Vacances de la Toussaint, Part 2: A Rainy Afternoon in Antibes

Even though today was one of the rare rainy days on the Côte d’Azur, Helen and I decided to spend a few hours in Antibes. We took a train that arrived around 11 am and spent the first two hours walking around and seeing the harbor, a statue, and the beach.

We decided to eat lunch at one of the restaurants that I remember from my first time in Antibes during my year abroad in Paris. I remember having an amazing savory crepe with roasted vegetables, pesto, and pine nuts. The experience this time was disappointing. When we first arrived, all of the restaurant staff ignored us, leaving us guessing as to whether we should seat ourselves or wait to be seated. After seating ourselves indoors since it was still raining, we had to wait a long time for anyone to even bring us a menu and then wait again for someone to take our order. The restaurant wasn’t even that busy, but the waiters wouldn’t even look at us, which made catching their eye to ask for something difficult. When our food finally came, my crepe was good but not nearly as good as I remember it being last time, and Helen’s was very over-cooked. We wanted to try a sweet crepe, but after waiting for well over 20 minutes after our plates were cleared for someone to pay us any attention we gave up on dessert and asked for the check. Overall it was a very disappointing experience as the food was just OK and we felt completely ignored by the staff the whole time.

After eating, since it was still raining, we decided we would spend the rest of the afternoon in the Musée Picasso. However, when we arrived at the museum, the line for entry was out the door —probably at least 50 people long! It seemed that given the rain, everyone else had the same idea we did. We decided to visit the museum another day and take an earlier train home. 

On the way to get the train, we stopped in a bakery and got raspberry tarts to make up for missing out on dessert crepes at lunch. 

Even though things didn’t go perfectly for Helen’s first visit to Antibes, it was still a nice afternoon.  It was really nice to get to spend some time with Helen and whet her appetite for what Antibes has to offer.

Vacances de la Toussaint, Part 1: Antibes and Menton

After only 2.5 weeks of work (I’ll post about that soon…) we already have a 2-week vacation. On Thursday, the first day of break, I met my friend Russian Marina in Antibes for the afternoon (I also know an Italian Marina and a French Marina, so it can be confusing). We spent a nice relaxing afternoon eating ice cream, walking around, and searching for sea glass and smooth stones on the beach. I really love Antibes, and I’m planning to go back tomorrow afternoon.

Pebbles and sea glass on the beach

Antibes

Antibes

Sunset from the train on the way home

Sunset from the train

I had been planning to take a day trip on Friday to Ventimiglia with two other English language assistants, Katie and Helen. Ventimiglia is the last stop on the train line that passes through Grasse, and it is just over the border in Italy. Normally all of the trains that pass through Grasse have Ventimiglia as their destination, but when we were looking at train times on Thursday evening, there were no trains listed going to Ventimiglia on Friday morning. We later learned that there was a transportation strike in Italy that day. Instead, we decided to spend the day in Menton, the last stop in France before Italy. It was another beautiful and relaxing day. The weather was gorgeous, although a little windy. We didn’t really do anything specific, just walked around the city, had lunch and ice cream, and walked along the beach. Menton is known for its lemons and it also has some famous gardens that we didn’t see, so I’m planning to go back sometime to see the gardens and explore the little city more. 

Menton

Menton lemons

Menton

Creepy turquoise cat at a market in Menton

Gnocchi for lunch

Interesting stairway leading to a church

We walked along an old fort, built to protect the city from the Spanish (who were in charge of Monaco at the time).

Gorgeous views of the harbor and city

Wednesday Market in Grasse

On Wednesday I had some extra time to kill before my bus, so I walked around in Grasse and found a market that is apparently in Grasse every Wednesday. Most of the stalls were selling clothing, but there were also various crafts and food. I bought an assortment of 15 small pastries that were very yummy. As I passed a table selling tapenade, among other food items, the man at the table insisted that I try a sample of red pepper tapenade on bread. While I ate my sample, he told me about all of the other varieties of tapenade he was selling, and then asked me if I was familiar with them. When I replied that I was not, he asked me which region of France I was from. I always get really excited when French people think I’m French, so that made my day. When I replied that I was from the United States he seemed impressed and then insisted that I try the black olive tapenade because it is a local specialty, and then he would “stop bothering me.” I don’t really like black olives, but he seemed excited to share it with me, so I tried it and it was surprisingly not too bad, for olives.

Bus Button Anecdote

I’ve had an extremely busy and productive week and I have many other blog posts in the works, but I just wanted to quickly share an anecdote from yesterday evening.

I’m still staying with Virginie and her family in Peymeinade, a town near Grasse. There is only one bus (bus C) that I can easily take between Grasse and Peymeinade and the schedule is fairly complicated (see Grasse Bus Saga). Yesterday evening I was waiting for bus C in Grasse to get back to Peymeinade, and a bus C arrived at the stop about 5 minutes ahead of schedule, which made me question whether or not it was the right bus to take.

The bus drivers here are very hit-or-miss: some are super helpful and nice while others are downright rude. The very first time I tried to take a bus C back to Peymeinade from Grasse I was very confused about which bus to take and which stop the bus would come to, so I decided to ask the bus driver of the first bus C I saw if he was going to Peymeinade, even though it looked like it was probably going in the other direction. This turned out to be a mistake as the bus driver was extremely rude and repeatedly asked me if I had read the destination sign on the outside of the bus and insisted that I need to read the sign. It was completely uncalled for and a simple “no” would have been perfectly sufficient. As a result, I’m very reluctant to ask bus drivers any questions, but I was more worried about missing my bus since the next one wasn’t for another hour.

I got on the bus and verified with the bus driver that the bus was going to the right destination and then I sat in a seat near the front so that I could easily see out the windshield to look for my stop (since the buses only stop upon request, it is very easy to miss your stop before becoming familiar with the route, which I’ve learned the hard way). The interior of the bus was completely different from any bus I have ever been on, which was disconcerting; it was like a mix between a coach bus and a public transport bus. The bus waited around for a few minutes, I guess because it was ahead of schedule, and during that time I looked around for the nearest “stop” button for signaling to the driver to stop but I realized that I didn’t see any stop buttons. I didn’t really want to ask the diver another question because he hadn’t been particularly friendly in our first interaction, but I had to find out how to get off the bus. I reluctantly went back up to him and asked if he stops at every stop or if we need to signal to him to stop. He replied “If someone at a stop wants to get on, I stop to let them on. If someone on the bus wants to get off, I stop to let them off, just like any other bus.” I said “Yes, but normally there are buttons to push to request a stop, and I don’t see any.” He replied that there are buttons all over the place and when I said “sorry but I don’t see where they are” he got up and walked back through the bus with me to look for buttons. We finally found ONE button by the exit door near the back of the bus…

P.S. I’m writing with a French keyboard, which is quite a challenge since most of the keys are in the same location, but the Q, W, A, and Z are all switched around and the M is also in a different place. Additionally, all of the character keys are different and you need to use the shift bar to get a period! It will definitely take some time to get used to it.