Sweating the small stuff – Menton Week One

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, to be met at Nice airport by the loveliest of men, William Rubinstein, Nice-based representative of the KMM Trust. It was such a help to be met by a friendly, smiling face and deposited into our lovely apartment, the sea immediately in front of us and the ‘Old Town’ of Menton rising through the trees. It’s gob-smackingly beautiful. The stuff of dreams.

With no stores in the cupboard we wandered along the waterfront in search of food, immediately running into the first huge cultural difference between NZ and France. No eating establishments open until 6.30 or 7pm here (sometimes even later)  – extremely civilised, unless you’re a hungry traveller who has just arrived.

Eventually we found somewhere and then came face to face with our greatest fear: with a few very basic French phrases under our belt we stared at the menu in the hope something would miraculously disentangle itself of its French vocabulary and reveal what it really was! It’s like ordering food blindfolded, while a somewhat bemused (my kind interpretation, which could also be read as haughty and disapproving) waiter let us fumble for the words. But we did eventually order something and did eventually eat it, stumbling back to collapse into an exhausted sleep.

We wandered up and found the Villa Isola Bella – a lovely building only a five minute walk from our apartment – and then kept walking. Four hours later (those of you who know me well will know that this is not without its difficulties for me) we finally made it home. But, oh, the place is beautiful. Dreamlike. Ancient. Nothing, not even an aching body, can change this fact.

Monday morning we got brave. We negotiated with the ticket machine at the local railway station and got ourselves to Nice to collect our leased car. Thank god for GPS! We have christened it ‘Mum’. It tells us in the calmest of polite English accents where to go (‘Do a u-turn, do a U-TURN, DO AU-TURN….) and when we fail to heed her good advice (still trying to figure out how the hell to navigate on the wrong side of the road) she patiently re-jigs her calculations and gets us back on track.

At this juncture I have to give a big accolade to my dear husband Brian. He is coping with this sudden shift of steering wheel and orientation incredibly well. I, on the other hand, have discovered that I’m even more navigationally challenged than I thought I was! After nearly 54 years on this earth, it is now apparent that, in times of stress, I have not yet learnt to automatically know my right

from left! If it wasn’t for ‘Mum’ we’d be seriously **cked! A Navigator I am not! That Brian hasn’t pushed me out the door yet, while he is multi-tasking with all these jobs (and I am panicking and jabbing at imaginary brake pedals  on the passenger side), is nothing short of a miracle!

Once we’d found a good sized supermarket we must have spent well over an hour there, peering at labels and contents as we tried to identify what each thing was. Actually, I’m exaggerating here – it’s not that hard – the hard part is not going crazy and filling up the trolley with every kind of cheese, olives, pastry, bread, exotic fruit …. you get the picture. I’m just warning those who know me now:   I am going to come home twice the size as when I left! And the wine, folks, is so damn cheap….

We’ve now ventured into Nice three times (I spent 4 hours  speaking to students at Nice University – a great experience) and survived! We’ve been welcomed officially in the Menton Tow Hall town hall, in the room set aside for marriages, painted in 1958 by Jean Cocteau – incredible — and met many lovely, friendly people who have opened their arms to us and made us feel very welcome.

Tomorrow I will start my research – and am very excited to do so. This is a beautiful place. In the early morning, while the light is still silver and the sea shades of pink and the palest of blues, the sun hits the buildings of the old town and lights them golden, glowing like a precious jewel. I feel very lucky to be here. And I know that it can only get easier with each new day.