Nice

We made our way to the coast and took the highway lazily through Ventimiglia, Menton, around Monaco into Nice. Parked in downtown Nice and joined the crowds in a relaxing amble through the town, to lunch, to the Promenade. Found our way to the mall with the Starbucks (we accidentally parked in the mall's car park--oh, darn) and learned they had no more old-style Starbucks mugs but "the other Starbucks near the airport" still had some. Aha!

Picking up Alcalde at the airport proved more difficult than expected because of navigational difficulties, Nice airport complexities, Alcalde saying he was in Terminal 2 when he was in Terminal 1, and other things. The connection was eventually made and we were expertly guided to "the other Starbucks" near the airport by some darn good luck and solid, expert dead reckoning. Mostly the first. And there we found...

There is an interesting dimension to this trip/mash unfolding. One member of the Mash Club, who we would not want to name and shame, is not here and is spamming us with petty criticisms and inventing juvenile dramas about his home appliances. It's clear he is overwhelmed with guilt over his failure to join us. Too bad. For him, that is. He could be on another continent, far away from his homicidal washer, if he had simply allowed himself the simple pleasure of being here.

His loss. So sad. Meanwhile, the sun is slowly setting over the Mediterranean and there is a soft breeze in the warm air on the balcony overlooking the coastline. So what, exactly, were we talking about?

Note Jose in Ron Jon shirt that I gave him over twenty years ago at another Mash.

Seborga Sunrise

Still mostly dark and it's 0645. The beautiful lights of Monaco are just starting to fade out.

I had forgotten about the roosters in Italy and the barking dogs and the echoes of the barking dogs from the steep hillsides. I wonder why crowing doesn't echo. Neither does the sound of frantic cat fights from the other side of the canyon. They make the dogs bark more, though, and then there are the echoes. Italia!

Update: 0800. Jose is still not up.

There is technically not a drip coffee maker. There are fancy Italian equivalents that can make one cup at a time very slowly. Clearly they are intended to make cappuccino and the awful muddy-frothy concoction that Europeans call coffee. The equipment works well enough, so we have sunrise coffee.

We barely have anything for breakfast after Jose raided my snacks last night. He claimed he wasn't hungry enough for dinner. Then he plowed through my remaining beef jerky, devoured the last almonds, reprimanded me for eating both pop-tarts (after refusing them), and tore into my Speculoos. 

Speculoos are the European equivalent of the cinnamon cookies given out on American air carriers. They're very good, so when I spotted them in the French supermarche I bought a couple small packages to carry with me for emergencies. After Jose demolished the first package I warned him to save the last package for breakfast. I'm enjoying some of them now with my Italian-made coffee, overlooking this:

The sun rising over the horizon and striking the coast and city of Monaco is beautiful. I can't help but think that the mountain to my front strongly resembles La Cumbre Peak in Santa Barbara. 

There are more sounds reverberating from the surrounding hills. Sputtering tractors (on Sunday?) compete with church bells. There are loud conversations in Italian that, at first, seem like arguments but they're not. Italians speak with energy. Dog barking and yapping continues. What a relief that is. Once in a while a donkey brays and there's something, somewhere that sounds like a cross between a peacock and a Yeti...

As for the apartment, I love the balcony but am having serious issues with the spiral staircase. It seems to have been designed for a playhouse.

Getting my large suitcase up that thing was a challenge. But I did it.

Today we pick up Alcalde from the Airport. Our plan is to bum around Nice all day beforehand. Things in the villa-apartment are almost ready:

Final First Day in Seborga Update

While Jose and I were sitting around mocking Al for contriving a lame, email-based exploding washing machine drama to try to compete with the unfolding real-life Seborga Mash drama, aka R4TS4&T2 Mash TWH, I was reminded that we took this very important--and stupid--selfie in the Nice "car park" when we picked up the rental car. I am holding my famous GPS from 2010 that still works. Pretty good. Most of the time. Usually.

Arrival in Seborga!

We begin our day at the Gare Cornavin, the main train station in Geneva, after dropping off the dear Baroness at the airport.

We end our day overlooking a beautiful Mediterranean sunset (and Monaco) from our spacious terraced apartment in Seborga.

Geneva to Nice

Observations:

1. The weather has changed from sunny and warm to cool and rainy. Or rather, it was that way at Geneva and Lyon. As we went southward at something like 200mph it changed to rainy and hot. Now in Nice it's cloudy and hot.

2. The TGV goes really, really fast. Wow.

3. I'm sitting at the rental car counter in Nice hoping the Jose will eventually show up.

4. I spent two hours debating world politics, philosophy, pedagogy, soteriology and epistemology with a French professor on the train. I'm pretty sure I won but he wasn't going to admit it. His long pauses after I caught him in logical fallacies and contradictions were enough for me.

4 Addendum. Thank heaven for the chatty French professor, who helped me run to the correct train in Lyon. Six minutes is not enough time to properly catch a train. On this point he was correct.

5. On the most recent leg of my journey, the bus ride from Gare Nice Ville to the Nice Cote-d'Azur Airport, the bus got stuck in traffic in the heart of Nice. A car broke down in the crowded street in front of us and we couldn't move. In rush hour. Traffic backed up for blocks. I heard the guy next to me speaking German and therefore assumed he could speak English, which of course he did. I asked if he would help me push the car out of the way. We went to the bus driver and asked if he would let us out. He had to call for permission but he did so and then, joined by a French good samaritan on the sidewalk, we pushed the little car uphill out of the way. When we got back on board the whole bus started clapping. Like it was heroic or something. I just wanted to get going.

The Jose is here now! RENDEZVOUS CITY!

Prettiest French Village / Town

Not Yvoire. It's Taninges. So far, that is. Taninges may not be on the Lac, but it's prettier and it's a real place.

Mont Blanc

It's the highest cable car in the Alps. It cost over $60 a person but we had to do it. Here's why:

Chamonix quickly recedes into the Alpine skyline.

The Baroness poses in front of a true Alpine glacier.

At the top. One can view successive Alpine ridgelines from the summit.

No view like this anywhere, even from the top of Pikes Peak:

Chamonix from the top.

Then we bumped into another strange discovery, the kind of thing you can never expect. We met a young gentleman from "the Bay Area." After prompting he admited he's from Oakland and he's there to research Mont Blanc for a "rappelling ballet" production. And no, I'm really not making this up. He got his gear together and dangled for about an hour doing ballet poses. Now, he could have easily been pretending, you know, for attention. And he got plenty. But knowing the Bay Area, one must admit there is a strangely plausible absurdity to his explanation. We took this picture from the lower level after we descended a bit, because we weren't allowed to eat our sandwiches at the top.

Clearly, Jose has competition as der Dopeydangler. Notice he's doing ballet poses or something. On the side of an Alpine cliff. At about 14,500 feet. I'm thinking the ballet production would certainly be original. Or stupid. Or tragic. Or all three.