Author: jemma

Antibes’ L’Armoise Restaurant: Survival of the Smallest

Posted on by jemma

It’s date night during the Côte d’Azur’s high season, and Philippe and I are counting on our lucky stars.  It’s nearly 8pm, and having utterly failed to make a reservation, we take our chances.  Navigating the narrow street that leads into Antibes’ Marché Provençal, Philippe squeezes the car to the side of the road, blocking three parked vehicles.  He calls over the street to the guy in a black t-shirt who’s lingering there, near the doorway of his restaurant.

Yes, there’s one remaining table for two tonight in his small restaurant.  The ruddy chef with spiky chestnut hair and trimmed stubble takes our car keys.  He’s busy waving off folks in a car that’s double-parked behind us.  On closer inspection, I’m guessing they must be his parents.

Fresh from the market, produce arrives every morning on the doorstep of this favourite Antibes restaurant.
Fresh from the market, produce arrives every morning on the doorstep of this favourite Antibes restaurant.

Philippe and I are the first to arrive at L’Armoise tonight.  A sole, ponytailed waitress, one we’ve not seen before, greets us cheerfully and offers us a choice of table.  We seat ourselves just inside the doorway, sidled up against an open window cut into what look like hand-plastered white walls.  But it’s the ceiling that gives this room its rustic charm, the white plaster cut by long ribbons of dark wooden beams.  Philippe and I take a gander at tonight’s menu, which is handwritten on a chalkboard fixed to the back wall, and again we admire the poetry of a French menu:

POUR COMMENCER (TO BEGIN)

  • Velouté de courgettes pays, radis roses, concombre, morceaux de chèvre frais (creamy zucchini soup with a scattering of radish, cucumber and fresh goat cheese)
  • Risotto à la pulpe de fenouil, poulpe de roche, haricots verts, pétales de gingembre (risotto with fennel, rock octopus, green beans and flakes of fresh ginger)

POUR SUIVRE (TO CONTINUE)

  • Selon la pêche, aubergines, pois gourmands, sucrine, fine purée d’épinards (daily fish, eggplant, peas, baby lettuce and spinach purée)
  • Poitrine de pintade fermière, écrasé de pommes de terre citron, petits pois, artichauts violets (breast of guinea fowl, lemon mashed potatoes, peas and purple artichokes)

POUR FINIR (TO FINISH)

  • Douceur de fruits rouges, éclats de nougatine, glace pistache, jus de framboises (sweet of red fruits, nougatine slivers, pistachio ice cream and raspberry juice)
  • Nectarine jaune pochée dans un sirop verviene, mûres, meringue, glace vanilla (yellow nectarine poached in a vervain sirop (the leaf is often used for herbal tea here), blackberries, meringue and vanilla ice cream)

We decide to try everything.  Meanwhile the muscular, spiky-haired chef has dealt with our car, easing it back into his parents’ former space that blocks another set of three legally parked vehicles.

Parinello scours Antibes’ Marché Provençal every morning. Photo: Steve Muntz
Parinello scours Antibes’ Marché Provençal every morning. Photo: Steve Muntz

You’d hardly expect such multi-tasking from a hardworking chef – just as we hardly presumed to snag a table at his restaurant tonight.  But Laurent Parrinello is becoming better known by the week.  The New York Times mentioned him in a best-of-the-Riviera article placed just before last summer’s high season.  The latest piece of literature was a short paragraph, photo and all, that appeared in an article about Antibes’ top restaurants in Le Figaro Magazine just a couple weeks earlier – though, it should be said, I didn’t see the article until just after our dinner this night.  From this national magazine I would learn that Parrinello formerly worked down the road at Restaurant Eden-Roc (situated within the five-star celebrity magnet, the Hôtel du Cap).  I also would confirm something I already suspected about one of my favourite chefs:  He picks his way through the neighbouring Marché Provençal each morning to unearth the day’s best produce.

These days the doorway to L’Armoise is decorated with various important stickers, like the big red dot proclaiming “2013 Michelin Guide”.  But Philippe and I stumbled on the pint-sized restaurant years ago.  It had been one of three intriguing nooks along that same narrow track leading up to the Marché Provençal, and over the years this one has remained our favourite.

The waitress comes to take our order.  She’s the perfect girl-next-door, cheerful and efficient with a slender frame, flawless complexion and glossy, dark hair pulled back into a simple ponytail.  Her attire follows this script.  The girl-next-door wears a crisp white shirt with puffy, short sleeves, and a silver heart pendant dangles around her neck.

Other neatly dressed diners, mostly French-speaking couples, have begun to filter into the restaurant.  A long mirror runs horizontally along one wall, presumably an attempt to enlarge the room.  Beside it stands a tall vase of long-stemmed, cream callas.  Philippe and I count the number of seats in the restaurant – probably the fifth time we’ve done this exercise over the years – and still we cannot believe it’s only 20.

Another couple stops to read the menu posted outside L’Armoise’s front door.  The waitress politely turns them away.  The restaurant is full tonight, she says.

Philippe and my conversation fixes onto on the subject we entertain pretty much every time we dine chez L’Armoise.  How can this restaurant survive on a nightly clientele of 20?  True, the chef does have certain positives from a business perspective.  The limited menu means limited wastage.  A minimal employee roster brings fewer French social charges and the related headaches.  And the restaurant’s proximity to the Marché Provençal surely eases its supply chain.

But there’s an overwhelming con:  20 meals a day – au maximum – because just like in most restaurants in France, the brains behind L’Armoise have absolutely no urge to flip tables!  Making matters more fragile are rising raw material costs (staff included) and a general cost-trimming by the dining public.  Also hovering is the whole “fait maison” effort circulating within France at the moment.  In the future restaurants may be required to identify which dishes are “homemade” from fresh ingredients – with glaring gaps remaining beside those menu items that are brought in.  But then, I’m guessing L’Armoise is already a fait maison sort of place.

As we dip into a generous amuse-bouche of polenta and salad greens, Philippe and I settle into familiar conversational territory.  The French, generally speaking, have a total incomprehension of how business works.  Okay, that’s too strong.  But the way they think about business is entirely different to the way most Anglophones do.  The French work to live, not the other way around.  The idea is a completely laudable one, for sure, but taken beyond reason you can find the mentality is not so productive.

Like Olivier, I say.

Philippe understands entirely.  Our friend is a highly qualified dentiste – a dental surgeon, to be exact – with his own cabinet equipped in the latest and highest quality machinery.  But Olivier hardly uses the place as much as you’d expect.  He reserves Mondays for himself – to study, of all things, more dentistry.  It’s part of his overarching aim of a well-proportioned lifestyle.  Why buy a house, he wonders, when an apartment will do?  Life is about quality, not quantity.

Philippe and I both get the lifestyle-choice argument, honestly we do.  It’s just that there are far more Oliviers in this part of the world than we outsiders would expect.

And there’s that toy store in Cannes, Philippe says.

Absolutely.  We tracked down En Sortant de l’École, a beautiful, old-fashioned toy store in the main shopping corridors of Cannes a while back.  But at 10:45 a.m., the shop remained closed, 45 minutes after it was due to open.  We returned at midday and found a woman just organizing her till.  It had been a long night, she said.  She’d decided to sleep in.  Surely the explanation involved some sort of French shrug.

As Philippe and I wait for our starters, another few enquirers linger before the menu outside L’Armoise, but the waitress turns them all away.  Meanwhile a small French-speaking group has arrived at the table behind me, and beside us is a table of two couples, presumably parents with their child and spouse.  The younger woman is visibly pregnant.  They share a Scandinavian-sounding dialect but navigate the menu with the ponytailed waitress in halting English.

Philippe remembers a joke a local friend told him earlier this summer.  It’s a new one to me.  You know what they call French people? he asks.  Des Italiens malheureux!  Unhappy Italians!

Unhappy or not, you cannot deny that the French know how to cook.  I’m spoiled by my risotto – I couldn’t resist the tangy ginger taste combination – and Philippe is hardly malheureux about his creamy zucchini soup.   Behind my husband I watch Parrinello through an open window leading directly into his kitchen.  The restaurant’s engine is all aluminum and high-tech, a sharp contrast to the rustic feel of the dining area.  Sometimes Parrinello’s back is turned as he hovers beneath an aluminium stove hood.  Other times he faces into the restaurant, his concentration evident as he embellishes plates beneath the serving counter.  A framed photo hangs on the wall of this wide serving nook; a bright red, hand-cut star occupies its lower left corner.  From inside the frame a toddler girl, all innocent-eyed, gazes out into the restaurant.

What is it about French morosité, Philippe and I wonder amid this most agreeable setting, that gets such constant airing?  Our affable waitress aside, why is the typical French reaction to râler (to moan)?  What keeps this lot from being more joyful, more pull-up-your-bootstraps-and-get-to-work like the Americans?

I’m reminded of something my witty French instructor said last year at Alliance Française in Toronto.  Joie de vivre, Jean-François said, is an Anglicism.  The French don’t use the phrase.  The concept of joie (joy), he said, is a bit too jolly for the French.  A bit too much like Père Noël (Santa Claus).

Philippe and my utensils stray onto each other’s plates as we warm to our evolving theme of the French work ethic.  The work-to-live ideology is a strong force here from the get-go.  But there’s another pivotal factor that pushes the idea even further into the everyday mindset:  taxes, the French Government’s own disincentive to work.

Stories flood into our conversation, one recollection spurring another.  We know people – our favourite cheese seller and our family doctor, to name two – who cut back their hours in order to pay fewer taxes.  The goal is to earn enough without earning too terribly much.

But working fewer hours hardly means people share their load either.  The fromager won’t hire a helper in spite of a sometime 30-minute queue that snakes along his cheese stall in the jammed market aisles.  He’d have to pay too much tax.  Social charges paid directly from employer to the government, we know, are roughly equivalent to the employee’s very paycheque.  Hiring someone, in other words, costs about twice the quoted salary.  And thanks again to more bureaucracy, it’s impossible to get rid of employees for poor performance or even a downturn in business.

The simple answer?  Do the work yourself – enough, but not too much.

And now housekeepers are covered in this tax category, I remind Philippe.  A local banker friend mentioned this one earlier in the summer.  Employees inside the home – housekeepers and the like – used to be afforded a 50% social tax rate paid by their employers.  Now they, too, cost a second salary.  But, our banker friend told us with a smile, the government’s take on social tax contributions from home employees actually fell in the last period by 8%.  She asked us, do you really think people have suddenly fired their housekeepers?

The ponytailed waitress delivers our mains, describing Philippe’s guinea fowl and my white fish with appropriate flourish before darting off to another table.  Parrinello’s culinary flair continues.  And I’m thankful, in a female sort of way, that this time my plate is the less ample one.

Philippe recalls a recent trip to buy a swimsuit in neighbouring Juan-les-Pins.  Numbers were down again, the grey-haired shop owner said.  His wife owns a women’s store two doors down and was in the same business boat.  The couple work their neighbouring stores with little rest in the high season.  Once they hired someone to help out, the man told Philippe, but she never showed up, so now they simply use their teenage daughter.  And then the couple closes their doors at the end of October.  After all, the man said, who buys swimsuits in the wintertime?

The storeowner’s conversation shifted all-too-naturally to taxes.  We find it’s a hot topic this year – and unsurprisingly so.  Everyone wants to blow off steam, especially here in the Côte d’Azur, as these folks never voted to put the current government in office.  Local friends have confessed to their embarrassment for the nation.

Last year, two weeks before the end of his season, the husband of this Juan-les-Pins shop-owning couple put a sign in his front window advertising a promotion.  Shortly an agent from the fraud department – basically the French IRS – strode through the door.  Promotions weren’t allowed during those weeks in October, she said.  They were not part of the official, French sale period.  For this crime of putting 50 end-of-season bathing suits on promotion, the storeowner was slapped with a EUR 2,000 fine.

Dinner at L’Armoise always seems to spur on this sort of conversation.  It’s as if, for all the years Philippe and I have dined here, we think that one day we’ll crack the mystery of how this place stays afloat.  But we never seem to get anywhere.  Each year we return to Parrinello, toiling away on the other side of his serving nook, his meals as top-notch as ever.

Our mains have been cleared by this time, and what with the amuse-bouche, some bread, the starters and the mains, Philippe and I only can manage a shared dessert.  We explain our predicament to the ever-engaging waitress and opt for the fantasy of red fruits.

At the same time we continue in our conversational vein, insisting that the go-slow work ethic is somehow intrinsic to the French psyche.  Some intangible motivation allows businesses to leave sales on the table, even if the rationale has nothing to do with the work-to-live mentality or higher taxes.

Like choquettes, I say.

Just like choquettes, Philippe says.  He knows exactly what I mean.  These airy bites of pastry sprinkled with pearls of white sugar have been our longstanding touchstone for the utter lack of French business initiative.  Our local boulangerie at l’Ilette makes the best choquettes on the planet – moreish and sweet, but never ever doughy or greasy.  And yet if you show up at the boulangerie too late in the day, you’ll find the stock of choquettes was gone hours ago.  Or if you visit on the wrong days of the week, you’ll find the boulangerie doesn’t make choquettes those days.  You’d think, given that the shop is open to queues of customers all day long, seven days a week . . . but that just makes too much business sense.

Sabrina, our French nanny, has her own complaints about the business mentality of her native land, too – but then she has lived in North America for several years.  She has a new apartment in Toulon and wants to fix up the kitchen.  At the end of July, she visited Ikea, the famous Swedish superstore that fits homes literally the world over.  The attendant in this French Ikea outlet was happy to take Sabrina’s order, but she warned that nothing would happen until September – a whole month-and-a-bit later.  August was August, she explained.

“C’est un peu bizarre,” Sabrina said to me.  Then she shrugged her shoulders in acceptance.   “C’est la France.”

When the genial waitress arrives to clear our dessert plate, Philippe and I can hold back no longer.  After complimenting her (again) on the meal, we find out that she joined L’Armoise in March this year.  She came south from Burgundy.

She may be a fairly new kid on the block, but business in this diminutive restaurant continues like we always remember it, we say.  Why do you keep turning customers away?  we ask.  Wouldn’t you want to turn any table that you can – to get more customers in?  We’re evidently thinking about our own table, which is coming free only 30-minute after the latest enquiry.

Non, the girl-next-door says.  We do 20 meals a night, she insists, and we do them correctement.

Enough is enough – especially in a restaurant that already abides by the time-consuming, fait maison criteria.  Anyway, she says, the chef doesn’t want to hire other people – except maybe to wash the dishes.

It all makes perfect French sense, but we’re feeling none the wiser.  Before making a move from our table-for-the-night, Philippe and I formulate the best question we can ask Parrinello directly on our way out.  He’s still preparing orders on the other side of the high countertop, the photograph of the toddler girl keeping watch over his diners.

Philippe manages to launch this question into the kitchen.  After praising the chef’s continued culinary success, Philippe asks Parrinello why he doesn’t expand his shop.

I like being a chef, he says.  And I don’t want any more employees.

The obvious answer – and yet, it’s only so obvious in France.

Parinello takes a momentary break from his work.  Moisture dots his hairline even now that the day’s abundant heat has dissipated.

I went to the accountant two days ago, he says, his hands pressed firmly into the counter to hold his weight.  The guy told me j’ai perdu six ans de ma vie – that I lost six years of my life.  I have less money now than I started out with, he says.

Put succinctly, the government eats all his profits.

I’ve tried, he continues, and I love what I do, but it’s not worth it.  The rising chef vows that he’d sell his business and leave France in a minute – if that offer only was available.

All of which, with some neat tagline, would have made a perfectly good-if-sobering end to this post.  But it gets better.  Last week, two weeks after our gorgeous meal at L’Armoise, Philippe and I again find ourselves walking that narrow strip of road leading up to Antibes’ Marché Provençal.  As we near L’Armoise, who’s up ahead but chef Parrinello, just nipping out for a smoke.

It was in this interim two-week period that we unearthed Parrinello’s latest plaudits in Le Figaro Magazine.  Now, seeing him again, Philippe suddenly strides across the road toward the loitering chef, who shuffles around outside his open kitchen window.

Hey, my husband calls, congratulations on the Figaro mention!  It’s really good news.

Parrinello looks up.  Ah, it’s not so great, he says.  The revered chef is distracted, surly even.  The word morosité springs to mind.

What’s not great?  Philippe asks, surprised.  You’re named up there with all the top restaurants in Antibes!

Something flickers now in Parrinello’s brain and he softens.  The cigarette might be calming his nerves or perhaps, now that I’ve caught up with Philippe, Parrinello recognizes us as his fans.  Or maybe the chef feels he already has fulfilled his French duty to râler as the initial reaction to most anything, from burdensome request to the highest of praise.

Parrinello gives the slightest nod of his head.  Well, yeah, he says of this magazine recognition that we’re insisting is so fortuitous.  Yeah, he says, I guess it’s okay.

Readers Write In: French Lessons’ Summer Postbox

Posted on by jemma

“Wonderfix!  Fabulix!”  wrote Mary from Rockford, Illinois, a few weeks ago.

It was a dazzling response to “Astérix for Foreigners,” this summer’s blog post (dated July 12, 2013) on the famous French cartoon character.  Mary’s words were meaningful, concise and witty – and, as it happens, nicely complimentary.  I’m thinking of handing the reigns of French Lessons over to her for a while.

But Mary is simply one of many, a cherished and intelligent community of readers.  As we near the end of this summer’s edition of French Lessons, I can’t help but make a few introductions.

That post on Astérix also stirred Kristine, my American friend who lives in nearby Biot with her French husband and their ten-year-old daughter.  Olivier was reading these stories to Kaiya.  In Biot exactly as in Antibes, father and daughter giggled at inane names and storylines.  In both French towns along the Côte d’Azur, a dad’s enthusiasm was infectious.

I adore when a blog post sparks a parallel in a reader’s own life.

But ever so politely, Kristine also corrected me.  Assurancetourix, the name of the bard in Astérix’s Roman village, is hardly a play on the phrase assurance touriste (i.e., tourist insurance).  It’s assurance tous risques, Kristine explained.  Insurance for all risks, as in comprehensive car insurance.

As it happens, Kristine is one of the first friends I saw again in France this summer.  She has lived here for nearly a decade now, and in some ways has become a hybrid between her two countries.

On that early summer day when we met for lunch, the first thing Kristine and I discussed was Jean-G.  She had just read my post “Summer in the Côte d’Azur:  The More Things Change . . .” (June 22, 2013) about this industrious and impassioned tax lawyer that we’d hired to sort out certain fiscal debates concerning our home Bellevue.  Kristine brought the blog post for her own family’s discussion and vowed to hire the colourful Jean-G to sort out their affairs.

My French-American friend was engrossed that noontime in her explanation of a tax miscalculation gone terribly wrong as she led me out of an underground parking garage in neighbouring Juan-les-Pins.  I, the rule-following North American, couldn’t help but interrupt her story as we hiked upward to rediscover the daylight.  To my horror we were winding along the narrow and enclosed, cylindrical, vehicles-only ramp – against any incoming traffic.  Kristine said it was the only way the French people ever exited this particular parking garage.

Fortunately we met no inbound vehicles.  She continued her story safely in the sunlight, developing a theme I’ve heard countless times this summer here in the Côte d’Azur:  The French Government is sapping the middle class.  The core of today’s society has no more financial incentive to work.  No one wants to use his or her abilities to make this country a better place.  The elected officials are trying to make everyone equal, and equal in this case is the least common denominator.

Kristine elaborated as we approached the chemin de la Salis, the route that flushes traffic downhill into Juan-les-Pins.  As we reached the road, there was a break in traffic so I started across the road, followed briskly by my friend.  Now Kristine was horrified.  We should be using the zebra crossing, she insisted.

French pedestrian rules, I think, are more about tradition than true rationale.

But in the very hour before Kristine and I met, she had a phone call.  All the talk about the incredible Jean-G had spurred her husband into phoning his own accountant.  Their latest problem had been a miscommunication.  Olivier, she said, felt a new lease of life.  That lunchtime we drank champagne on the beach.

Immortalized in Valmondois in northern France, Honoré Victorin Daumier once created characters like our feisty Jean-G. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Immortalized in Valmondois in northern France, Honoré Victorin Daumier once created characters like our feisty Jean-G. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

That same post about the energetic Jean-G and the French tax machine also inspired Diane to write in from Denver.  “This one should go in some current publication,” she wrote, “except you’d have to change the property location and somehow totally affect it being anonymous.”  She added, “The characters are great.  I can envision Daumier-style illustrations – his series on Law and Justice.”

I had to Wiki this chap Daumier.  Honoré Victorin Daumier (1808 – 1879):  a prolific French artist whose work provided commentary on the state of his country’s social and political affairs during the 19th century.  A canny perspective from this erudite Denverite!

French Lessons doesn’t always prompt such lofty feedback.  “The Côte d’Azur:  The World’s New Silk Road” (July 26, 2013) declared that the Côte d’Azur is a modern crossroads for the world’s cultures.  One example of such a junction, I said, was a recent concert in Juan-les-Pins by Diana Krall – and her possible visit to our Bellevue the next day . . . except that we were leaving for a golfing event in the morning.

Alex from Toronto made me laugh.  “Krall” was the simple title he chose for his email.  “I would have blown off golf in 2 minutes to hang with Diana,” he wrote.

Some posts have prompted readers to look at their own activities through a new lens.  Barry from Who-Knows-Where is one such reader.  Fashion dominated my attentions in “Monaco’s Fête Picasso:  The Art of Fashion” (July 19, 2013) until, walking through this summer’s special Picasso exhibition at Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum, I stumbled on details of the painter’s days here in our French hometown.  Within moments I was plummeting through Alice’s rabbit hole, becoming completely engrossed in what could’ve been.  Did the life of this celebrated artist ever intertwine with that of Bellevue’s founder, a man who would’ve been Picasso’s contemporary?  Could Picasso have stood at the Mediterranean’s shoreline and gazed up at the very limestone walls of our grande dame?

Perhaps we should’ve blown off golf after all? Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Perhaps we should’ve blown off golf after all? Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“Your blog has really struck a chord,” Barry wrote.  He’d made a recent cycling trip simply to look at his paternal grandparents’ house in a seaside resort.  These relatives were long gone, he said, but he got talking to the home’s current owner and, one thing and another, a new friendship was launched.  Meeting within that home’s walls only one day before receiving my post, Barry was quietly drawn down his own mythical rabbit hole.  He was keen to point out that he doesn’t necessarily count black cats that cross his path, but the silent third character in his budding friendship was the house, his grandparents’ former home, and the generations of stories that dwell within its walls.

Another dedicated reader who found a new lens for her day was Pat.  Like the fabulix Mary, Pat also hails from my birthplace of Rockford, IL.  “The Châteaux of Bordeaux:  France’s Hedonist Paradise” (June 28, 2013) began in the fabulous vineyards of Bordeaux and culminated in a late-night, sumptuous, ten-course feast within a 17th-century Carthusian monastery, featuring variation de chou fleur aux huitres et caviar (cauliflower whipped up like you’ve never seen it, with oysters and caviar) and homard bleu, petits légumes en risotto, cappuccino de corail (blue lobster, vegetable risotto and a froth of edible coral).

Pat drew several parallels with her own recent outing to Milton, Wisconsin.  Her day had begun in a parade of vintage cars that wound into this renowned winemaking vicinity for a “wine run”.  Then she and her friends moved onto dinner at the nearby Buckhorn Supper Club.  “We were eating early,” Pat explained.  The group arrived at 4:30 p.m.  Their table was black wrought iron, the glasses disposable plastic.  The waitress chatted at length about her children and husband.  And continuing in the subtle wit that wove through her tale, Pat said she chose for her main course the evening’s special, a dish so awe-inspiring that it wasn’t listed on the menu:  chicken and dumplings.

Some of you have encouraged me from the moment of this summer’s relaunch – and it has been a real pleasure to write each week knowing that you are actually out there in the ether.  Now for a little unabashed whooping:

Upon receiving the season’s first French Lessons post (“Brittany vs French Riviera:  Which is the Real France?,” June 15, 2013), Stacey from Florida declared, “Summer is officially here!  I no longer track the season with June 21st, but the initial French Lessons email . . . .  I can’t wait for my weekly fix of your blog.  I sampled a few options but my favorite way to enjoy it is over coffee on a Saturday or Sunday morning before everyone is awake.”

John from A-Place-Unknown also chimed in.  “I’m glad that you’re back, forgot after you left last year so it’s a treat to have this waiting in my inbox today!”

They are the kind of comments that propel me onward.  Shari from Colorado enjoys her “vicarious vacation” – the same journey that Barbro from Rockford takes.  She appreciates the chance to “linger for a bit, and smile.”  My mother has said some nice things, too, but then again, she would.

Jeremy from London has offered a terrific boost with his own, humongous fan base.  “Liked it and just tweeted it,” he wrote after receiving the summer’s first post.  Blogging is about as far out on the social media limb as I go.  His tweets, which have continued all summer long, have been sweet birdsong to my ears (and to my viewer stats).

Kathy from Utah has become my new best friend.  “Just a note of appreciation for sending us the best reads this summer!” she wrote after reading “Jewels, Fireworks and the Odd Storm:  Summers in the Sunny Côte d’Azur” (August 2, 2013).  “Thanks for sharing this smart, sassy, and truly enjoyable blog with us.”

Smart and sassy in the same sentence?  I’m calling Kathy for a quote on some future book cover.  But seriously, a gros merci to all of you, named here or not.

One particular blog post from last summer brought a new friend this season.  Kristina, a writer from Sweden, read “Antibes and World War II:  Two Tales of A City” (August 23, 2012) about the World War II history that lurks just beneath the surface of Antibes’ sandy beaches and sunny cafés; you just have to know to look for it.  The centerpiece of the story is a tall shard of limestone with a copper plaque that has gone green.  The monument stands halfway around the bay from Bellevue and commemorates the undercover mission of the H.M.S. Unbroken submarine, which surfaced in these waters one night in April 1942.  The Allied protagonist in this story of wartime France was Peter Churchill, a member of the British Special Operations Executive who headed the mission, and the French lead character was Dr Elie Lévy, a kingpin of Antibes’ Résistance movement whose nearby home on Boulevard Foch served as a secretive Résistance headquarters.

“I’ve just finished reading this amazing story,” Kristina wrote.  “I am writing this sitting at Boulevard Foch in Antibes, and as soon as I finished I will head out to have a proper look at the war memorial.”

A simple memorial sheds light – and prompts more questions.
A simple memorial sheds light – and prompts more questions.

I wrote back to Kristina, as I do to most every respondent.  A few days later, she replied, “Do you know what I discovered?  I am sitting in the very house with the marble plaque:  Here lived Dr Elie Victor Amedee Lévy.  I have walked past it many times but I haven’t noticed it before. . . .  Now I can’t stop thinking about what happened to his [Jewish] daughters.  Did the [falsified baptismal] certificates help them?  Did they survive the war?  Who owned the house that was here before? . . .”

Kristina went on to explain that she’s working on a book about the Côte d’Azur but that she’d breezed over Antibes, the very spot where her family owns this apartment on Boulevard Foch.  “There is so much history here, it is just a question of finding it,” she wrote, almost quoting the upshot of that blog post.

We decided to meet up for a coffee.  I made the suggestion in spite of what one seasoned Canadian writer advised me a couple years ago:  Befriend agents, not other writers.   (Presumably she said this in the process unfriending me).

Kristina and I have met twice in the same artsy café in Antibes’ old town, Arts Thés Miss.  The stifling afternoon heat was eased both times by a rotating fan, a couple strong coffees, a shared tasting plate of gateaux and bookish conversation.  Kristina explained social media to me and I translated a few words of French for her, and otherwise we’ve enjoyed discussing Antibes’ role in the Roaring Twenties and World War II – and what, exactly, would make a good book about this place.

Once, as a response to my post “French Language:  Form Over Substance” (July 4, 2013), Kristina wrote, “For what it is worth, I am jealous of your French.”

It was really nice to hear in a way.  Learning “the world’s most beautiful language” has removed a small handful of years from my life.  But now I wonder, thanks to new technology, if all the pain has been in vain.

Last weekend Philippe, Lolo and I moseyed into Blanc du Nil, a chain store in Antibes’ old town that sells clothing made only from white, Egyptian cotton (thus the reference to the great Nile).  As happens frequently with our bilingual family, we got talking language with the shop attendant, a woman whose dark complexion smoldered against her (patently) all-white, cotton clothing.  I mentioned the brilliance of the French-English dictionary app I carry around on my iPhone.

The woman wasn’t impressed.  As of this summer, she told us, people use their mobile phones as full-on translators.  Foreigners simply ask her to speak into their phones and voilà, a second later, a translation appears in their chosen tongue.  It costs 20 Euros.  Yes, I have a larger size.  That sort of thing.

I, meanwhile, only could think of the French subjunctive tense and how it virtually caused my premature death.  Does this app actually work?  I asked the shop attendant, hoping for massive pitfalls.

She shrugged her shoulders.  I don’t know, she said.  But the customers leave happy.

In the same email about my evolving language skills, my Swedish writer friend Kristina also asked for a follow-up on the last scene in that post.  “How was the livarot?”

I have to say I prefer the less ripe cheeses sold by Jacques Viale, the famous fromager at Antibes’ Marché Provençal, but given how smelly the creature was – and its stench was significant as we’d left the crusty meule to warm up in the kitchen for a good hour before its consumption – in spite of all this, the livarot’s taste was powerful but unexpectedly pleasing.

Kristina wasn’t the only one with feedback on the smelliest of all French cheeses.  Having visited Bellevue earlier this summer and shared the stinking meule of livarot, Philippe’s daughter Julie wrote from Toronto, “So the other day I’m in a cheese store, and lo and behold, I see livarot.  I make a face and scrunch up my nose.  The cheese curator notices and takes umbrage.  She agrees that it is pretty smelly, but then I tell her my tongue feels like pop rocks are on it when I eat it.  She tells me with this cheese it’s not unusual.  It’s actually a mild allergic reaction!”

Sometimes my own husband – brilliant and ever-reliable sounding board for these blog posts – sends me responses by email, too.  Like this one as a follow-up to “Jewels, Fireworks and the Odd Storm:  Summers in the Sunny Côte d’Azur” (August 2, 2013) in which, among other headlines that surrounded us during a short interval, we unknowingly strolled right beside the scene of a crime that soon would hit the international press:  a EUR 103 million ($137 million) theft of gems, jewelry and diamond-encrusted watches from the legendary Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

“What you missed,” Philippe wrote, “is that yesterday there was another jewelry theft in Cannes!  So the police are now doing the French thing – they’re creating a committee to study the problem!”

Reality is stranger than fiction.  That’s what makes these stories so bewitching.  With that catch, I think I’ll have to hand my French Lessons pen over to Philippe some week, too.

For all those wonderful people I’ve not mentioned in today’s post, I adore hearing from you, too.  But this post is like any other:  You have to prune so that readers have an article to read, not a book.  At the same time, you cannot prune too much.  You must stay honest to that irresistible truth.

Inbal, a new follower from Toronto, wrote at the beginning of her subscription, “It sounds like you are having quite an adventure.”

There was only one way I could respond:  This is real life, my friend.

Bellevue: On the Heels of World War II

Posted on by jemma

“C’était dommage,” Jean-Claude says, shaking his head piled with thick waves of white hair.  It was a shame, he says, but “mon père a voulu absoluement l’acheter, et ce Monsieur Rigaud n’a jamais voulu la vendre.”  His wrinkled face forms a playful smile around startlingly blue eyes.  Jean-Claude chuckles a little after explaining that his father really wanted to buy our home Bellevue, but the owner back then didn’t want to sell it.

The fact that this 74-year old in a magenta-and-white checked shirt is here, chatting with Philippe and me at our home along Antibes’ broad bay, is something of a dream to me.  He is a newly discovered link to Bellevue’s storied past.

I’m dying to see the photo album he had tucked under his arm when he arrived with his son Olivier, who owns a gourmet chocolate store in town, but the album lies on the terrace table alongside bowls of olives and pistachios.  The photos will have to wait.  For now we’re walking through Bellevue’s main rooms, heading on a trip down memory lane.  I carry my phone everywhere, having asked permission to tape our conversation as, I say, my English is a little better than my French.  The two men agreed, laughing charmingly.

The geography of our home has changed, I’m learning.  It has undergone something akin to the shuffling game played with three overturned cups.  Jean-Claude surveys the work we did on Bellevue some eight years ago.  Our living room was his boyhood dining room.   The room we call the dining room was closed off and used as an office.  Completing the circle, our office was his living room.

For generations it has been an unforgettable view.
For generations it has been an unforgettable view.

But the old plan made sense, Jean-Claude explains as we move onto Bellevue’s wide terrace, the hub of our existence here even if it’s exposed to the elements.  He understands why we did what we did to the terrace – the view is quite exceptional, sweeping from the city’s sandy beaches to the ancient old town with the Italian Alps forming a scenic backdrop, at least on clearer days – but this space was closed during his childhood.  Its exterior wall looked like any other.

We pause here at the edge of Bellevue’s terrace on this steamy afternoon.  Waves from the Baie de la Salis trickle onto a pebble beach beneath us.  The thick air is engulfed by the throbbing hum of the season’s cicadas.  Jean-Claude surveys Antibes’ bay and its sandy beaches from this perspective, both new and well-known to him.

“Cette plage est artificielle,” he says.  The sandy beach is fake; the sand is all imported.  In his day it was rock, like the rest of the coastline around here.  Pebbles and algae.  So much barer was the terrain back then, he says, indicating the wide crescent of coastline that leads between Bellevue and the town, that his mother would aim a set of binoculars over the land to spot his father as he walked home for lunch in the midday heat.  Today you could confuse a single man with a couple hundred other people – and that’s assuming you could make him out in the first place against an unbroken backdrop of apartments.

This part of the shoreline, though, has changed significantly.
This part of the shoreline, though, has changed significantly.

Jean-Claude raises a finger with a new recollection.  His blue eyes sparkle against his round, lined face as he studies the rocky jetty at the neighbouring port.  At nighttime, he says, he and his brother Philippe would build shallow pools off the jetty with six-holed bricks from the nearby shipyard.  In the morning, once the tide had gone out, they’d find the pools populated by minnows.  Des petits poissons!  he says with evident joy, holding the tips of a thumb and forefinger four inches apart.

The minnows will hardly be Jean-Claude’s most startling recollection from his childhood at Bellevue.  He lived here between the formative ages of 7 and 16.  It was just after the war when his family moved in as renters – 1946 to be precise.  In fact, one of the first things Jean-Claude said when he walked through Bellevue’s door was that he’s not from here.  He’s not a true Antibois; he wasn’t born in Antibes.  Now we get the detail.  It was his grandfather who lived in Antibes at the close of the war, and he was the one to encourage Jean-Claude’s father, a lawyer from Burgundy, to head south with his young family.  This, Jean-Claude’s grandfather told them, was where the action would be.

Longer readers of French Lessons will remember that two summers ago I devoted several posts to the puzzle of Bellevue’s origins.  In the end I traced the roots of our grande dame to 1930, give or take, with her vision originating from Edouard Muterse, a descendant of the area’s notable Guide family.  Edouard had rented out this property by the sea, and I stumbled on one of her earliest occupants, Arlette, a women who – amazingly enough – became a relative of Edouard himself, though several years after his death in 1948.  She married Edouard’s grandnephew a decade and a half after having lived in Bellevue as a child.

Arlette’s family, the Caus as they were called, had moved to Antibes from the north of France to escape the great war – but they were forced out of Bellevue earlier than they’d liked.  By the early 40s, the war had descended onto Antibes.  With Bellevue’s strategic, shoreline location, the Italians requisitioned the home.  Unsurprisingly, the details of what happened within her thick, stone walls during the occupation years are sketchy at best.  Arlette mentioned that Bellevue’s garage was mined.  A local man and longtime member of our neighbouring port told me the structure, once a proud home, had been ransacked by fleeing troops.  They ripped everything of value from Bellevue’s frame, pipes and all.

Other than that, we only knew that Bellevue stayed within Edouard’s descended family until sometime in the 1950s or 60s.  Being childless, Edouard left the property to his niece, but her husband – a banker named Rigaud, the very one mentioned by Jean-Claude a few moments ago – insisted that they hang onto the property as an investment.  What happened from that point until the mid-1960s has remained a mystery.

Jean-Claude, the septuagenarian standing on our terrace today, is the answer.  He’s more than the answer given the stories that populate his memory.  He knows the strength of this next one before he begins it.  It’s a staggering image that, given the way he holds court with Philippe, his son Olivier and me, he seems eager to share.

Not so long ago, Bellevue’s garden told a totally different story.
Not so long ago, Bellevue’s garden told a totally different story.

His gaze shifts down into Bellevue’s garden.  Today it’s a verdant plot, punctuated by a couple palms, a parasol pine and a couple smaller varieties.  Our daughter’s wooden climbing structure occupies one stretch, and in the middle lies an iridescent, turquoise swimming pool.

This story about our grande dame by the sea is his earliest, one that actually happened just before his arrival here as a child.  It was late 1945.  After a couple insufferable years, the region was once again free territory.  Jean-Claude explains that the first task at Bellevue for his grandfather, the man who’d beckoned his family south, involved German prisoners.  These last words stun me.

“Revolver dans les mains,” Jean-Claude continues, “ils déminaient le jardin, car le jardin avait des mines.”  There were mines everywhere.  His grandfather had the German prisoners in his sight, down the barrel of the revolver, à quatre pattes – crawling – through Bellevue’s garden, routing out landmines.

The picture is so visual it both thrills and horrifies me.  Philippe and I find ourselves repeating virtually every word to make sure we heard Jean-Claude correctly.  Des prisonniers allemands?  Un revolver?  À quatre pattes?  Yes, we have understood.

Once the land was mine-free, a process Jean-Claude insists didn’t take terribly long, Bellevue was like a small hotel, at least by today’s standards.  Her occupants included Jean-Claude’s family – father, mother, Jean-Claude and his younger brother and sister – and extended family that stayed full-time as well.  The brother of Jean-Claude’s mother trained at the legal offices of Jean-Claude’s father.  The other siblings of Jean-Claude’s mother also lived here.  And then in the summer months, the brother of Jean-Claude’s father arrived with his family of five, bringing the grand total under Bellevue’s roof to 14 people!

“C’était ma mère à l’époque qui faisait les courses à bicyclette,” Jean-Claude says.  His mother did the shopping for all these people on her bike.  The group ate meat two or three times a week, he recalls.  Fish was on Fridays as a matter of good Catholicism.  And otherwise meals focused on eggs or soup, and there were always two types of vegetables, often laced in sauce.  And cheese.  Of course there was cheese.

A cylindrical staircase now cuts through Bellevue’s core.
A cylindrical staircase now cuts through Bellevue’s core.

Philippe and I are trying to accommodate all these inhabitants within Bellevue’s current framework.  Jean-Claude explains there were five bedrooms on the garden level as opposed to our three.  And up top, there were four chambres rather than two today.  I grab my phone, which still records our words, and together we climb Bellevue’s circular, marble staircase to survey the changes.

As we reach the top of the steps, Jean-Claude pauses.  This was his bedroom, he says, indicating the landing and a great circular hole that plummets three stories to the basement.  Yes, his bedroom led out onto the upstairs balcony.  His room was here, right here.  It no longer exists.

It was, funnily enough, exactly what Arlette had told us of her own childhood bedroom when she visited Bellevue for the first time a couple years ago.  Fortunately from neither former occupant have I perceived a sense of loss.

I still marvel at how we found Jean-Claude; it is a manifestation of the world remaining small in these parts.  News of his existence first came through our local friend Veronique, mother of one of Lolo’s former schoolmates.  Her family also sees Dr L, the kind and sociable family doctor we’ve visited from time to time since purchasing Bellevue eight years ago.  Dr L apparently told Veronique that he knew someone who had lived our home.  My mind boggles at how, exactly, the three-way connection among Veronique, Jean-Claude and us was determined through Dr L (what with client confidentiality and all), but then this would hardly be the first time I’ve heard talk about a third party from our amiable doctor friend.

Jean-Claude, Olivier, Philippe and I return to Bellevue’s terrace and seat ourselves around the dining table.  Philippe breaks open some sparkling rosé while we, the hosts, seem to be devouring most of the olives and pistachios.  The buzz of the cicadas ceases only momentarily now and then as Jean-Claude answers our battery of questions and summons his most vivid memories.  At last we break into the photo album that he carried with him through the front door.

A mosaic of black-and-white photos decorates each broad page, bound by a clear cover.  Some depict clean-shaven men in ample suits and women in primly collared shirts and abundantly gathered skirts.  Others capture the grins of a little blonde girl and her slightly older brothers.  Jean-Claude’s brother Philippe, we learn, became the show waterskiing champion of the world shortly after the family moved from Bellevue.  Each photo and story is enchanting in its own way.

But rifling through the pages, the other character regularly present in this family’s lives was the grande dame herself.  Bellevue’s office was filled with plush, rectangular furniture and pleated, ceiling-to-floor draperies.  We learn that in front of the home, where today we park cars, was a badminton court – just as we purchased a badminton set this summer for our garden below.  Bellevue’s garden, instead, was home to a ping-pong table on the coarse, dusty earth beside the seawall.  And where we dug a rectangular pool, there was an enormous, cylindrical urn – the sort that in ancient days would’ve carried olives and their oil to market – with thick, leafy branches poking out at the rim.  The urn sat atop a tall, marble platform where in one photo – similar to the antics of our own daughter today – Jean-Claude’s sister had climbed for a pose.

This plate has been attached to Bellevue longer than any of us.
This plate has been attached to Bellevue longer than any of us.

On a whim I head inside Bellevue and pick up a white dessert plate decorated in a red, pink and grey floral motif in the art deco style.  Back on the terrace I present it to Jean-Claude.

Philippe helps me explain the plate’s significance.  It was a gift from Arlette and her husband Jean, who felt – much to our delight – that it belonged here.  This plate was one in the service Arlette had used as a girl in Bellevue.  It had been reunited with her rather circuitously after she married into Edouard Muterse’s family.

But the little plate means nothing to Jean-Claude.  His family rented the home unfurnished, unlike the let during Arlette’s day.  Evidently Edouard Muterse managed to get his belongings out of Bellevue before the house was requisitioned in the war.  Jean-Claude’s family had to bring their own furnishings, big and small.

“C’était incroyable,” Jean-Claude says, returning to his pet subject.  He shakes his round head lightly.  The injustice of it all seems a bit incredible.  His father wanted to purchase Bellevue in 1955, but the banker Mr Rigaud didn’t want to sell at that time.  So in the end Jean-Claude’s family bought a home on the other side of the Cap d’Antibes in Juan-les-Pins, and they moved there.

Jean-Claude’s family evidently had fallen in love with Bellevue and her idiosyncrasies – but the grande dame’s journey continued in the mid-50s without Jean-Claude in it.

His life in Antibes has blossomed over the decades, even if he doesn’t consider himself an Antibois.  He specialized in tax law and knows well certain people in our circle – such as the famous Jean-G and Madame Double-Barrel featured in this summer’s earlier blog posts.  The small-world story of Antibes carries on.

But other mysteries remain.  Jean-Claude knows our home as Lou Gargali, the baptismal name given by her creator, Edouard Muterse.  Someone changed her title along the way.  Someone, too, added a sculpted frame to her front door with the initials “RC” and a beautifully carved, cherubic angel on the overhead mounting.  I continue searching.

But this day, out of the cracks of time, a local man – the father of the guy who owns the fancy chocolate store in town and a guy who doesn’t consider himself a true Antibois – has filled in a nine-year gap about our Bellevue.  This gentleman easily could’ve sat next to me in a café last summer, or five summers ago, reading his newspaper and drinking his morning coffee.

Now, as I wander through Antibes’ old market or buy bread from the boulangerie, as I get my hair trimmed at the salon or sip more coffee at a local café, I will wonder who lingers beside me – today, or perhaps tomorrow.

Sunny Summers in the Côte d’Azur: Keeping Up Appearances

Posted on by jemma

Philippe returns home a couple mornings ago as an eyewitness reporter to the Côte d’Azur’s biggest news. He just dropped his nephew at the airport and now, back home in Antibes, he waves his arms in front of himself in the form of an explosion.

You know those storm chaser shows on TV? he says, completely animated by the early morning drive. It was just like one of those! We were in Cagnes-sur-Mer and everything was black. I mean, I couldn’t see two cars in front of me – and the windshield wipers were going like crazy! Then this tree – the whole top of a tree – came down in front of us, like right there! he says, sweeping his arms downward from high above his head to point to the floor some paces in front of him. His tale continues: And then Nemo – you know the orange fish Nemo? – this big, blow-up pool toy like Nemo came screaming across the road right in front of me. And there were palm branches – whole palm branches – flying around in the air, horizontal to the ground! And one of them smacked into the car and made a dent!

Toppling trees and flying fish – at this point, I’m needing some confirmation. I pop outside to see the car for myself. Sure enough, there, at the edge of the roof on the passenger’s side, a palm branch hit our rental car with such force that it created a couple-inch dent.

Making the situation even more bizarre, the whole time Philippe was dodging falling trees, airborne fish and the eye of this storm, he had to remain calm inside our pint-sized car. I laugh now at the vision of him reassuring his broad-shouldered, 19-year-old godson while swerving Rambo-style through the knotted streets of the South of France. Yes, everything is under control! he kept insisting to Philippe, who sat beside him, luggage stowed in the trunk. No, you won’t miss your plane to Montreal! Anyway, you think the incoming plane is even going to land in this weather? You’ll get out of here, no problem. And it’ll be sunny by 10:30, I promise! It’s the Côte d’Azur!

Noise travels well here.
Noise travels well here.

Back home at Bellevue, I endured my own dramas this morning. Our eight-year-old daughter Lolo, my 16-year-old cousin Zoe and I were catching a few more winks – until 7:22 a.m. to be precise. That’s when the bliss of Bellevue erupted. Zoe called it a gunshot. The blast exploded into the cylindrical, marble staircase at the core of our home. Immediately the alarm wailed through every crevasse of the house’s stone structure. And if the screeching hadn’t been enough to rouse our (and our neighbours’) slumbering heads, the bedroom doors did, banging open and shut as if old Bellevue was haunted by some cantankerous ghost – or more logically, I realized as I pulled out of my sleep, because of shifts in the air pressure that circulated through the house’s central stairwell.

The top half of a five-foot oval window had blown open on the ground floor of the cylindrical staircase. Backed by the full force of the storm in the bay outside, the top half of the window – wood, glass and all – slapped down on the bottom half in one almighty bang. At least nothing broke.

As thunder and lightening blazed down in the angry bay outside Bellevue, I found a table and chair to help me lift the lumbering half-oval and finally latched its metal (metal!) lock upward, nearly at ceiling height. At this point Bellevue’s garden was inside the house and Lolo was in my bed, sheets pulled over her head.

At last, the house secured and our family reunited, the TV news is confirming this morning’s havoc to the waking world. Winds reached so-many kilometers per hour and this-many homes are without electricity. The storm was a surprise, completely outside the forecast for this area. It is, after all, July in the Côte d’Azur!

The Carlton Hotel isn’t just a film set for crime. Photo: Steve Muntz
The Carlton Hotel isn’t just a film set for crime. Photo: Steve Muntz

The same morning news lays bare another incident – a shocking incident – that (quite incredibly) escaped our attention yesterday. It happened while we sat quietly at church in Cannes, a mere two blocks away from the city’s famous seaside boulevard La Croisette and the legendary Carlton Hotel, a popular destination for film stars. In broad daylight an armed man, his head covered in cloth, entered the hotel and made away with nearly $150 million in jewelry and watches.

$150 million: The figure makes it one of the world’s biggest-ever jewelry heists! It’s certainly the largest France has ever seen. The jewels, we now learn, were part of an exhibition. The thief escaped with a briefcase, evading whatever security was present. Surveillance, reports say, appeared pretty minimal.

But not a single siren broke the calm of our Sunday morning communion up the road. Philippe, Philippe, Zoe, Lolo and I emerged from church at noon and walked toward the sea, passing directly beside the white, art deco-style Carlton Hotel, which – in the vein of it’s-so-good-you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up – was once the location of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller To Catch A Thief. Here, at the scene of the crime, pedestrian and road traffic moved normally. There were no alerts, no blockades. There was no elevated security presence, no questioning of the public. Nothing. Rien de tout. We proceeded across the seaside Croissette boulevard and descended the wooden steps directly across from the Carlton to enjoy Sunday lunch on the beach. It was just like any old, sun-soaked afternoon on the beach in the Côte d’Azur. Absolutely nothing of urgency grabbed our attention.

By all accounts, the spectacle of the Côte d’Azur presses on. Neither a massive jewelry stick-up nor a bout of furious weather will stop the summer fun. By 10:30 this morning of the storm – just as Philippe predicted to his nephew Philippe – normality returns. The sun blazes down on our glorious patch of palm- and pine-tree-ridden land that hugs the balmy Mediterranean, this day like any other. I stand on Bellevue’s terrace overlooking our garden and the glimmering bay below. The only remaining traces of this morning’s bombardment are a couple large palm fronds strewn in the garden and the shambolic state of our pool toys. Those, and a kick-up in the wind with its about-face; today it blows from shore to sea.

The wind is doing its best to ruin the Rivieran fun. Shortly Vegaluna restaurant phones. We are due there, back on sandy beaches of Cannes, tonight for the next installment in the city’s festival d’art pyrotechnique – fireworks like you’ve never seen them, set off under the guise of an international competition and choreographed to music from the host country, be it Greece or Spain (both flush with this sort of surplus cash), Argentina or China. This evening’s competitor was due to be none other than France.

The storm hit Cannes’ bay and damaged the barges used to deploy the fireworks. Today’s strong winds wouldn’t help the display either. The show has been moved to tomorrow night.

The change actually suits us. They way I think of it, the fireworks now will coincide with Zoe’s last night here before she heads back to the US. I explain to her that just like with Philippe, we can send her off with a bang, too. She doesn’t seem too impressed by the idea.

The winds die down during the day before the show, just as forecast, and our perfect Côte d’Azur evening starts exactly as planned. Philippe, Zoe, Lolo and I are joined at Vegaluna by our friends Walid and Nada, and together we share a rose petal-strewn table along the sandy shore of Cannes. The set meal of gambas (large shrimps), the daily catch (a delicate John Dory that in this country, unhelpfully, is called Saint Philippe), and a roll of chocolate mousse enrobed in dark chocolate (creatively dubbed Wonka) is creative as well as superb. The air cools, the humidity drops, and the sky softens into blue-grey shades that Monet would’ve adored in this region some 125 years ago. Shortly the first stars appear and the last yachts come to anchor at the far edge of the bay. The stage is set.

The fireworks are celestial...
The fireworks are celestial…

At 10 p.m., the deep, lush voice of a professional announcer cuts through diners’ conversations, their clanking forks, the rush of traffic up on La Croisette and the lapping waves at water’s edge. The fireworks start gently and then erupt into graceful, silver waterfalls and dazzling explosions of colour in the night sky. Their entries and exits punctuate the soulful stanzas of French greats like Charles Aznavour, Édith Piaf and (if we can include the French cousins) Céline Dion.

Except that things aren’t going exactly as planned, it seems. The display is spectacular, no doubt, but more than the occasional firework misfires, erupting low in the bay and in a formation that’s wholly different from the others. And sometimes there’s an unmistakable hole in the middle of the grand, celestial array.

...if not always well timed.
…if not always well timed.

Édith Piaf’s final, belting chorus coincides with a battle-worthy eruption of colour in the nighttime sky. The show is over. We beach dwellers clap – but the yachts scattered in the bay don’t blast their horns, as is the tradition. The central launching barge has caught fire.

It’s rather a large fire actually. Fireworks continue to blast from that barge. A few boats anchored in the bay begin to move away from the heat. The fire seems to be getting bigger. We recognize the Saturn-shaped firework from midway through the program. Then comes the palm-tree-like firework followed by the gem-like, horizontal flares that shoot out into the bay. The show goes on – in part anyway.

A crowd starts to gather on La Croisette above our restaurant – but we must leave. Zoe’s flight is among the first out of Nice Côte d’Azur Airport tomorrow morning. She and Philippe are leaving Bellevue just after 5:00 a.m.

We’ve lived through three headlines in three days! I announce to Zoe as we wind through Cannes’ streets toward the car. I’m proud about sending our guest off with such excitement. Even as we reach our car, eruptions pummel in the night air. They continue until around 11:30 p.m. (The yachts, we will learn, finally blast their horns.)

As it happens, Philippe, Zoe, Lolo and I are still close to the beach at this late hour. We’ve been driving (or queuing in dense traffic) for a good 30 minutes. We’ve gone nowhere.

Midnight. We’re still in the car. In fact, we’re still in Cannes. And now, shortly after midnight on the night of Zoe’s pre-dawn departure, we know why.

The seaside road heading out of Cannes has been shut down to a single lane – a single lane, that is, for both directions of traffic. On the outskirts of town there’s a diminutive stoplight that shines red and green, red and green, a tiny soldier dictating when the flood of cars and motorbikes might actually flow out of town.

But these French roadworks already had been scheduled. No one thinks to change them for this festival night. It’s the Côte d’Azur. The show must go on.

The Côte d’Azur: The World’s New Silk Road

Posted on by jemma

Tar! Philippe says. You can really taste a lot of tar.

As I swill the crimson liquid in my mouth, I taste it, too. Tar. But seeing that the label on this bottle looks like a page from a black-and-white comic book, clipped out and slapped on the emerald-coloured glass as a joke, the wine is a lot better than I expected. Or maybe I’m not expecting much because I know the wine comes not from France, but from India.

It’s no good, our host declares, setting his wine glass back on the patio table. Karl’s our neighbour from Vienna, a scruffy-bearded, intense sort of chap who, when not watching the German bond markets is sorting out his investments in various Eastern European vineyards. The bottle was a gift from a friend, he says vaguely. We pour the remnants into a red plastic tumbler.

Karl lifts the next bottle from the table. This one’s more interesting, I think. His English is precise and clipped. Chateau Nine Peaks. It has won all the awards.

Indeed, the label on this bottle has all the right features, including an award-winning gold stamp in the corner – even if Philippe then points out that the label of this French-sounding wine calls itself Reserva 2011. Reserva, he says, is a Spanish word, not French.

Karl explains the wine comes from China. He pours shallow glasses for Philippe and me, this liquid appearing more serious and less flamboyantly fuchsia than the Indian variety. High in the branches of the parasol pine trees that dot Karl’s property, an orchestra of cicadas strums their rhythmic chorus. It’s still hot this early evening, and beads of sweat appear on our host’s forehead. From time to time he inserts a napkin through the gaps of his button-down cotton shirt to wipe his stomach.

Karl’s terrace overlooks the lofty olive tree in front of our home Bellevue, the neat columns of her red-tiled rooftop, and the Mediterranean bay below with its fleet of moored yachts. He pours a glass of the Chinese wine at the same time for Peter, who was sitting with him and a calculator when Philippe and I arrived. Peter has the wide cheekbones of a Russian and, when I ask, describes himself obscurely as Karl’s former business partner. We’re joined shortly by a clean-cut guy called Jamie, again without any acknowledged connection; he later describes himself to me as an American banker from LA. English is our common language.

Lots of red fruits and some decent tannin, I say of the Chinese wine. And then I actually hear myself saying, with a note of surprise, that I like it.

That’s the right answer. Karl now tells us he is invested in this vineyard. The estate is run by a Chinese-speaking Frenchman and a French-speaking Slovak, but the group is getting skinned by the authorities. Inspections, changes to regulations – the usual stuff that hinders foreign investment there.

Karl’s hurrying us along. The third wine is the most interesting, he says over the incessant chant of the cicadas. Its velvety, ruby nectar expands before us on the patio table in a flat-bottomed decanter. There is no bottle. The wine, Karl says, comes from Russia.

I drink my Chinese wine to the bottom – What else can you possibly do in front of the owner? – and Karl pours the Russian tastings. Once in my glass the wine takes on a dark garnet colour, a deep purple even.

Philippe summons his knowledge from our recent wine dégustations in Bordeaux. The wine must be very young, he offers on account of its colour. We sip, swill and swallow. The taste is remarkably fruity and round, stitched in by hints of pepper and delicate tannins and alcohol. The aftertaste blooms and lingers. It is better than the Chinese wine.

Karl is keen for our reactions. The wine is young, yes, he says, only a 2012. But imagine where it is going. And the price point is good – about $40 a bottle – but the brand is not advertised. Sochi, he thinks, could be a big marketing opportunity.

Are you involved in this vineyard? I ask.

No – not yet, he says. But I want to be. We’re talking.

Philippe voices the idea that’s on my mind, too. Wouldn’t it be great to bring some of this Russian wine back to Toronto? Russian wine – really good Russian wine – in Toronto. Can you imagine everyone’s reaction? Karl promises to send details.

The old Silk Road nearly made it to our doorstep.
The old Silk Road nearly made it to our doorstep.

We linger here for some time in this unlikely quintet, gathered around a patio table beneath parasol pines and overlooking the Mediterranean, the cicadas in full crescendo around us – and I cannot stop thinking I’ve stumbled onto the world’s new Silk Road. Like its 13th-century predecessor, the Cote d’Azur’s Silk Road is partly about trade, but it’s even more promising in the cross-fertilisation it brings to cultures and ideas. This area, the French Riviera, has become one of the world’s crossroads. It’s a place where you meet people – people you might never otherwise meet because they spend the rest of their days in places you never go. But here your lives intersect, and you stop and drift, and together you drink wine, even the wine of a friend or business partner, and take the full breadth of the experience back with you to your homeland.

Soon Karl’s wife joins us. Yana is Russian. The two of them met decades ago, he once told me, because this woman with the riotous, black hair and gravelly voice was his caviar dealer. Another bottle is produced – this one an Austrian version made by the same folks managing the Russian operation – and I become keenly aware of the usual course taken by an invitation to our Viennese neighbours for a simple apéritif. Drinks explode almost magically into a full-on, four-course feast out of seemingly nothing, until at 1:00 a.m. we pour ourselves out their front gate and into ours across the street.

Diana Krall rocks the Jazz à Juan stage
Diana Krall rocks the Jazz à Juan stage…

But Philippe and I are otherwise engaged tonight with something a bit closer to home – our Canadian home, that is. We’re off to see a fellow Canadian who has crossed the seas to share her musical visions with this cross-section of the world. Diana Krall is tonight’s star at Jazz à Juan, the outdoor jazz festival that descends here every July, just over the hill of the Cap d’Antibes.

Her concert is glorious, teeming with prodigy, imagination and musical humour, but our real thrill comes afterward. Philippe and I have two passes for the “After Show” that, we are told, will be very private.

Diana Krall’s After Show is so private, in fact, that it’s just the three of us. We Canadians meet the fellow Canadian because here, at the world’s new crossroads, we are united by our first homes.

...but is even more fabulous in person.
…but is even more fabulous in person.

She meets us in a makeshift lounge area wedged among fellow band members’ trailers. She already has changed out of her long black gown into a silky blue jumpsuit, and her face is washed free from stage makeup. She’s fresh and lovely and kind, if not honourably tired after a thrilling, couple-hour performance.

She’s in town with the six-and-a-half-year-old twins while Elvis is on his own tour, she says. Last night she played the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and tomorrow is fortunately a day of rest. She and the kids have opted for a middle-of-the-row hotel here rather than one of the super-fancy, famous ones because, well, kids do better when they don’t have to confine their pool time to the pre-designated “splashy-splashy” hours.

Philippe and I again have the same thought: Why not invite Diana and the boys around to Bellevue for lunch and a swim? It’d be a far more comfortable way station for this Silk Road traveller and her little ones – and it’s an idea that he actually suggests to the superstar, quickly followed by the unfortunate fact that our family is headed to the mountains early in the morning.

The impossibility of the invitation makes it easier to accept for her next journey along the Côte d’Azur’s trade route. And early the next morning, while I curse the golf game that’s taking our family away from Bellevue on the critical day, we pile into the car.

The annual golfing event is held at Château Taulane, an elegant 18th-century manor home-turned-hotel situated a couple hours’ drive along winding and gently inclining roads into the French Préalpes. Philippe’s golfing partner is our dear friend Walid. The Frenchman’s alone at the moment, holding the fort here in France while his wife travels with their kids to visit relatives in, of all places, Toronto.

Up in the mountains, we surely will be surrounded by locals, not the world’s wine importers and waylaid artists. To enter the golf event, after all, you need to have certain papers. And the weekend’s golfing sponsor is none other than Louis Julian et Fils Joailliers. Any French business called “X et Fils,” where X is some guy’s name followed by the ubiquitous “and Sons,” means the business is probably a distinguished outfit handed down from one generation to the next over the past century and a half. So is the case with this sponsor. But then Louis Julian et Fils is a jeweler.

Eight-year-old Lolo and I spend our day scouting the area because the hotel’s pool is the sort that would require “splashy-splashy” time for our experience to be a successful one. But we join the golfing masses for dinner.

Fortunately we see a few other kids among the white tablecloths and stemmed glassware. French kids. We organize the tables so that Lolo is seated between ten- year-old Victoria Rose and me.

First issue is the menu. Among its elaborate poetry I know Lolo will eat only the last stanza: dessert. The waiter proposes an alternative menu for the children. Victoria Rose accepts the substitutions with impeccable grace, even if I sense her spirit is depleted by the changes. She bows her cherubic face forward, long sandy hair dangling gently before it.

Do you prefer the fish? I ask.

Yes, she says, her dark eyes expressive, even sparkling.

And do you like foie gras? I wonder, knowing I’ve gone a step too far asking about the adults’ first course.

Yes, of course, she says, with a polite smile. It turns out Victoria Rose also likes oysters, mussels and Brussels sprouts.

Is there anything you really don’t like? Have you ever tasted peanut butter?

I’ve never tried it, she says, but I’d like to. But I don’t really like Nutella.

I am speaking with a French child who may be French but who seems hardly a child. And the longer we talk, the less traditional French she seems either.

First off, her English is impeccable. She credits her single year of instruction at Nice’s international school. Nice – a major urban hub along the new Silk Road. She finds the school’s methods of investigation far preferable for learning than the traditional, strict instruction in her country. She no longer needs to sit tall at her desk all day, shoulders squared, hands placed gently on the surface in front of her. If she feels like slouching in a chair while reading, she slouches. But the usual French way, she says, is still easier than some. One classmate jumps to her feet whenever called upon, clasping her hands at her breastbone, elbows splayed. She comes from Russia.

The world does journey to the Côte d’Azur – even at this young age.

So what about Astérix? I ask her. I’ve been learning this summer how all French children adore this homegrown comic strip, even if it’s through ample encouragement from their parents.

Victoria Rose turns up her sweet little nose at Astérix.

As the image of the typical French childhood blurs before my eyes, I must remember where I am in France. This place is special. It has many influences.

Shortly my own childhood in the US Midwest resurrects itself in the form of the eight- track tape. Somehow Philippe’s golfing partner Walid and I are onto these clunky tapes from the 70s. We’re talking Carly Simon and The Bee Gees.

My memories of the eight-track come from the boxy houseboat my family floated down the Mississippi River each summer. Walid recalls the eight-track tape player in his family’s Pontiac Safari station wagon.

You remember those? he says. The ones with the back windows that went down?

Yes, I do remember.

And the wood paneling on the outside? It was so horrible!

Yes, I do remember.

And the bench seat at the rear of the station wagon – the one that faced backward?

Yes, I do remember. And I can picture the spats Walid describes with his sister, the little scraps about who-gets-to-sit-on-the-back-seat-this-time-because-you-got-to-sit-on-that- seat-last-time. I’m lulled into remembering similar battles with my own brother, right there on the steaming asphalt of the Sears parking lot, no doubt Bay City Rollers playing over the car’s back speakers.

Except that, of course, Walid stops my reverie short. Our friend’s recollections aren’t the same as mine. He didn’t grow up in the US Midwest. His memories come from Saudi Arabia.

Monaco’s Fête Picasso: The Art of Fashion

Posted on by jemma

The man standing beside my husband Philippe at today’s vernissage is wearing a turquoise linen suit adorned in fine, white, criss-crossing lines. His hair is dark but greying, swept up in a ponytail with curling ends that poke beneath a Bandolino hat. His shoes are, of course, crimson. Crimson, patent wingtips.

He doesn’t look that out of place. Nearby an angular young man with prominent, round glasses is wearing green jeans – a jolting asparagus sort of green, with a lining of sunflower-yellow that’s exposed at the ankle turn-ups. This guy hardly looks out of place, either.

If the Côte d’Azur is boulangeries and grèves and megayachts, as I’ve discussed in various posts, this place is also fashion. Philippe dubs these two chaps and their kind “the Artistes”.

And certainly, artists are one community that’s well represented here at the Monaco Fête Picasso. Through personal invitation of our friend Jean-Louis, who’s centrally involved in this world, we’re here at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco to witness the inauguration of the season’s new fashion. I mean exhibition. The Monaco Fête Picasso is a pivotal attraction among a wider theme in the Côte d’Azur this summer: celebrating Picasso on the 40th anniversary of his death.

The Président of the Forum (and, I later learn, Monaco’s recent ambassador to France) makes his opening remarks in an airy, glassed-in entry hall. This is a two-pronged exhibition. On one hand, we have the Nahmad Collection that presents 116 of Picasso’s masterpieces in thematic groupings. On the other, we have a collection of Picasso’s works from the Côte d’Azur.

Yes, this event is all about art, and specifically Picasso’s art, but my eyes wander as the Président speaks. Picasso’s works in the adjoining galleries have yet to be unveiled to us, but the fashion is a ready feast.

The vernissage features iffy footwear. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The vernissage features iffy footwear. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I spot a woman wearing Birkenstocks with her summer dress. Okay, so one foot is bandaged, but I covet the choice as I crimp my toes in my high-heeled sandals.

Fashion was a decent consideration for me at this event. Last night I asked advice from Philippe, my fashion expert. He’s the French one. I trend toward functionality rather than haute couture. I suggested my bright linen sundress, a simply cut A-line with bold swathes of colour and design. Easy to wear, I called it my Picasso dress to enhance its suitability for the occasion. Even more importantly, the heeled sandals that went with the dress were reasonably comfortable.

This is Monaco! Philippe said. He started rifling through my clothes, becoming increasingly distraught with each flick of a hangar. My second and third suggestions were even less suitable.

You need Dior! he said. You need Valentino!

I pulled out my only such item, a beautifully crafted navy and white sweater set and a pair of skinny white jeans, both with appropriate amounts of lace and ruffles. I’d bought the outfit one afternoon, years ago, on Philippe’s impulse that we should dip into the designer’s shop.

It will probably do, he said. But you need to go shopping.

Most women would rejoice at that comment. I felt exasperated. Philippe headed into the bathroom and began filing his nails.

You’re going all out, I said.

It’s Monaco! he said. We both glanced down at my fingernails. They looked reasonably good, I thought – unpolished but quite shapely given that I never go to a professional. I can’t stand having junk on my nails.

Philippe reminded me of my trouble booking a manicure for our eight-year-old daughter and her cousin a couple weeks ago. Now, he said, you can see why Antibes’ nail salons were all booked up!

Maybe I shouldn’t go to the vernissage? I suggested. Who knows, maybe Trinny Woodall will be there – What Not To Wear and all that.

No, Philippe insisted. Come.

And so I’m here, in Monaco at the Grimaldi Forum, tottering on ridiculous sandals (which, truthfully, are visibly shorter than some heels in the room). And now I’m more obsessed by what other invitees are wearing to this shindig than to what the good Président is saying about the collection of Picassos awaiting our imminent digestion.

The speech is followed by polite clapping, and the crowd converges toward a doorway at the far end of the hall. I’m busy pointing out the Artistes when our pace is slowed by an older lady ahead of us. She’s wearing a tailored, crêpe de Chine dress in spring green. A silk scarf in a green, blue and white floral motif is draped around her shoulders.

Philippe creates a new group. She’s a member of “the Old Divas,” he says. The dress probably cost a fortune 20 years ago, but you can tell she didn’t buy it yesterday.

And indeed, not that anyone is bothered by this fact, I recognize my fashionable, paternal grandmother in such an outfit. It’s hardly a criticism but, yes, another group is evident among us.

The first room of the Nahmad Collection opens out in front of us. I stop to read the exhibition brochure. This collection, formed by two generations, presents masterpieces created between 1901 and 1972. They’re grouped thematically rather than chronologically so that we can compare the progression of Picasso’s approach toward still-life, figure painting, landscape, his studio and such.

A couple rooms into the Nahmad Collection, my feet are smarting. I look longingly at the Artistes and the Old Divas in their more moderate heels. There’s even a beach bum or two wearing comfy sandals, and one couple looks like they just came in from a spot of gardening. I see a second woman with a taped foot placed gingerly in a flat sandal.

I point out the foot to Philippe. That’s how I should’ve done it! I say. By the next room we’re having a petite pause on the benches at the center. Other attendees block Picasso’s works, so we look at these folks instead.&

There’s another Old Diva wearing a crepe floral blouse that definitely could’ve belonged to my dear grandmother. Another woman wears a red silky jumpsuit with baggy, Arabian trousers and a long slit at the back that exposes a red bra. I find the outfit intriguing. Philippe says it’s awful – but he does point out her beautiful nails. Another woman glides around in a flowing, white-and-neutral sundress dolled up with a pair of killer heels and matching handbag. Breaking the image is a hot pink sack slung carelessly over one shoulder. Its contents are evident by the form that presses against its thin cloth. This woman is carrying around her flip-flops.

And then I spot the most exquisitely dressed person in the entire congregation. She’s in her 40s, her sun-blushed hair clipped loosely, artfully, into a twisted chignon. She wears a simple, sleeveless pencil dress (beautifully, it should be said), pure ivory in colour except for a broad band of black at the jewel neckline, which continues as a vertical ribbon down her spine. Her simple, moderately heeled pumps and oversized bag are a neutral taupe. I point her out to Philippe.

The vernissage also features fabulous footwear. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The vernissage also features fabulous footwear. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The shoes are Louboutin, he tells me. They have the hallmark red adorning their undersides, a stroke of genius from the man behind the brand. He saw a woman painting her nails in that very red, as the story goes, so he used her nailpolish to paint the undersides of her shoes. The woman loved the look so much that the Louboutin shoe designer eventually tried to patent the idea in the US, but other shoemakers ganged up against him in court.

How does Philippe know this stuff? I wonder. In any case, this woman with the Louboutins is hardly an Artiste nor an Old Diva. He calls her a “Femme Fatale”.

Philippe runs into the friend we’re meeting for lunch. As they chat amid Picasso’s canvases depicting his studio life, I move onward, subject-by-subject, until I find myself at a crossroads: the exit from the Nahmed Collection and the entrance to the second part of this exhibition: Picasso’s Côte d’Azur. The front-facing, charcoal wall in the first room declares ”Juan-les-Pins.” That’s the more flamboyant half of Antibes. Basically, it’s our hometown.

Of course! This part of the exhibition is as much about Picasso’s art as the area’s history. I’m propelled immediately inside.

A few years ago I began researching the history of Bellevue, our home in Antibes, scouring local books and research papers, museums and personal memories and postcards. And as it sometimes happens when you start into a new hobby, this new endeavour – recreating former lives in this corner of the world – has become a growing source of intrigue for me. Central to this broad lattice of research is Edouard Muterse, a notable local man who breathed life into our home.

Ahead, in a maze unfolding before me, is an exhibit about how Picasso himself was entwined in this area’s history. And Edouard, I realize, was Picasso’s contemporary – a mere two years older than the renowned painter!

I never knew Picasso found himself in our area as early as 1920, soon after World War I. For three months that summer, Picasso, aged 38, and his wife Olga rented a hillside villa in Juan-les-Pins: Les Sables along the chemin des Sables.

Chemin des Sables! That was Edouard’s street! Sure, his legal career was based in Aix-en-Provence at this point, but he spent decent amounts of time at his family’s home on chemin des Sables – and surely he would’ve stayed during the slow, summer months. Picasso, I now learn, would head out into Juan-les-Pins and Antibes. He’d go to the beaches.

Could the two men, Pablo and Edouard, have taken their morning coffees at the same café? Could they have swum in the same waters? Could they have run into each other amid Juan-les-Pins abundant nightlife?

Picasso stayed in this Juan-les-Pins villa in 1936.
Picasso stayed in this Juan-les-Pins villa in 1936.

I head into another room of the exhibit. It’s now 1930 and the Picassos are again in Juan-les-Pins, renting Villa Bachlyk just a block from the beach. He’s working on sand- reliefs, filling his canvases with gathered objects such as driftwood, pieces of rope and, of course, sand.

It was around this time that Edouard, now living full-time back on chemin des Sables, purchased his Hudson Terraplane, one of the first, commercial American cars in the area. He enjoyed driving the ample, seaside roads with his friends and family.

Could Edouard have cruised by Pablo as the artist gathered his driftwood and sand? Could the motor of Edouard’s Terraplane have disrupted the grand master’s contemplation – ever so briefly – as he sat before a sand-relief in his rented villa?

I’m Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Summer of 1939. Picasso and Dora Maar stay at 44, boulevard Albert 1er in Antibes. At the bottom of that road is the bay where Edouard sailed his boat – the very bay that ripples beneath our Bellevue. Could Pablo have witnessed Edouard’s sail flapping in the wind one morning when he strolled a couple blocks to the seaside? Could he have continued along the promenade as far as the Port de la Salis, where Edouard served as its Président? Might Pablo have stopped among this local community there to shoot the breeze? Might he even have gazed up at the home next door, at the generous curves of our Bellevue, and wondered who lived behind her thick façade?

Could Picasso’s footsteps have traced Antibes’ boardwalk this far?
Could Picasso’s footsteps have traced Antibes’ boardwalk this far?

No, I’m not Alice. I’m Jacques, our artist friend who visited Bellevue a few weeks ago. He learned that Philippe and I are friendly with a woman who lived in Bellevue during the early parts of World War II, not long before Picasso worked in the museum across the bay. Jacques wondered if – possibly – our friend could’ve breathed the very air of Pablo Picasso?

My cellphone goes. “Where r U?” says Philippe’s text. “We r waiting 4 u in lobby.”

I completely missed our rendez-vous. I head back to the glassed-in lobby at the entrance of the Grimaldi Forum. The woman in the red jumpsuit with Arabian trousers lingers with friends. The Artiste in the turquoise suit and crimson shoes chats with another man, a glass in his hand. I find Philippe.

Did you see the priest? he asks. The little, short priest walking around?

No.

I wanted to point him out! He was the confesseur to Prince Rainier! The guy Prince Rainier made all his confessions to! He’s been here in Monaco for decades!

Clearly I have missed out.

And I got to meet Nahmed! Philippe continues delightedly. I told him we have two things in common! We’re born in the same year, and we’re both art collectors!

Okay, maybe I did miss out a little bit, but I still prefer my experience down the rabbit hole.

We head out of the building for lunch, and I try to relay my own enthusiasm for the vernissage. It has nothing to do with Picasso’s evolution as an artist, of course, and I’ve certainly forgotten about the fashions.

As we walk along the promenade beside the Mediterranean, my thumb scrapes over the nail of its neighbouring index finger. Somehow during the experience, I managed to break a nail.

And guess what? I don’t care one bit.

 

 

Astérix for Foreigners

Posted on by jemma

“Like Marcus Sacapus, right Papa?” my eight-year-old Lolo said to Philippe one morning as we were eating breakfast at the kitchen counter.

“Exactement, comme Marcus Sacapus!”  Philippe said, grinning.  Even if Lolo still preferred to speak English back to him, this new project of his was bearing fruit.  Lolo was becoming more and more French each day.

Of course I didn’t know what was exactement like anything in this conversation.  The culture of French childhood had totally escaped me.  “Who’s Marcus Sacapus?” I asked.

“Mommy!” Lolo called back, her voice undulating in a way that says you-are-so-stupid.  “Marcus Sacapus is Marcus-Sac-A-Pus!  Get it?”

I so didn’t get it.

“Like sac à puces!,” she insisted.

Sac à puces.  Fleabag.  Or more precisely, a flea-infested animal.  I got it, sort of, but I still didn’t know who Marcus was.

Instead of Marcus, actually, I thought of Gianluca.  He was an enthusiastic Italian colleague from years ago, the one to whom we always had to say, “That’s great, Gianluca.  Now explain it again, this time from the beginning.”

This cast of characters enchanted my husband – and most all Frenchmen – when they were children (and even today). Photo: Wikimedia Commons
This cast of characters enchanted my husband – and most all Frenchmen – when they were children (and even today). Photo: Wikimedia Commons

At least I knew the context of that breakfast conversation.  Philippe was teaching Lolo about Astérix and his sidekick Obélix.

The series of comics was one of Philippe’s favourites when he grew up in Quebec.  Since its initial publication in 1959, Astérix has been equally adored in France and, after translation, in many other European countries.  The famed actor Gérard Depardieu even played Obélix in four Astérix et Obélix films.

The stories chronicle the adventures of these two characters, Astérix and Obélix, who are occupants of a village in Gaul (present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg and other bits of Western Europe).  The year is 50 B.C., and these Gauls have enjoyed marvelous success in resisting Roman occupation.  Their winning strategy?  Drinking a magic potion brewed by their local druid Panoramix.

It’s hardly fairies and animal rescues, the type of fodder that attracts my daughter these days, but by force of enthusiasm, Philippe seems to have pushed Astérix and his mob to the fore.

Was Obélix involved?
Was Obélix involved?

That this whole, educational mission began during our family’s trip to Brittany last month is hardly a coincidence.  Astérix’s Gaulish village lies in Brittany.  And Lolo’s first encounter with the cartoon characters occurred there in the city of Carnac, at the gift shop situated next to the area’s menhirs, a striking collection of small Stonehenges.  The day job of Astérix’s enormous chum Obélix, in fact, is to make deliveries of these enormous rocks.  Obélix:  obélisques in French, obelisks in English.  It’s that sort of humour that is embedded in the names.

When we visited that gift shop in Carnac, Philippe went straight for the children’s bookshelves, which were situated right next to the cashier.  There was only one volume of Astérix available – number 23 to be exact – unsurprisingly the one entitled Obélix et Compagnie.  Here, standing near the cash register as people made their purchases, Philippe spent a good 20 minutes reading this book aloud, and with great animation – to Lolo, the cashier and all other shoppers.

This book launched my daughter’s latest education.
This book launched my daughter’s latest education.

That day our daughter looked at the colourful pages and cartoon characters wearing Roman tunics and helmets with a mixture of interest and implausibility.  The names of the Gauls – the good guys – all ended in “-ix”, Philippe explained, because that was the way several of the real chieftains’ names ended back those days.  He introduced the protagonists Astérix and Obélix.  There was also Obélix’s dog, Idéfix.

He slowed to translate for our eight-year old.  Idéfix.  The dog’s name was like idée fixe.   You know, like fixed idea.  Get it?

Maybe so, but what was certain in Lolo’s mind was Philippe’s enthusiasm.  A couple shoppers smiled knowingly as they approached the cash register.  Lolo nodded, willing herself to understand idée fixe.

Then, Philippe explained, there was Panoramix (the village druid, the man who by his name seemed to encompass everything).  More courageously, there was Abraracourcix (the village chief whose name stemmed from the adjective abracadabrant, or preposterous) and Assurancetourix (the village bard whose name resembled assurance touriste, or tourist insurance).

The jokes were as much for adults as for kids, I realized.  Each of these characters represented a sort of job or, more generally, a certain type of person in life.  Caricatures and stereotypes formed the very basis of the series!

Philippe found a map at the beginning of the book.  Astérix’s village was situated at Brittany’s seaside, encircled menacingly by Roman camps.  And see here?  he said with evident glee.  All the Roman camp names end in “-um”, just like many place names in Latin!  There’s the camp called Aquarium.  There’s another camp called Babaorum – like the dessert, get it?  And there’s Petibonum.  Petit bonhomme.  Little fellow.  Get it?

Lolo laughed, half for understanding the map, I think, and half for enjoying the boyish enthusiasm of her papa.

Now, anchored again in Antibes, Astérix and his buddies crop up in our household conversation with some regularity.  My husband and daughter have spent untold hours reading the series together this summer.  Local friends who hear of the educational undertaking chez les canadiens nod in appreciation. “Every French person has read it,” Philippe insists to me.  “It’s part of the culture.”

One character that comes into our conversation more frequently than the others is Amérix.  The context is far-fetched, but remember cartoons come alive.  Who, growing up, ever doubted that Snoopy should walk on his hind legs?  Or that Calvin’s stuffed tiger Hobbs really talks when no one else is around?

This volume includes an irreverent jab at my daughter’s other tribe.
This volume includes an irreverent jab at my daughter’s other tribe.

Philippe and Lolo recently explained this guy Amérix to me.  Apparently Panoramix, the revered druid of the Gaul village, was distraught because he broke his serpe d’or, his golden sickle, and without his serpe d’or he could not attend the annual assembly of druids.

Astérix suggested buying another one.

Panoramix remained anxious.  Good serpes d’or were very rare, he said.  The best ones – the only ones he’d accept – were made in a faraway place by the famous Amérix.

“Get it?” Philippe said to me.  “Only the best ones are made in America.  In the US!”

Yes, I got it.  The story continued that Astérix would accompany Panoramix to this far-off land.  Obélix would go, too, as Amérix was his distant cousin.  Amérix, Obélix explained, was the one in his family who was a success story.

Philippe thought it was hilarious.  Lolo giggled because he was laughing, I think.  And I chuckled at the quip on the US’s supremacy.  What was written in the 60s, at the height of the Cold War, has remained a relevant joke.

But now, at last, I’m getting more thoroughly educated in things Astérix.  We’ve just finished dinner on Bellevue’s terrace, and Lolo already has scampered off.  As the cicadas continue their evening symphony and the late sun edges toward the horizon on the opposite side of the bay, Philippe becomes the teacher.  He goes upstairs to our daughter’s room and grabs their growing collection of Astérix books.  He returns to the table and begins flipping through their vivid pages, stopping to explain various names.

My eight-year old, I gather, has already met several Roman centurions, all with the appropriate “-us” suffixes.  There’s Caligula Minus.  Caligula was one of the most feared Roman emperors, Philippe says, reminding me of history I probably never knew.  And minus means runt or loser.  There are other Romans called Biscornus (having two horns) and Absolutementexclus (totally excluded).  There’s Caius Saugrenus (saugrenu means ludicrous).  And this is where Marcus Sacapus, the man who’s a fleabag, fits in.  Of course he’s a Roman.

Philippe explains Astérix and his friends and the villages and the series’ entire modus operandi of defeating the Romans.  He does this without a single mention of the magic potion that gives the Gauls their extraordinary strength in the first place.  I guess I am just supposed to know about that.  Fortunately, as I am not French, there are things like Wikipedia.

Truth be told, though, I think I’m finally beginning to get this whole Astérix thing.  The stuff does get funnier the more you hear it, sort of like John Cleese’s antics in Fawlty Towers.

But at the same time I do worry about this comic series.  I appreciate that my daughter can glimpse the world through another set of binoculars, but what about the case of Amérix, when those binoculars are trained back on the very culture from which she hails?  What is she learning about the land of her own passport?  And for that matter, what attitudes are being reinforced on generations of French (and Quebecois) schoolchildren?

Or, put an entirely different way, perhaps the binoculars are actually turned inward on Astérix’s Gaulish community.  Here is a small, isolationist village, inhabited by a gang that’s different from most and who always dig in their heels to get their way.  Sound familiar?

And this book is a parody of my daughter’s other ancestral tribe.
And this book is a parody of my daughter’s other ancestry.

The cicadas have halted their evening chorus momentarily when Philippe moves onto the third book in the series, the one he’s reading with Lolo at the moment.  This volume has a go at the Germans – which, I should mention, is my ancestry from generations back and therefore Lolo’s half-ancestry from one further generation back.  The speech bubbles of the German characters are written in a Gothic font.

The Germans’ chief is Téléferic.  Téléphérique.  A cable car.  Their treasonous interpreter is Cloridric.  Chlorhydrique.  Hydrochloric in English, an adjective I only associate with the highly corrosive acid.  Another German is called Général Electric.  His buddy is Passmoilcric.

Philippe leans back in his chair on Bellevue’s terrace, laughing like a schoolboy as he explains this one to me.  Passmoilcric.  Passe-moi-le-cric!  A cric is a car jack, he says, pumping his arms.  Pass me the car jack!  It’s evidently hilarious.

We whizz through more names and places.  Finally he stops on Agecanonichou, who’s then called Agecanonichet.  Philippe’s laughing hard now.  “It’s so funny,” he says.  “I mean it’s just so funny.”

They are pet names – names of endearment even – bestowed on Agecanonix by his glamourous sweetheart.  Agecanonix.  Âge canonique.  A venerable age.  “The guy is about 90 years old!” Philippe explains.

I don’t get it.  I mean, I get it, but is it really that funny?

Philippe’s still laughing.  Finally he says, “You have to be French.”  And with this explanation, he somehow manages a perfect Gallic shrug.

French Language: Form Over Substance

Posted on by jemma

I’ve been feeling a bit self-satisfied about my progress en français during these first few weeks back in the country.

The weekend of wine degustation in Bordeaux had to be the trigger.  Enduring fact-laden discussion after discussion about winemaking techniques and les appreciations visuelle, olfactive and gustative – tout en français – gave my French a little swagger.  I’d mastered the weekend without the usual headache – not from the wine, I mean, but from the endless hours thinking in a ridiculously intricate language.

The perfect finale of our degustation weekend came from the stewardess aboard the domestic Air France flight back to the Côte d’Azur.  I’d asked for my jus de tomate, no glaçons, and then managed some joke that, whoops, asking her to hold the ice was so American of me!  My words may not have been beautiful sounding, but they were all, each and every one of them, en français.

On leaving the aircraft the stewardess asked if I’d managed to understand her français-anglais.

Mais oui, bien sûr, I told her.  Piece of cake.  It was, in truth, hardly rocket science – just the usual instructions to fasten my ceinture de sécurité, and to pull the masque à oxygène toward me and breathe normalement rather than hyperventilate as the plane plummeted toward Earth.

My French-Canadian husband Philippe followed me out of the plane.  The stewardess told him she wished she understood English as well as I did French.

It was a thrilling, new endorsement.  An audible improvement in my language skills makes some sense.  I’ve been speaking more French at home in Toronto this year.  And I’ve hardly given up on that weekly class at Alliance Française.  My accent will never match the sheer beauty of my eight-year old’s, mind you, but she started speaking French three decades earlier in her lifetime.  Her tongue remains adaptable.

Now back in Antibes from Brittany and Bordeaux, we’re at last spending more time in our beloved summer hometown again.  Life is returning to its ritual charms.  Saturday morning I’m heading out on my bike to the daily Marché Provençal to pick up some essentials, but first I have to check out nail salons.  Not for me – for my eight-year-old daughter and her ten-year-old cousin.

I’ve never appreciated how popular the nail salon is in Antibes.  Cruising into town, I recall the hub for such vital services is Boulevard Albert 1er, the main thoroughfare between the shops at Place de Gaulle and the sandy beaches.  Nail salons, hair salons, and real estate agencies.  All these necessities are grouped together in their inexplicable proliferation along this particular stretch.

What I also haven’t realized on this Saturday, a couple weeks before the real season begins in the Côte d’Azur, is that services for les ongles are all booked up.  On about the seventh go, I see two salons side-by-side at the bottom of Boulevard Albert 1er.  The first being closed, I head into its neighbour, bike helmet still firmly fixed to my head.  I remove my sunglasses.  Two women hover over an older woman with wet hair seated in the styling chair near the door.  They’re discussing her treatment.

Bonjour!  I say.  (Always start with a cheery bonjour.  I mean always.  It’s incredibly rude not to.)

Bonjour! Replies the small chorus, quite tunefully, as is the way.

I hear my voice rise a couple pitches to match theirs.  Est-ce qu’il y a des rendez-vous disponibles cet après-midi?  Are there any appointments available this afternoon?

Attendez…  One of the standing women heads toward the reception desk to check the appointment book.

….pour les ongles?  Des manicures ou des pedicures?

Non, nous ne faisons pas les ongles – c’est notre voisin qui fait les ongles.  Not here, the woman at the reception desk says.  Try next door.

A few meters away, the lady getting her hair done pipes up.  They don’t do nails here, she tells me.  You get your nails done next door.

Mais son magasin est fermé, I say to the receptionist.  Her shop is closed.

Oui, the she says, elle va l’ouvrir à 10h30.

I look at my watch.  Mais il est….  I start to explain it’s well past that hour when the client with wet hair again makes her contribution.  The store next door will open at 10:30.

I’m suddenly confused.  Is this woman with wet hair the employee of the neighbouring shop?  On break at the moment to get her hair done?

Bien oui, il est presque 11h00!  the receptionist says.  Elle n’est pas loin, peut-être au coin de la rue….

Pas de soucis – no worries, I start, when the seated woman jumps in again.  The neighbouring shop attendant isn’t far away, maybe just up the street.

I’ve been totally off kilter in this shop and finally I understand why.  I look at the woman seated in the styling chair with the wet hair.  Oui, je peux parler en français!  I tell her.  I can speak French!

The Marché Provençal is a centerpiece of Antibes’ daily life.
The Marché Provençal is a centerpiece of Antibes’ daily life.

Merci, I say to the receptionist on my way out the door.  Je reviendrai après le marché.  I’ll come back after going to the market.  And then I’m off, cycling into the old town as my brain churns – in French – at the client’s idea that she needed to help me out.  Et je n’ai jamais perdu un mot – un seul mot!  I never lost a word – a single word!

Antibes’ Marché Provençal unfurls every morning in an old covered plaza just outside the medieval part of town.  Merchants lay out their tables in three long rows under a metal roof, selling produce, meats and cheeses, olives, spices and flowers.  On Saturdays the place is especially busy as merchants’ tables spill over the edges of the plaza and pedestrians slip into the streets.  Today the zucchini flowers look especially beautiful at one vegetable stand – less wilted than usual as the temperatures remain nicely below seasonal.  Local heirloom tomatoes feature at another stall.  A man pulls hot soccas (chickpea pancakes) out of a clay oven at one end of the market while the dozen whole fish remaining on the neighbouring table seem to watch the throng with unblinking gazes.

Olives, tapenade and garlic are this man’s specialty... Photo: Steve Muntz
Olives, tapenade and garlic are this man’s specialty… Photo: Steve Muntz

The fromager at the center of the Marché Provençal has to be the best cheese merchant on the planet, and unfortunately I’m not alone in this opinion.  I pick up the other items on my list – cherry tomatoes, cucumber, olives and pourpier (a leafy green my dictionary translates as “purslane,” for whatever that’s worth) – before joining the inevitable queue that forms beside Jacques Viale’s popular stall.

The woman in front of me strikes up conversation.  Il y a toujours une file d’attente, she says.  There’s always a queue.

Yes, I say, but the cheese is fantastic.

Hardly flummoxed by my foreigner’s French, this woman with blunt-cut salt and pepper hair continues.  She blames her neighbour for the fact that she’s standing in today’s file.

We shuffle forward slowly past enormous hunks of parmigiano reggiano, comté, and vieux gruyère that line the top of the fromager’s counter space.  This woman’s neighbour, I learn, highly recommended a particular specimen of blue.  I can’t ascertain its exact whereabouts within the long, glass cases up ahead, but I do understand that the grocery store’s version of this cheese is pretty lousy.

Several minutes later the woman’s husband joins her in the queue.  I shuttle my basket forward on the floor behind theirs so that now we’re parallel with the case of blue cheeses.

...while other stalls offer deliciously fresh produce. Photo: Steve Muntz
…while other stalls offer deliciously fresh produce. Photo: Steve Muntz

Ah, c’est celui-là?  I ask the woman, pointing at the bleu de brebis that sounds similar to what she mentioned.

Non, non, she says and shifts my attention further along in the case.  Her husband interrupts.

No, the looming and bespectacled man says to me in English, brebis is a sheep.  This is not cheese from a vache, a cow.

Non, non, je comprends, I say. I understand, but…

The lecture continues.  A vache is a cow.  A brebis is a sheep.  They are not the same thing (you moron).  The man’s wife tries to cut in as he continues to underscore my stupidity.  At last she prevails.  The two of us were speaking earlier about a particular blue cheese, she explains.

The husband is unrepentant.  Happily he’s still within earshot when I’m finally at the head of the growing queue, face to face with the broad-shouldered, thick-fingered fromager in his white t-shirt and apron.  So I go local for the benefit of the unrepentant husband.  Completely and unabashedly local.  I make my selections from the famous Mr Viale with abundant competence.

The plastic is a new addition, much to the chagrin of Antibes’ favourite fromager.
The plastic is a new addition, much to the chagrin of Antibes’ favourite fromager.

Bonjour!  I start cheerily (as scripted).  A good slice of the vieux gruyère, s’il vous plaît – I bought it from you a couple weeks ago and it’s vraiment délicieux!

Avec ça, madame?  The fromager always asks what else, with his usual, courteous smile.

And here’s the Cabris!  It’s my chèvre (goat’s cheese) préférée!

Avec ça, madame?

I choose a virtually obligatory block of (Italian) parmigiano reggiano.  Yours is the best in the world!  I tell him.

Avec ça, madame?

The final thing, a half-round of livarot.

This choice delights the fromager, though unfortunately my unrepentant lecturer has moved on and is missing this bit of our conversation.  Buying livarot has to be the most local thing I’ve done in a good while.  Tasting it has been on my “to-do” list, simply for curiosity’s sake, for probably six or seven years – since the time I read that livarot was the smelliest of all smelly French cheeses.  Today seems as good a day as any.  A much better one, in fact.

Back at Bellevue, the girls are delighted to learn that I’ve found two last-minute rendez-vous for them and their ongles.  Philippe’s equally thrilled by my cheese selections, especially the livarot.  He’s equally receptive to learning about my personal encounters at the salon and the marché.  He reflects for a moment on my interactions with the locals.

Your vocabulary is really good, he tells me.  He’s obviously trying to encourage.

But your accent, he continues.  That’s the problem.  With an accent like that, no one thinks you understand a single word they’re saying!

The Châteaux of Bordeaux: A Hedonist’s Paradise

Posted on by jemma
The crimson content of these barrels makes us fledgling connoisseurs.
The crimson content of these barrels makes us fledgling connoisseurs.

Sylvie dips her nose into the bulb of a luminous glass having a shallow puddle of crimson liquid at its bottom.  “Poil de brebis!” she calls out, thrilled at her sudden inspiration.

The other dozen of us in the bright classroom roar.  Even our host chuckles.  He’s never heard anyone describe the smell of a distinguished Château Lynch-Bages wine as anything like sheepskin.

Good thing he has a sense of humour.  Dégustation is a big deal in Bordeaux, be it in the tasting of wine or food.  And Bordeaux is precisely where my husband and I find ourselves in our next bid to explore France beyond our home in the Côte d’Azur.  Bordeaux, the hedonist’s paradise.

Our articulate and engaging young host asks his attentive classroom what else we smell in our glasses before the agitation.  Blackberries, someone calls out.  Prunes.  Roses.  Alcohol – yes, a good whiff of pure alcohol.

Inside this modern classroom on Château Lynch-Bages’ manicured estate, Philippe and I, along with our Quebecois artist friends Jacques and Sylvie and a handful of Benelux enthusiasts, are deep into the second step of wine tasting:  the appreciation olfactive.  We’ve already discussed the appreciation visuelle and its concepts of intensité and fluidité and whether the wine was a jolly, cherry red or a more dignified brick colour.

Now we spin our glasses to bring out the heavier scents in the wine and again dip our noses into the glass vessels.  Anise.  Toast.  Moss.

“Ça sent la mouche!” our friend Sylvie calls out.  It smells like flies.

Where do these Canadian come up with their descriptions?  our affable French host wonders.  Little does he realise Sylvie hasn’t taken a sip.  She’s a virtual teetotaler.

The seduction is nearly complete, our host says.  Next is the appreciation gustative.  We learn about the attaque (the first 1 – 2 seconds as the wine enters your mouth), the middle of the mouth (5 – 10 seconds of swilling the wine around in your mouth, preferably after slurping in a bit of air), and the finale (the lasting effects, whether from swallowing or spitting).

I execute the attack.  The word that comes to mind is wet.  I crack my lips in an attempt to slurp the tiniest wisp of air into my mouth without dribbling a stream of burgundy fluid down my chin.  Success.

But now what?  There’s hardly enough room in my mouth to swill around the liquid and the air at the same time.  So I sit in my chair, a motionless pufferfish, trying not to giggle as the wine explodes in my mouth into a festival of fruit and tannin and then a growing bitterness.  My eyes widen.  Other tasters begin suggesting how close this wine is to a perfect équilibre according to its acidité, rondeur and tanins.  At last, amid the chatter, I can swallow.  Loudly.

The first wine in this Château Lynch-Bages blind tasting was purple and punching with alcohol.  Ten seconds in my mouth turned it into steel wool.  It was a 2012, basically the stuff occupying the cedar barrels downstairs in the estate’s shed.  By the fourth glass, we’ve discerned a wine that belongs pretty squarely at the bull’s-eye of our equilibrium chart.  It’s the estate’s 1999 Grand Cru – a good year, I understand.  We’re a roomful of experts.

A simple beauty surrounds Bordeaux’s mighty estates.
A simple beauty surrounds Bordeaux’s mighty estates.

But that’s how it goes in Bordeaux, a region bestowed with some of the world’s best wines.  Around us, over 150,000 acres of neatly tended vineyards are cut by a rambling river and winding country roads.  Centuries-old stone buildings dot the landscape, some polished and palatial with their grand approaches and round turrets, others crumbling around their rusted gates and scrappy wooden shutters.  Throughout the ensemble rose bushes form a surprising punctuation mark at the end of many grapevine rows; roses, we learn, provide an early warning system for mildew.

How different this trip is from my only other visit to the region!  My clearest memory of the place two decades ago is a white Peugeot cabriolet, a small man, a fairly heavy bit of chain and a new vocabulary word:  un tracteur.

This time we’ve started out far less blunderingly.  It may be damp and a bit chilly outside – the harvest is already three weeks late, we understand – but the weather hardly slows our initial touring at the winemaking meccas of Château Lynch-Bages in Pauillac and Château Giscours in Margaux.  The former is a Cinquième (5th) Grand Cru Classé and the latter an even more impressive Troisième (3rd) Grand Cru Classé.  These rankings were established back in 1855, when Emperor Napoléon III asked for a ranking of the country’s best Bordeaux wines based on the reputation of the château and the price of its production.  The idea was to create a universal hierarchy for global visitors to the Paris wine exhibition that year.

Since then, though, no one has dared touch the classifications – with the sole exception of Château Mouton Rothschild, which was promoted from Deuxième (2nd) to Premier (1st) Grand Cru Classé in 1973, when as Ministre de l’Agriculture Jacques Chirac signed the new decree.  (Rumour has it he likes very good wines.)  Even though many wines now trade well wide (up or down) of their official Grand Cru classifications, a 150-year-old ranking from the time of Napoléon III remains a highly respected mark.

Our hosts at these formidable châteaux explain the winemaking process. Like how wine resting in its barrel is like freshly squeezed orange juice, its pulpy froth floating delicately at the surface.  And how winemaking is like brewing a cup of coffee, as the liquids are forced to filter through heady grounds (in this case, skins and seeds and pulp).  The big difference here is that winemakers percolate their increasingly intense brew through its sediment far more times than even the most serious caffeine addict could fantasize.

Of course we discuss oaks – French versus American.  Naturally French is better.  It cannot be cut mechanically like its brethren, so it costs more, but we learn that French oak adds better fire-based dimensions to wine, like notions of coffee and caramel.  The difference in the two species comes down to a single, special molécule (the all-important “mo-leh-KUHL”) that inhabits French oak trees but apparently steers clear of its US siblings.

We learn, too, that egg whites form part of the winemaking process.  Yes, raw egg whites.  The fact is so bizarre that I simply have to share it.  Today most houses use a listeria- and salmonella-free substitute, but at one time every barrel of wine was clarified by whipping up the whites of a few eggs and pouring their clear, sticky substance directly into the barrel through a corked hole.  The egg white would sink through the wine, trapping impurities on the way to the bottom.  The sludge was then cleared out of the barrel and used elsewhere in the winemaking process.

What happened to the yellows?  our friend Jacques asks our current vineyard escort.

Canelés are a moreishly delicious after-thought to Bordeaux’s wine production. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Canelés are a moreishly delicious after-thought to Bordeaux’s wine production. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

He likes the question.  The area’s nuns, being of resourceful nature, would beat the yellows with flour and sugar to create little pastries called canelés and then hand them out to the poor.  Indeed, I remember years ago when a Bordelais visitor to our Bellevue brought us a box of these canelés:  stodgy little carmalised buns that, unfortunately, I simply adored.

At the third estate we meet Madame La Générale.  She wears a hot pink, double-breasted trench coat, and her hair is pinched back into a tight bun decorated with large floral hairclips.  A short, blunt-cut fringe masks the top half of her forehead.

Where have we been already?  She asks.

It’s a good question, I think, so she can tailor her talk to our small group.  We mention Giscours and the prestigious Lynch-Bages (which, though being a 5th, trades like a 3rd Grand Cru Classé).

Ah, she says.  She pauses for effect – or to regain her stripes.  (She represents a 3rd Grand Cru Classé château that’s currently trading like a 4th.)

We do things differently here, she says.  (Sub-text:  Our group must be disemboweled from everything we’ve already learned.)  We are more traditionnelle at this château.  We seek true élégance.

Escorting us to the warehouse, Madame La Générale overhears me talking to Philippe in English.  She brings this breach to my attention, confirming that I’m not a native French speaker.  More precisely, she targets me as l’Américaine in the group.

We file into the lofty space stacked with fragrant barrels that pervade our nostrils with a mix of ripe red berries and strong earthy oak.  Our host stands before us, backlit, the silhouette of her square shoulders warning us not to move an inch further into her domain.

Here the wine ferments in oak barrels, we learn.  French oak, of course.  She turns to address me directly.  We prefer French oak because of its élégant overtones, like crème brulée – not the noix du coco that comes from American oak.

Coconut comes from American oak barrels?  Has anyone ever mentioned coconut as an aroma in a wine dégustation?  Maybe alongside flavours of banana and rum?

Someone asks Madame La Générale about the eggs.

We use traditionelle methods, she confirms.  The whites of somewhere between two and seven raw eggs filter through the wine of each barrel, clarifying the impurities.

No one asks about salmonella.  Either we’re completely dumbfounded or afraid to perturb the general’s brittle disposition.

Madame La Générale leads us into the château’s clammy, stone cellar. It’s lit by somber yellow lights and encrusted with cobwebs and a layer of mildew that grows thicker with the elevation.

No flash on that camera!  Madame La Générale barks.  She continues.  We, unusually for the châteaux in this area, grow our grapes on elevated lands.  We have space for a true, underground cellar (even if the stone now surrounding us was imported from the other side of the river).

Tastings are a rarity at this château.  Most all wine is exported as soon as it’s bottled.  But somehow we have arranged a brief tasting of two cherished wines.  Madame La Générale leads us into the château’s airy dégustation room and pours out a dozen small glasses of the well-guarded nectar.  She pushes them haphazardly toward us across a tall serving table.  Her glass remains empty.

I go through les appreciations visuelle, olfactive and gustative.  The wine’s really good but I don’t want to admit it.  Instead I consider the lasting side effects of salmonella.

She refills our glasses from a second bottle and slips her empty glass under the counter.  No need to waste the precious brew.  Promptly then she leads us back outside to the parking area.

Is there anything else we would like to see? she asks, depositing us right next to our minivan’s open doors.

Is stainless the new oak?
Is stainless the new oak?

Fortunately the host of our fourth and final château restores our faith in female wine dégustation hosts.  She’s a young, joyful mix of information and enthusiasm, even on this, her fifth tour of the day.  (Perhaps that’s why.)  Château Lagrange is 100% Japanese owned with all the electronics to match.  The vats housing their earliest grape juices are all stainless steel.  Even the balcony that circumnavigates this lofty room of vats, and the stairway leading up to that balcony, are made of brilliant stainless steel.  Stainless steel piping climbs the walls and runs along the ceiling, while two enormous flat-screen computer monitors govern the heartbeat of production inside a glassed-in office.

There’s not an eggshell to be found on this sweeping estate.  Nor is there an owner.  The Japanese man who purchased the estate – and therefore the only person with the right to dwell in its noble château with its formal gardens and four-story, Baroque-style turret – this Japanese man only comes to visit his Bordeaux vineyards for a few days every few years.  Apparently he’s afraid of flying.  Meanwhile, the head of Château Lagrange’s operations – effectively its CEO – wasn’t even allowed into the château for the first two years of his contract.

But the wine here is completely inviting.  Our sociable young hostess drinks with us, presumably for her fifth time today.  Dégustation offers up a good, solid équilibre of a 3rd Grand Cru Classé wine but at very reasonable prices.  And still, purchases, even of a single bottle, are impossible these days.  We’re all flying.

It’s a gorgeous Bordeaux wine estate...
It’s a gorgeous Bordeaux wine estate…

As experts in the art of wine dégustation, we now are ready to tackle the Michelin two-starred restaurant at Château Cordeillan-Bages, just down the country road from Château Lynch-Bages, where we began our education only yesterday.  Our small group reassembles at 8:30 p.m.  Already ten wines into the day, we are rested and hungry.

Situated in a 17th-century Carthusian monastery, Château Cordeillan-Bages’ contemporary dining room is scattered with small clusters of diners.  The maître d’ parades us through this space into a separate room having at its centre a long, stately table draped in starched white linen.  Three coloured glass balls line its center, simple and modern décor for the intricate feast to follow.

...but it’s completely vacant.
…but it’s completely vacant.

A menu dégustation at this sort of restaurant is an exercise in endurance.  I’ve learned this the hard way.  On my couple prior experiences I’ve ended up either saddened and embarrassed to turn away luscious desserts, or else completely distended.  I now appreciate that you have to pace yourself.  Here, for example, the warm hors d’œuvres balls that arrive at the table don’t even feature on our ten-course, printed menu.

Still or sparkling water?  a waiter asks.  Rule number one in these situations:  Still.  Always still.  Bubbles take up space.

Another waiter circulates with a basket of gorgeous breads.  Rule number two:  Choose one roll and taste it, but don’t even think about eating it.

Various butters arrive, each with an explanation.  Select one, but only a tiny bit.  Remember, this is a matter of survival.  You cannot eat the bread.

The first wine arrives:  Graves 2011, Château Villa Bel-Air.  You must drink cautiously.  A waiter circulates to refill modestly drained glasses, but notice that three more empty wine glasses queue up at each place setting.

The servings continue at this pace amid a flurry of cutlery changes and propositions of more bread.  Thankfully the waiter with the breadbasket never tempts me again as I’ve barely touched my first bit.

The mise en bouche (a nameless appetizer, which is delightful but in writing this note, I honestly cannot remember what it was) is followed by an oversized soup bowl of variation de chou fleur aux huitres et caviar  (cauliflower whipped up like you’ve never seen it, with oysters and caviar).

Not being fond of foie gras, I suggest skipping the course – it’s all about endurance – but instead am treated to a bed of yogurt, cucumber and dill topped by shaved crab and crowned with several large bites of warm king crab leg.

The second of our wine glasses is filled with a more golden white, Bordeaux 2011, Blanc de Château Lynch-Bages, before the arrival of the chef’s twist on pain perdu.  “Lost bread” is how French people normally describe what we Anglophones call French toast.  Tonight’s pain perdu, though, comes not with maple syrup but with algues, fines lamelles de seiche, and bouillon au sésame grillé.  Bread with seaweed, squid slivers and grilled sesame broth.  It honestly ranks as one of the most flavourful and delicious things I’ve tasted in my life.

Out comes the homard bleu, petits légumes en risotto, cappuccino de corail (blue lobster, vegetable risotto and a froth of (presumably edible) coral), and somewhere in there arrives the first red, Pauillac 2002, Château Cordeillan-Bages, the restaurant’s namesake.

Philippe, I am told discretely, is skipping the next course, but I’m dying to try it:  pigeonneau légèrement fumé, mousserons et rhubarb, reduction de betterave rouge.  Who knew that pigeons could be something other than a nuisance?  Especially when they are smoked and accompanied by hearty mushrooms, cooked rhubarb and a beetroot reduction.  The fourth wine arrives, too:  the glorious Pauillac 2003, Château Lynch-Bages.

Unfortunately, I must skip it. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Unfortunately, I must skip it. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A trolley circles the table, stopping at the ladies first, hoping to tempt us with the sélection de la fromagerie Xavier à Toulouse.  This cheese shop, we see from the menu, is under the baton of François Bourgon, Meilleur Ouvrier de France – a title that indicates Mr Bourgon ranks among the best cheesemongers in the whole of France, a country renowned for its cheeses.

And yet I must decline, citing issues of space.  The waiter places an empty white plate in front of me.

There’s a pre-dessert which is, of course, followed by the real dessert of chaud froid tout chocolat, fève Tonka, crème glacée chocolat blanc cardamome.  Chocolate and more chocolate.  It’s precisely the reason I skipped the cheese – even if it is now after midnight.

The marathon finishes, more than four hours later, with the impossible suggestion of coffee or tea – along with sharing plates of douceurs et friandises.  Nestled beside raspberry and salted caramel chocolates are Bordeaux’s famous canelés.  I take one from the plate to save for breakfast and wonder, in my satiated and saturated state, whatever they do today with all the extra egg whites.

As someone rolls me out of the restaurant, we pass a table of diners still grazing at their own endurance test.  Sitting at the table alongside their parents are two young children.

Fortunately our plane departs tomorrow.  Joining a seven-day tour in this style – as some do – wholly exceeds my digestive capabilities.

Anyway, this trip already has cost a pretty penny.  From now on, I fear I’ll be unable to touch anything inferior to a 3rd Grand Cru Classé.

Saving Bellevue: The Skyrocketing French Wealth Tax

Posted on by jemma

Philippe ran into our friend Jean-Louis in the old town of Antibes a couple days ago.  Jean-Louis, a well-connected Frenchman, was glad to see my husband again.  He was a bit relieved, too.

I thought you might not be back this summer, the Frenchman said.

Indeed, Philippe explained, we almost weren’t.  The truth – the obvious but unspoken words exchanged between these two friends – is that our family was nearly Holl-ended.

Here’s what we could’ve done after tearing open that registered envelope.
Here’s what we could’ve done after tearing open that registered envelope.

It started in Toronto on a soggy day in December – Tuesday, December 10, to be precise, as each day would begin to matter.  A registered envelope arrived at our front door with news from France:  The value of our cherished Bellevue – the ruin on Antibes’ Côte d’Azur seaside that we’ve lovingly resurrected over the last seven-odd years – had skyrocketed.  It had, in fact, tripled!

Pop the corks, you’d say!  Tripling the value of your home is a massive windfall!  We were suddenly the implausible, grinning Grand Prize Winners in one of those Sweepstakes Clearinghouse letters.

Except that there was no note of congratulations anywhere within the registered French envelope.  Quite to the contrary, the only winners in this game were its senders.  Our sudden windfall simply served to generate more tax.

We’ve all heard about French actors and singers, athletes and businessmen who’ve been what I call “Holl-ended”.  The famous tax hikes of France’s new Socialist Président Hollande have prompted some of the country’s most celebrated names to flee.  Only three days before that registered letter arrived in Toronto, for example, the famed French actor Gérard Depardieu became a Belgian tax resident in order to escape the new French levies.  France’s Prime Minister called the actor’s calculated departure “minable” (pathetic).

A lot less famously, we Canadian-Americans who own Bellevue were getting hit by the country’s other notorious tax:  the impôt de solidarité sur la fortune, or the ISF.  France is unusual in the way it levies this annual wealth tax on all French assets above a certain threshold – and what luck!  Ours had just blossomed magnificently.  We’d become the latest targets in Mr Hollande’s grand attempt to chase taxpayers out of the country.

This man circumnavigated the system by becoming a Belgian tax resident – and then a Russian citizen. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
This man circumnavigated the system by becoming a Belgian tax resident – and then a Russian citizen. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

It is bad manners in France, I know, to discuss all matters of finance, so I’ll pass over the detail.  But I forge ahead because the story is, at the least, instructive in the French art of flexibilité.

We had 30 days to reply to the French Government’s letter.  This period conveniently spanned seven days of Hanukkah, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and Epiphany – not to mention Human Rights Day, which fell curiously on the day we received the winning letter.  These holidays, and the weeks connecting them, were all perfectly good reasons for anyone who could possibly help us, to not be in the office.

If, after these fixed 30 days, the government received no response from us, Bellevue’s new valuation stood.  Our tax payment – what we’d owe the government each year – would go up to something like the price of a typical American home.

Philippe vowed to sell Bellevue.  I pleaded that we find help, preferably from someone who didn’t observe Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the New Year.  Our holidays passed on the western side of the Atlantic with a decent bit of unspoken angst, at least on my part.

Three days into the new year, actor Gérard Depardieu returned to the headlines.  He became a Russian citizen.  The sub-headlines mentioned the beauty of Russia’s 13% flat tax.

The very next day, with our 30-day response deadline looming, there was an email from our newfound savior, Jean-G.

Having secured a 30-day extension from the government, our new French tax accountant outlined the next steps.  He was busily amassing details of comparable house sales, thanks to a study he commissioned by a certified appraiser with a double-barreled surname.  Her credentials were amazing, as was the hyphen.  What’s more, she was – how shall we say? –personally connected to all the right people.

Jean-G outlined the process.  We’d debate Bellevue’s valuation with the administration, heading up the ranks as need be.  If we still weren’t satisfied at the top, we’d hire a lawyer and take the issue to court.

Thanks to our new tax accountant’s instruction, we were expecting the next registered envelope that arrived in Toronto.  On February 20, we learned that Mr Hollande’s team was revising our taxes retrospectively.  Bellevue’s extravagant new valuation would apply not just for 2011, but for 2010 and 2009, too.  Again, there was no trace of confetti.

Three days later Gérard Depardieu became an official Russian resident, thereby establishing a new way to escape France’s hefty taxes.  The actor’s new permanent address?  1 Democracy Street.

Meanwhile Jean-G beavered away, negotiating our way up the chain of administrative command.  He tested every avenue for the best result, including the possibility (which he went on to prove) that the government had overestimated Bellevue’s floor space – and therefore our tax base – by more than 50 square meters.  All the while, our case escalated.

One day, Philippe was talking business on the phone with his buddy Matthieu, a banker in Paris.  My husband mentioned our ordeal.  Soon, he said, he was coming to Matthieu’s native land to meet with the Directeur Général of the Côte d’Azur’s ISF bureaucracy.  This guy was basically the top dog before we brought our case before a judge.

The Parisian banker gave it to Philippe straight.  We had only one hope in succeeding, he said.  Philippe had to lay on his Quebecois accent good and thick.

Matthieu’s tactic had to be right.  That long-lost-cousin trick already has come in handy in countless important negotiations here in the south of France – like when we’d forged an agreement with the city’s garbage collectors to start picking up our trash.

And then the big day arrived.  On April 2, at 2:00 p.m. precisely, the industrious Jean-G swung into the administrative commission in Nice.  His hair was disheveled, as if he’d never found time to comb it; his stocky body was pumped, fidgety even.  In his hand was a thick portfolio of research, and at Jean-G’s side was the full-throttle Quebecker Philippe.  The two men took seats in the Directeur Général’s office, a utilitarian space surrounded by neat rows of dossiers packed into towering bookshelves.

They presented Bellevue’s case to the skeletal, regional head of the ISF.  There were concrete facts.  There were interpolated figures.  There was discussion.  There were shrugs.  There were concessions.  There was more discussion.  There were more shrugs.  Finally, when the gap between the government and private valuations seemed irreconcilable, Jean-G submitted the ample dossier of valuation research collected by our certified appraiser with the fancy surname and connections.

The Directeur Général, a quintessential, eagle-nosed French bureaucrat, noted the author of the weighty report.  Ah, Madame Double-Barrel, he said.  Just show me the final figure.

At last, two exhaustive hours later, the meeting produced a result.  Philippe emailed me over the Atlantic, were I was busily pouncing on my Mail icon at the sign of any new message.

“I’m happy with the result…” were his opening words.

I was breathless.  I was relieved.  I had a little party in my desk chair in Toronto.  Basically put, if we started at 1 and they started at 10, we ended up around 3.  This still represented a 50% increase in our annual tax charge, mind you, but it was a number we could at least live with.

The adjustments made in Nice that day were hardly won by the discovery of loopholes in France’s well-thumbed laws.  No, they were delivered through effort, strategy and an appreciation of that subtle notion of French flexibilité – the same fluidity in life we confronted when negotiating Bellevue’s garbage pick-up.

Christelle, our favourite Antibes taxi driver with the outrageous spiked heels, drove Philippe back to the Côte d’Azur airport that day in early April.  Talking to Christelle in her taxi is always like gossiping with your hairdresser.  The discussions somehow fall outside the usual French maxims, such as the one about not discussing money.  Quite probably this is because for much of the day, Christelle drives around foreigners – often the wealthy, new compatriots of the “pathetic” Mr Depardieu.

Cruising the Côte d’Azur highway to the airport, Philippe told Christelle about our ISF dramas.  He told her the backstory and explained the hard-fought negotiations leading up to that April day.  Finally he shared the reduced valuation that he and Jean-G and the team had just achieved for our cherished Bellevue.

That’s it?!  Christelle was astounded at the final number.

Philippe agreed.  Christelle was right.  Angela, our long-time estate agent, also had valued our property a smidgeon higher than this end result.

No, Christelle insisted.  That’s hardly what she meant.  Her clients constantly beg her to let them know – a-s-a-p – if a seaside property should come up for sale in the Côte d’Azur.  Christelle-the-Taxi-Driver vowed she could sell Bellevue tomorrow!  And for a much higher price!

Brittany vs French Riviera: Which is the Real France?

Posted on by jemma

A full-bearded immigration officer looks curiously at two toppling hotel carts of luggage for three people.

Philippe, eight-year-old Lolo and I are staying in France until the end of August, we explain to the officer at the airport in Brittany.  From here, we head to our home in Antibes.

Antibes? he says with a vague smile.  He turns halfway toward the neighbouring border agent to share the joke.  Antibes, ça n’est pas la France!

Antibes isn’t France.

Philippe and I laugh, too – who doesn’t laugh at an immigration officer’s joke? – and proceed through the gates.

We’ve touched down in Brittany for a few days before continuing south to our summer hometown.  We’ve been returning there, to the French Riviera, on and off for eight years now.  One time when life allowed it, we actually managed to live in Antibes for a full year.

But this summer, before hitting the shores of the Med, we’re here in Brittany.  Seeing the place is part of our bigger project of visiting more of France each summer than just its feted Côte d’Azur.

Mont St Michel is the area’s most famous attraction.
Mont St Michel is the area’s most famous attraction.

Geographically speaking, it’s tough to find a corner of France that’s further from Antibes.  If our home in the Côte d’Azur is the extreme southeast of France, Brittany is the extreme west of the northwest.  From the words of our immigration officer, though, it sounds as though the sentiment goes further than pure geography.

This area’s big draw (which is technically just over the border in Normandy) is Mont St Michel, a jagged outcrop of rock surrounded by water and topped by an abbey having roots back to the 8th century.  By some index, the place ranks as the most visited tourist site in France outside Paris.

Brittany has its features, too.  It is the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, founder of Canada, and a virtual place of pilgrimage for Quebeckers like Philippe.  The region is celebrated, too, for its iconic crêpes and its menhirs, smaller but far more prolific Stonehenges scattered through parts of the countryside.

Lolo, meanwhile, doesn’t want to visit Brittany.  She wants to go to France.

But we ARE in France, Philippe and I tell her.

She means the REAL France.  She wants to go to the REAL France.  To Antibes.  The Côte d’Azur.

Mini-Stonehenges dot the countryside near Carnac.
Mini-Stonehenges dot the countryside near Carnac.

Our daughter obviously didn’t hear the bearded immigration officer.  But in some ways, he was right.  Even if Brittany and the Côte d’Azur share the same national borders, the two areas are poles apart.  The architecture here in Brittany is hardly stucco with red-tiled roofs.  It’s Norway’s gables-meets-England’s Tudor period.  The population eats dinner at 7pm, not halfway to midnight.  Butter is served in a bucket.  And truth be told, the weather is not at all Côte d’Azur.  For this morning’s swim aerobics class in Brittany’s sea, participants wore wet suits.

If Brittany is the real France, I reason, then the Côte d’Azur can hardly be teaching us foreigners about the true French culture.

Lolo wants to know how many hours before we are in France.  She corrects herself.  In Antibes, she means.

St Malo feels more like England than the French Riviera.
St Malo feels more like England than the French Riviera.

We work on her math skills, starting with a few multiples of 24.

As our family whittles away the hours in Brittany, though, we start to recognize aspects of France that actually unify its extremities.  Lolo mentions the pointy white road signs with black writing.

How many hours until we’re in Antibes NOW?

A frilly, white Petit Train for tourists runs up and down the streets of St Malo and Carnac, just like in our Antibes – and in Monaco, Nice and Cannes.

We track down the tourist information office in Carnac.  Fermeture exceptionnelle on Tuesday, the day we’re standing outside its locked doors.  No other explanation.  Yes, Brittany is definitely part of the overarching land that we know as France.

How many hours now?

Thanks to French strikes we roamed the entirety of Mont St Michel’s famous, 8th-century abbey...
Thanks to French strikes we roamed the entirety of Mont St Michel’s famous, 8th-century abbey…

One afternoon we three climb to the top of Mont St Michel, the focus of our visit.  The ticket office is closed.  Workers are on strike because the price of parking (in the public lot that’s situated on the plains some three kilometers from the island) has gone up from EUR 8.50 to EUR 12.00.

But no worries!  The striking ticket agents are in solidarity with us, the over-paying public!  As we’ve already paid the extortionate parking charges, and we’ve suffered the interminable shuttle buses to reach the base of the island, the employees have swung wide the gates.  We can roam around the abbey’s vast domain for free today.  the r on in!

This – in one of the country’s most popular tourist sites.  Surely we are nowhere BUT France.

Now how many hours until we’re in France?  Lolo asks.  She gets her mistake, but she’s no longer using the facts.  She’s on strike.

Fortunately for her, the answer finally requires little math.  We leave Brittany tomorrow morning at 11:00 a.m.

Except that we don’t actually leave.  France’s air traffic controllers are on strike because the French airport heads are discussing the possibility that there might possibly be future discussions with some people in Europe.  Possible discussions about the abominable subject of unification.

...for free!
…for free!

And, the headlines warn us, don’t even consider taking the train instead.  There are no trains.  The drivers are on strike.  The national railway company has some EUR 36 billion of debt, and counting, and the government has finally announced that it needs to deal with it.  It’s the perfect reason to go on strike for not just one or two, but three days.

But eventually, one day late, Philippe, Lolo and I finally fly to France.  The real France.   We apologise to the bagagiste about our sky-high luggage carts.

Pas de problem!  she says.  For this length of stay, she expects two toppling hotel trolleys – each.

Et voilà!  There’s Christelle, our favourite Côte d’Azur taxi driver, behind the glass doors waiting for us.  Her strawberry-blonde hair glows in the abundant sunlight.  She’s absolutely radiant in her skinny white jeans, sparkly electric blue and white top, and electric blue, open-toed, slender-heeled spikes.  Those shoes would be unwieldy even without trying to drive a taxi.

Cap d’Antibes from above: The “real” France beckons.
Cap d’Antibes from above: The “real” France beckons.

Thirteen centimeters!  she confirms about the heels, with pride.  That’s over five inches.

France, the only France, finally has welcomed us.

Rentrée: Re-Entry After a Côte d’Azur Summer

Posted on by jemma

It’s time for re-entry.  We’ve pushed this year’s departure from the Côte d’Azur out by a few days compared with last summer’s – but that only makes leaving more difficult.

Bellevue’s figuier has been in full production...
Bellevue’s figuier has been in full production…

If you’re the sort of person who appreciates sunshine, gorgeous vistas and French food – but without gobs of other folks enjoying exactly the same things as you, at exactly the same time, all pushed up snug against you in the blazing heat while you try to maneuver centuries-old passageways – then you, too, would find it harder and harder to leave the South of France.  As each day passes, the throngs disperse.

The figs only add to our impending doom.  Five years ago we planted a fig tree here in Antibes, at the edge of Bellevue’s garden.  It was a knot of wood with a few big, oddly shaped leaves on it.  Since then, the figuier has flourished, entertaining ideas of requisitioning the whole of the garden if we’d only let it.

Three years ago the tree gave us its first fruits.  It wasn’t much, but we relished each, sweet fig.  Then for the last two summers, there’s been nothing.  Not a single, edible fig.  We’ve seen the green fruits developing on the sprawling tree, but they disappeared, seemingly in midair.  We suspected birds, or if not birds, then – perish the suggestion – rats.

Then this summer (or to be precise, only in the last couple weeks) our figuier has bestowed us with a cornucopia of gifts.  The figs are fragrant and plump and sweet, with thin violet skin and a moist, seedy, magenta interior.   We harvest the fruit and then more appears.  We are none the wiser why the tree pours forth this year – unless we can tie the sudden bounty to a meter-long, green snake I mentioned in this summer’s first blog post.  We saw it only once but, well, it has to eat something.

...at least this year – but possibly for an unthinkable reason!
…at least this year – but possibly for an unthinkable reason!

Summers pass quickly in the Côte d’Azur, and French Lessons has shown it.  This season, from the moment Christelle (wearing her customary strappy dress, high-heeled shoes and sparkly butterfly clips) collected Philippe, Lolo and me from Nice Airport, these posts have recounted the area’s characters, its cappuccinos and foie gras, the Roman boat and France’s relentless taxes (both when you’re living and when you’re not), and then finally, in a brief moment of reflection, Antibes’ ever-present history.

In case you’ve missed a week – or if you haven’t and need a healthy dose of sunshine or glamour over the long winter months – why not dive back into these posts to relive the madness:

Volupté’s cappuccinos remain a highlight of our summer days...
Volupté’s cappuccinos remain a highlight of our summer days…

And if you’re longing for more, feel free to crawl back into the earlier annals of this site.

Being based in Antibes in a semi-perpetual way makes life here a whole lot more natural for us, I would say, than the typical summer visitor.  We live more true to the French way.  We can’t simply pass through town quietly anymore, as we did in the earliest years.  We can’t dive in as tourists, tick the boxes of the area’s highlights and then return to our own realities.

Instead, my family and I connect.  We live here as best we can, becoming an expected part of the summer fabric.  This fact came to roost in spades this summer when the usual effervescence of our Côte d’Azur days was hit by three estrangements (female friends from their other halves) and two deaths.  These things don’t happen to passersby, and while they are heavy, I take each connection as a blessing in my life here.  Connections convert the fairytale into a reality that I’ve tried to share in my posts.

...but this summer’s discovery of a Roman boat has been more of a mixed bag.
…but this summer’s discovery of a Roman boat has been more of a mixed bag.

Language, of course, is also at the core of understanding French life.  Sometimes people ask if I’m fluent, and I always reply with a firm “non”.  I started to learn French at the age of 35.  I’ll never be fluent.

But my language at least has improved with time (and a healthy dose of work).  Just a few days ago I biked up to the Phare de la Garoupe, the lighthouse at the top of Cap d’Antibes, mounting the switchback road in 33C heat and full-on sunshine.  At the top another cyclist was stopping for a water break.

I said “bonjour” on the way past; it’s the done thing.  Yes, it’s hot.  Yeah, glad to have this water to drink.

Of course my accent isn’t great.  It never can be when you try to learn the linguistic gymnastics of French vowels at a ripe age.  The cyclist asked where I was from.  I told him Toronto.

The Garoupe Lighthouse casts a beam over Bellevue, reaching far into the Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Steve Muntz
The Garoupe Lighthouse casts a beam over Bellevue, reaching far into the Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Steve Muntz

That’s a long way.

Yes, but I came by plane, not bike.

He laughed.  Your French is very good!

Which, of course, I’m always grateful to hear even if I’ll never, ever slip by as one of them.  But the simple conversation made me realize I’ve come a long way.  Forget the usual question about whether you dream in a foreign language.  Who really remembers what they dream, anyway?  I say the key is jokes.  If you can joke in a foreign language, things aren’t going too badly.

But it is time to get back to our full reality.  Summer’s days are dwindling.  I know it’s true because some of the area’s train operators are on strike today.

“Well, it’s about time,” the radio announcer said.  What she meant:  No one strikes here during the summer holidays – workers must be present to strike.  And so today’s strikes must mean that summer is officially over.

You can see it, too, in the Côte d’Azur’s shop windows:  The mannequins are wearing long sleeves.  People are thinking about la rentrée – a French re-entry of sorts when all of France goes back to whatever they should be doing.  The beaches are depopulating, and with them went the crush of August’s heat.  The market crowds are thinner.  And the license plates in this popular corner of the world are becoming less and less varied.  It’s time to go home.

Here’s the reward for a steamy bike ride.
Here’s the reward for a steamy bike ride.

Honestly, it’s not a moment too soon.  Lolo came up with a terrifying idea last week, one that would jeopardize any promise in her future academic career.  ”Mommy,” she asked, “why can’t we have a whole year of school and then a whole year of summer?”

I realized how far we’d shifted from the normal rhythms of life when I had an email several weeks ago from a friend – someone with whom I once shared the exact, same lifestyle – that began like this (and I quote):  “Are you insane ?!!!”

Kathleen and I were simply planning a night together with our families in her leafy outskirts of London.  We wanted to get our kids’ meals and bedtimes in sync.  Kathleen’s plan was simple.  The kids would have dinner at 5:00, and her nanny would put them to bed while the grown-ups scooted off to a nearby gastro-pub.

A fine-sounding plan, I said, except that 5:00 was basically snack time for Lolo.  My daughter was in the habit of eating dinner around 8pm and going to bed before 11pm, if we were lucky.

“11 pm !!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  Kathleen wrote back.  “Are you insane ?!!!  I’m probably in bed BEFORE 10 pm!!!   Lolo is 7!!”

By this point, I should’ve realized we were living in French Lala-Land – but heh, 11pm bedtime in the summer months didn’t seem out of line in our circles.  In fact two nights ago, as Philippe and I enjoyed a final dinner out in the Côte d’Azur, our seven-year-old daughter was out bowling with friends (and their parents).  As the clock turned over 11pm, Philippe and I were already in bed – waiting for her.

I guess the upside is that we’re already pretty much on Toronto time.

So we head back to North America.  In some ways, I’m dreading re-entry, those first days swamped with frantic, last-week-before-school shopping.  Just like last year’s re-entry, I’m sure Lolo has outgrown all her closed-toe shoes.  It’s hardly an ideal situation when you live in Canada.

But in other ways, I look forward to our own rentrée as one does the change in seasons.  Re-entry is part of the normal rhythm of our lives.

The best bit, though, is knowing that we’ll return to our cherished Bellevue next summer.  In the meantime, dear readers, if you have any comments you’d like to share about French Lessons, or suggestions for next year’s posts, fire away!  The more the merrier!  And make sure you don’t miss any of next summer’s fun.  Subscribing is easy:  Use the link in the pink – in the top left corner of the site.

So, well, Bonne Année!  Happy New Year!  You’ve gotta start saying it sometime.  I look forward to sharing next summer with you, as I dish out another bowlful of French Lessons, just as you like it.  I promise it’ll even tax-free – no Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée, no Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune, no Contribution à l’Audiovisuel Public . . .