Days since last round up: 30-ish
Doses of vaccine received: 2
Best bit of vocab: panisse (not so much a useful word as a culinary discovery from the region - a kind of chickpea dough which can be shaped into some very yummy chips)
Language progress: course level taken at Alliance Francaise is C1, so we’ll go with that, but spoken French has probably been a little lacking, at least in comparison to Paris.
Reading: La Promesse de l’aube, by Romain Gary (amongst other things)
Weather: sun, sun, and more sun - exactly what you’d expect from the Côte d’Azur in July
Status: en vacances
I’d always liked the idea of a semester in Paris and summer in the south of France for the French part of my year abroad, and the temptation of the easy Meditteranean lifestyle was just too strong when I found out that one of my best friends would be working in Monaco and living in Nice for the month of July. We got an apartment convienently close to the train station (for Francesca) and also not far from the beach (for me), a co-location with a very lovely Argentinian guy and a slightly batty but very French landlady. I also signed up for two weeks of language classes at the local Alliance Francaise, to give me a little bit of structure before working remotely on Oxford’s outreach summer school UNIQ.
It was lovely to arrive in an actual apartment, with space to spread all my stuff, an actual kitchen, and ceilings which I couldn’t actually touch just by stretching. After a 6 hour train journey from Paris and a late-night arrival, we quickly got into the swing of things with a Sunday morning trip to the market, boulangerie breakfast, and even some ‘socca’, a kind of chickpea pancake which you can find (very cheaply!) on almost every corner here. We also had to do some last minute shoe shopping for the Gala Awards ceremony of the Monaco International Screening Festival which Francesca, as a freelancer for the Monaco Tribune, had press ticket to. It turned out to be not quite as glamourous as it sounds, but was something of a baptism of fire into Monaco culture - not just wealth but a huge focus on appearance, without a huge amount of cultural depth or sincerety. Sounds a little scathing, and I have to say Monaco did grow on me, but the shambolic organisation of the awards ceremony will always stay with me, and first impressions are usually not entirely wrong. Either way it was an entertaining evening out, and the ticket also got me into a screening of the film Saint Frances later in the week, which I can’t recommend highly enough. I’m not the world’s biggest film buff, but this one was so worth the time - it had me crying at more than one point, not because of an especially sad story, but just because of the beauty and subtlety of its portrayal of the female experience and solidarity in the face of a tough world.
My first week got off to a good start, with a brilliant language teacher, a lovely class and a cracking book (L’Autre qui danse by Susanne Dracius), in spite of some pretty painful sunburn (caught, in very British style, within 24 hours of my arrival), and the blisters from Sunday’s new shoes. As both of these eased off and I started to feel more settled, I rediscovered the town I’d visited as a post A-level holiday with a school friend at the time, and started to embrace the beach-side holiday vibes. I also explored more of Monaco, and, in characteristic style, located all of the plant-based eateries nearby, which is more than you’d think for such a touristy and relatively small place.
The real highlights of my time in Nice have been some fo the more low-key ones: evening swims and sunset on the beach to cool off after a hot day once the sun had gone behind the buildings on the prom, weekend market trips, and cosy film evenings in our apartment. A Saturday night dinner at a vegan bistrot towards the Port, and a Sunday morning walk around Cap Ferrat from Beaulieu were some of our more eventful undertakings, and the biggest standout will have to be an evening in a Napolitan restaurant, where the top-notch pizza was somewhat overshadowed by the tangible tension as a room full of Italians watched England score in the first two minutes, until things turned round and the night ended in celebration, in big, loud, Italian style.
Nice itself is a lovely base, but I also tried to make the most of the other villages along the coast, with two trips to Beaulieu (about halfway between Monaco and Nice) for their open air cinema screenings, a visit to Villfranche (the next village along, with a gorgeous medieval old town) for 14th July fireworks, and even a trip to Cannes before the film festival ended. Sadly no celebrity citings, but I did enjoy the slightly more glitzy vibes, even if the old town doesn’t quite live up to Nice and Villefranche. My favourite trip out was an evening train ride to Eze-sur-Mer, from where you can hike up the Nietzsche footpath to Eze village, a medieval settlement right at the top of a (bloody big) hill. I don’t think I have ever walked up as many steps in my life, and our legs felt it the next day, but it was utterly worth it because Eze village is really rather adorable. A close second would be the train to Tende, in what’s known as the ‘arriere-pays’, with some brilliant mountain and river views, and all for free because the route was so badly flooded last year that they’re letting people travel for nothing this summer. Tende itself is right on the Italian border, and became a French territory less than 100 years ago, so despite a very French bistrot lunch, it felt like we were visiting a traditional Italian village.
With Francesca working in Monaco, I’d go over there once or twice a week, and my initial culture shock was mediated by the pretty old town, castle, twinkling aesthetic of the port by night. Monte Carlo and the Casino are exactly what you’d expect, but the buildings do have a certain turn-of-the-century charm, and even if when you know how superficial and bizarre it all is, the glamour of it all does make it quite a fun place to be, in small doses. We mostly kept to ourselves, with lunch and (iced!) coffee dates in the old town, but also got friendly with a fourth flatmate who moved in shortly before we left, and a visit from a friend from Oxford for 14th July. Making the most of cultural events (already tricky with Francesca’s quite hectic work schedule) became even more so after the introduction of the pass sanitaire, but Monaco really redeemed itself with an utterly captivating ballet spectacle based on an Italian folk dance similar to the Tarantella, accompanied by the most beautiful costumes I’ve ever seen, and a play about May ‘68 in their open air theatre.
I have to say that Nice is overwhelmingly a holiday destination, and with a stay of only a month, long enough not just to be a holiday but too short to really get yourself establish, it did always feel quite temporary. A Saturday night livestream of an utterly beautiful one-woman play currently being shown at the Royal Exchange in Manchester was so powerful that it had me literally sobbing à plusieurs reprises, as the French would say, at which point I realised just how much I had, and have, been missing home. It’s not that I’m ready to go back just yet, but it’s been a long stint abroad, and even longer since I was properly settled in the UK, and if someone told me I had to go home right now, I wouldn’t be devasted. There’s still plenty of exciting experiences to come, but there’s also a corner of me which is very ready for a bit of Manchester, a break from adulting with my parents, English friends and the good old British weather. I never thought I’d say that, but one thing I’ve learnt from Nice is that I’m just not cut out for daily life in the Meditteranean heat, as much as I love their culture around food and lifestyle for a relaxing holiday.
Our last few days were much more relaxed than Paris, with walks along the prom and some tapas on Place Garibaldi, and saying goodbye to my big suitcase, which is being shipped home rather than taken to Austria, was one of the happiest moments of my year abroad so far. No more airport luggage stress, and no more lugging 35 kilos up and down multiple flights of French apartment blocks! Before leaving France, one last thing had to be rounded off: my second vaccine dose. The process was very streamlined by now, with mass organisation at a concert/sports stadium just out of the centre, and it was a nice note to end my time in France on - after so much time spent under curfew and various restrictions, it feels like we’re moving on to something more normal, and hopefully travel from now will be much less of a logistical issue than it’s characteristically been for this year abroad. This time it really is au revoir to France, but not quite to Europe just yet, and I couldn’t round off without a Nice pun - a Nice time sums up the month in Nice perfectly, but I’m looking forward to a little more purpose and structure in August, all with the knowlege that the days are ticking down until I’m back in lovely, wet, friendly and homely Manchester.