On the Sea

Ditto on the note from yesterday

On the Mountain Top

We had a good nights sleep on our mountain top B & B. The Med is greyer today than it is blue. We had a very nice breakfast with our host. She seemed eager to stay with us and we suspected that she wanted to practice her English. She apologized for not cooking us a proper breakfast but told us that it was illegal for a B & B to cook for their guests but are limited to serving cold meals. She blames the restaurant political influence. It seems like the more things are different, the more they are the same.

It is embarrassing that we speak no other languages. The joke is: “What do you call a mono-linguist?.........an American”. Everyone is proud at how many languages they speak and we seem to be stuck playing charades. I got a huge “Bravo” from the hostess last night at dinner because I could identify and pronounce (badly) ravioli. I was way to hard on the “a” and didn’t roll my “o” nearly long enough, but she was delighted. The bar for American linguists is really low. I hope as a country we take a renewed energy in helping our children to be better.

After breakfast we braved the winding road to get off the mountain and headed for France. It was barely noticeable going across the border with no document check at all. We thought of going to Monaco that is just west along the coast but stopped one bay short since it is apparently quite crowded on the road once you get there. The roads are so narrow and fairly crowded anyway. Once we got into the bay front town we parked the car and walked for most of the afternoon. The beach and the city were beautiful. We eventually turned inland and toured through narrow alleys that had a Saturday market going. Lots of overpriced but interesting things. Some French art but that was mostly cheap looking and not so impressive.

On the way back we stopped at a restaurant and had lunch. We had been told that there was good seafood there. Jamie decided to stay on the safe side and just ordered a salad. I ordered something that was in the pasta category and included “gifts from the sea”. Mine turned out to be a well-populated fettuccini with about six different fish items. Jamie got the big surprise since her salad turned out to be sliced potatoes drenched in butter and ……….sliced squid in a very recognizable form. The good news was that it was a generous portion of Squid. You would have loved to see her face. Even the two old women beside us laughed at the commotion. It turned out that she traded her squid for some of my salmon and prawns and some of the noodles. We are still laughing about our adventure.

There is very little on television except in French or Italian. We did find an English speaking French world news station with a repeating cycle of the same news items about every fifteen minutes. Actually it is more of a fashion channel with a little world news thrown in. They are very concerned about fashions, fashion shows, models, designers, shoes, perfumes and every thing related. They also seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on the American news. They are giving a great deal of attention to the health care fiasco and the conservatives attempts to kill it. It is pretty interesting to watch the foreign news and the different perspectives they have.

No pictures until we have a faster upload.