Europe, Episode 7: Nice, the beach

Much as I loved Avignon, we were there in the height of a swiftly warming Spring and at night, the house that we lived in swarmed with mosquitoes.  In the heat, I could hear Bear creaking frustratedly on the top bunk as they gathered along the wall, looking for all the world like tiny cloves.  Each time I fell back asleep, the pneumatic whine jerked me into wakefulness.  By morning, our cheeks were covered in tiny red bites.

Thus sleep-deprived, we trundled over to Nice where we settled ourselves in the bright purple-and-white guest bedroom on the fifth floor apartment of an immaculate man called Yves.  After an afternoon of walking, we split a cheap bottle of peach wine and crawled under the sheets at nine.  The next time I opened my eyes, twelve hours had passed and the cool, white morning light was streaming in through the window on soft birdsong.  Bear and I shuffled round in bed, looked at each other simultaneously and burst out laughing.  "What the hell was that?"

Turns out that Nice is some of the best sleep you may ever have.

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Everyone we told about Nice said that it was way too crowded and touristy and that there wasn't much to do.  I suppose that wasn't exactly wrong.  But it reminded me of Cannes in the best way possible, the voluptuous meals, the hot scent of rocks and tar on the air, the clean blue sky.  I spent days in Cannes walking around by myself, listening to music and delving into the kind of difficult thought that comes with easy places. 
 
So in Nice, even without itinerary or incentive, I enjoyed strolling the long boardwalk and following the coastline with my eyes.

On one end of the shore, gaily-painted boats bumped gently along the dock.  I amused myself by trying to read and translate their names as Bear took pictures of children playing along the concrete gangways.  (I realise now, three months of classes later, just how awful my French was when I was actually in the country.  I'm surprised waiters didn't shuffle away quickly to hide their laughter each time I ordered.  And there's still a long way to go, so I suppose another trip is on the cards!)

We followed the pathway out of the harbour and out along the pebble beach where children were playing in earnest.

We spent bits of one day dipping in and out of the beach, retreating to ice cream shops and pots of mussels when the sun got to be too much, and eventually, as evening fell, the sea melted into the perfectly pale tint that I had been longing to capture since we'd arrived. 

As you can see, I was also enamoured of this little girl and the adorable brother that grasped her hand right after she burst into tears.

So, like Cannes, Nice was hot and crowded and touristy, but for a short, comfortable break filled with good food and people-watching, it's exactly the kind of hot, crowded and touristy you need. 

Two days of sun, sea, sandals and a whole lot of sleep.

Regularly scheduled programming

Now that all the big hurdles have finally passed, I can go back to clearing the massive backlog of photos waiting for me and reliving our travels.

For now, this picture that reminds me of a wonderful day on a beach in Nice with the scent of searing pebbles underfoot and nothing above us but the clean blue sky. 

All I needed

Life's been full of false starts and stops recently.  I'm not upset or depressed - far from it, in fact - but I am a little bit stressed with the O levels and A levels on my tail.  

The students are jittery and I remember, with sympathy, sleepwalking through those exams; so exhausted that all I did when I came home was fall into deep and dreamless naps and wake, horrified and guilty that I wasn't studying.  Now, I was starting to feel guilty that they weren't and the relentless grind wasn't giving any of us much chance to recalibrate.  

At the end of a week of a lot of running around and very little sleep, I was invited by my good friend Sindhu to her theatre showcase.  Sindhu (or Sid to us) was part of an incubation group for young theatre practitioners for a year and for their final showcase, the group put on an interpretation of the T.S. Eliot poem, The Wasteland.  

Before Sunday, Sid told Amanda, Bear and I that we might find the production too avant garde and experimental.  She needn't have worried.  It was pretty unorthodox, but we enjoyed ourselves and I was inordinately moved at points.  

At the door, one of the ladies told us that one of the ideas behind the piece was that the actors had discovered their meanings of life.  We were to try and find ours.  I was tired, having run down from eight hours of work, and not completely ready to think deep thoughts just then, but the doors opened, and we ran with it.  

The set, scented with a smoke machine and perfumed oils, was split into sections for the performers to build little nests within.  One fragment was hung with embroidery and knitted pieces and another had books and marigolds hanging from the ceiling.  One of the actors had even filled the floor of her space with grey sand and desert rocks.  Sindhu's corner, a velvet den glowing with candles, fairy lights and a mosaic of drapes and mementos, was at once beautiful and sad, a tribute to times and people gone by.  

We were allowed to walk around the set during the performance and Amanda and I found ourselves touching things and standing, fascinated, under fishing line hung with apples and naked bulbs that pulsed and glowed.  

Throughout, I kept feeling snatches of something unfathomable.  Sure, it seemed uncomfortably experimental and possibly inaccessible, but there was also something deep and real winding beneath the surface that kept slipping through my fingers.  It was as if the stories and thoughts of real souls were woven in with the acting and if you only felt your way, you would touch something incredibly poignant. 

Sid, dressed as a faded, desperate Cleopatra, sobbed on a chair under a rich canopy of silks.  She didn't appear to see us, that is, until the end.

As the performance drew to a close, the actors picked up brown envelopes that they had secreted in corners and started to give them to the audience.  All around us, people were unfolding white pieces of paper with various "meanings of life" scribbled on them - things about giving yourself away or holding on tightly.  The sound was rising to a crescendo and people were speaking unintelligibly, tasting lines from the poem on the incensed air. 

Just as I was feeling left out, I saw Sindhu coming in our direction.  As she neared us, we made eye contact and her face lit up with a smile that felt like it was meant just for me.  In character, she knelt before us and gently pushed a letter into my hand.   

Then in a deep greeting of peace, Sid pressed her palms together and with tears streaming down her face, whispered against the backdrop of noise, "Shantih.  Shantih.  Shantih."  Startled, I felt my own eyes start to well, but before I could say anything, she sprang up, catlike, and was gone. 

In the silence that followed, with Amanda looking over my shoulder, I peeled away the envelope to find a solitary word:

And just like that, I understood.

Europe, Episode 6: And the Universe listened

This is a field of lavender, just about the only thing I wanted to see in Avignon, and about the only thing we were told it would be impossible to find.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we left Paris, I was finally on friendly terms with the city.  I don't think I really understood her before I started learning French but now, every street, every wall, every corner, every train was a buffet of the tongue, a smorgasbord of new things to learn, and I could pick up words and emotion and explain more or less what was going on.  I understood people better and they were more sympathetic to us and I loved just being there and listening to them talk.  

So, I didn't love Paris right away but Avignon was exactly my speed.  

First of all:

Ladies, this is Antoine.  He's one of the most (ahem) efficient waiters I have ever met.  (He was also the waiter who attempted to frighten me on the street corner at night.)

He is concerned when he can't seat people properly.

But he's determined to get it right, you know?

Rebecca and I found him so... efficient, that after walking past his restaurant twice and having breakfast next to it once (during which I didn't take stalkerish pictures of him with a zoom lens or anything), we eventually ended up going there for dinner.  It so happened that the food was delicious but it also started a trend of us choosing our restaurants based on how cute the waiters were.  We would walk past a bunch of cafes, see a hot waiter come out, do a double take and go back to get a seat.  That was how we met Antoine (and Roberto, and Alfredo, and William, and one so handsome we couldn't be sure he existed.  We christened him David Beckham anyway).

To start with however, we arrived in Avignon in an afternoon dripping with rain.  We quaffed a giant lunch and our second coffee of the day and after dropping our bags off at a cute little house in a sandy-laned neighbourhood, went exploring in the drizzle.

Avignon is exactly what I imagine a little town in the Southern part of Europe to be.  The houses are large but cosy, sandburnt to an almost-pink with pale orange roofs, and rain creepers over their walls and wrought iron balconies.  Some houses were walled in with great swags of pink flowers, others decorated with quaint brass doorknockers.  It was quiet, and romantic.

After getting peacefully lost in the neighbourhood for about an hour, Bear and I found our way to the old city.  The old part of Avignon is built like a fort, cocooned in massive sandstone walls interrupted by gates at every juncture.  To plunge in through one of the gates is to find yourself in the past traversing winding cobbled streets and, just outside the papal palace, a large, bleached plaza where people busk and ride bikes.

Outside the old city, the streets throng with devotees of H&M and Printemps.  Inside, they worship in small churches dedicated specially to saints; come out into the evening sun and dine in petite squares filled with the music of trickling fountains. 

In the summer, there is a massive performing arts festival and we found ourselves near several important venues.

The artistic essence of the city is clear; there are pretty little statues or frescoes tucked in niches on each corner, making the town a pleasing scramble of stone, brass and ochre.  

Mostly though, for the two days that we were there, we enjoyed getting lost in higgedly-piggedly streets that parted ways and met up again on various corners.  I particularly liked the second morning, when the harsh Southern sun finally came out to play.

When we'd first arrived, I attacked our host, Gilles, demanding to know where we could go to see the fields of lavender displayed on every postcard.  He shrugged and made the "pfft" sound so common among the French (or at least, my teachers make it at me all the time).  "It is too cold.  There is no lavande open yet."  I groaned and Bear glared at me - the lavender was the sole reason we were there - but I got over it quickly.  

The next morning, we sat under the shade of a spreading tree, ate wholemeal waffles and crepes and listened to the tinkle of water.  Every now and then, a frustrating phantom whiff of lavender would drift on the breeze and I would make a longing face at Bear.

Afterwards, we got up to walk round and occasionally, we would stumble upon sparse pots of closed lavender which I would try to deeply inhale.  "The Universe is listening!"  I told Bear as I stood over a small spray outside a flower shop.  "Maybe it is trying to present me with what little lavender it can!"

We started our wander in the church of one Saint Didier, cool and dark behind thick walls of stone.  Outside, we walked past small merchants and apartments lush with window boxes, some dangling flowers big as bells. 

We bought a box of chocolate for lunch and walked through the largest plaza, stopping to watch a merry-go-round and appreciate the zip of violin and accordion music on the air.

Eventually, when the heat of the afternoon hit its peak, we climbed to a park outside the papal palace to eat slowly in the sunshine along with the first ducklings of summer.

As we licked the last of the cocoa off our fingers, I leaned back and closed my eyes as Rebecca made a suggestion, "Let's see if we can cross the river today and check out the bridge from the other side."

I agreed and we chose a winding, downhill route that opened out over the glittering water.

At the base of the palace, I briefly occupied myself with a woman who was sketching streetside and then later, with shops selling soaps typically scented with lavender and olives where I discovered that the symbol of Provence is the cicada ("Une cigale!" the proprietor proclaimed) and, accordingly, bought three hanging clay cicadas for my mother.

When we'd dragged ourselves away from the souvenirs, we realised we'd come to a break in the road that was different from the crossing we'd found the day before, but decided to chance it anyway.  As we ran across three lanes of traffic and dived into a large, green island in the middle of the thoroughfare, we looked down to find ourselves hip deep in some bushes and realised...

"LAVANDE!"  Bear and I grabbed each other at the same time, laughing in gleeful surprise.  Mound after mound of delicate purple stalks shimmered against the heat-chill of the afternoon wind and we immediately doffed our bags, grabbed our cameras and dropped to our knees.

"See, Shus?  The Universe heard you!"  Bear called to me over the rustling flowers.

The Universe had listened indeed.  I couldn't stop chuckling to myself at my good luck and we spent a very fulfilling sunset hour cloaked in the mouthwatering violet scent, watching fatly furred bees amble about their business.

With the help of my brother's macro extension, I grew deeply absorbed in the miniature cosmos unfolding before me.  (I've realised now that the macro-extension-zoom-lens combination works best for such scenes, providing speed, stability and astounding clarity near the long end of the range.  At any rate, I'm delighted with the pictures!)

Before the sun set, I also acted as a portrait model for Bear and managed to convince her to model for me in return.

(The thing about travelling with only one other person is that they end up becoming your most malleable, amenable portrait subject whether they like it or not.  Thankfully, this time, Rebecca let me practise with various angles and sunrays.)

Despite all the posing, one of my favourite pictures is this odd, dreamy one, shot through a filter, of her more natural behaviour.

We capped the evening by finally getting acquainted with Antoine at the tartine place where he worked.  And thank goodness too because Bear had a delicious salmon tartine and mine, a traditional mix of goat cheese and honey, was an exact replica of my favourite meal in Cannes.  We had wine and salad and for a digestif, Antoine recommended an excellent, sweetly boozy cognac aux amandes  that warmed me for the long walk home.

We traipsed back cheerfully in the darkness, fortified by the hand we had been dealt that day.

Today, thinking about Avignon's last surprise warms me for I know the Universe is listening still.