Summer 2015

Hop aboard your favourite Uber vehicle and travel with us as we launch French Lessons 2015. A couple young visitors play “spot the difference” between our Canadian hometown and Antibes, our summer home, while a local friend declares, “Ça y est les vacances!” Let summer begin!

Amid international headlines to the contrary, French Lessons discovers that Cap d’Antibes’ real estate market is floundering with the latest Russian exodus. We search for green shoots with Angela, our colourful property agent, while recalling the glory days when our northerly neighbours lived large on the peninsula.

It takes a (French) village to teach this Canadian-American how to cook. A simple trip to buy fish at the poissonnerie in Antibes’ Place Nationale turns into a full-blown meal, thanks to unsolicited recommendations, serial pieces of wisdom and a stern warning or two from passionate local vendors.

When our favourite taxi driver arrives at Bellevue dressed in a canary yellow dress and rhinestone high-heels – all dressed up to the nines – she unwittingly launches a debate over les deux françaises.   Who knew that French French and Quebecois French could be so different for little apparent reason?

This week French Lessons asks you to don your life vests. Together we embark on a photographic journey of the eastern Côte d’Azur – from Antibes to Monaco – witnessing the landscape, its beloved charms and eccentricities from a perspective that most visitors will miss.

France’s education ministry is brewing up plans to reform its collèges, or middle schools, in order to make them more equitable – and with luck, a bit more fun. From dry teaching to unforgiving grading systems and unsavoury attitudes, French Lessons learns the inside scoop from those invested most.

French Lessons welcomes back Philippe for his annual one-man show. Insightful and entertaining as ever, he regales us with his latest musings about the French economy – this time with nods to the hotly discussed Uberization, a foundational book Sapiens, and les Dames Pipi.

French Lessons sets sail on Part 2 of our photographic journey along the Côte d’Azur, this time leaving Antibes’ port in the direction of St-Tropez. Colourful histories, offbeat innovations and a secluded beach pepper our sun- and salt-soaked journey – as do James Bond and a small-time king.

When my daughter Lolo tags along on a visit to elderly friends, we compare the lives of two 10-year-old girls living within the walls of our home, Bellevue – stories that are separated by a full 75 years. An iPad and a runaway apple remind us of today’s prosperity.

In a special post to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the Côte d’Azur’s Libération, French Lessons interviews a local woman who was drafted and captured, and who ultimately survived the war to reestablish her life here, four countries later, on the Cap d’Antibes. Her story is, at last, in print.

As France gets on with the annual rentrée, French Lessons takes its final week of the 2015 summer season to soak in the reality of Côte d’Azur living – and to share a grab bag of offbeat highlights that never made their way onto these pages.