Getaway (from some stuff) Day — to the Riviera!

 Today’s blog begins, Gentle REader, with praise for Air France.  

after the rugged experience on French Bee flying over, Air France treated its customers well.  First, free checked bags! Hooray! Bigger seats! Hooray! Free snacks and drinks (on a 90 minute flight!!!) Hooray!  Win,  win, win, win. 

But to go back to the start of the day: it started with a series of jolting episodes that reminded us we weren’t back on the farm anymore.  Yes, better than the woman in the men’s room yesterday. 

First among these was KG and EH witnessing a woman dropping trow on the street corner and taking a pee into the wastebasket there.  It was a crowded street.  By the time K and. I got there there was only the runoff…and two eyerolling kids. 

Next was a guy begging on the Metro.  Maybe he was legit, but even K, the least skeptical of us all, said he was overplaying it.  KG said “well, he was misssing toes on his right foot…I could seem them bc they weren’t well bandaged.”  He wasn’t pulling in much coin, despite his best efforts. 

Then there was just the plain old “please, please monsieur” pan-handler.  

You just don’t get much of that back home in Bloomsburg.  

Breakfast was good (picture of EH’s salmon toast later) and, after a quick episode of “the olds can’t remember”, we pushed off to the Arc d’ Triumphe.  We even went up top, where we got these pictures.

Starting with the Tomb of the Unknown soldier in the Arc.  You can see that the flowers from 11-11 are still there. 

(you know what this is…)

EH’s salmon toast and Swiss latte from breakfast, the most porny of our choices. 

Down the Champs d’Elysee toward the Louvre (which you can see way down theere)

This is the “Notre Dame shot” as you can see it in the distance just under the crane’s basket and above the red and white railing. 

We “strolled” down the Champs d’Elysee (notice the “down” as it was an important part of the logistics, as you can see the slope in the pictures from the Arc) and there was an exchange about what “stroll” was meant to mean. :) 

We ended up in the Place de la Concord, with its famous obelisk (pictured) and then to the end of the Christmas market we hadn’t gotten to Saturday night.  

Drinks (“boissons”) and macarons (“Macarons”) were purchased and we headed to the luggage storage place and to Uber.  [note: there was a brief exchange with the storage guy about the Blackberry, but my low-ball offer was met with a sad tale of having to make money and no counter, so there was no deal.  I can get one on Ebay cheaper :))

The Uber ride, in their XL model so we had plenty of room, not the complained-about taxi we were sardine-canned into on Saturday, though without real choice, but it took about ten extra minutes, too. 

Then into the hospitable arms of Air France.  Voila.  

We are all still malade — it’s a walking cacophony of hacks and snorts, with drugs being handed out every 4 hours like clockwork in multiples of 4, but not sure they really work.  Hack, cough, snort, hack, cough. It was not a pretty thing in the environs of the airplane. ):

Got into Nice Airport, our check bags were out before we could finish bathroom runs, and then a long, windy walk to Enterprise, but no one in line and two helpful people put us quickly into a Lexus SUV. It’s bigger than our car back home and the roads to the resort are smaller.  And windier.  And the parking spaces made for a mini. ):

For this portion of the trip we went to two apartments, one with one bedroom, and KG took that — in recompense for having to sleep on the sofa bed last year.  He’s lucky: there’s so much noise with others (if not yourself), it’s not terribly peaceful.  The place looks good — not overly fancy, but spacious and accommodating, and the little town of Mougins (where we are, literally) is cute.  Antibes is down the hill on the Meditteranean below.

The current plan for tomorrow is a late-ish breakfast (we were told “ten is too late to get the day started” — an annual convo 😂) and then to Monaco and maybe some places near there, about an hour aware.  Further plans will be revealed.  

Oh, dinner tonight was to the nearest restaurant — here’s unlabeled food porn (Nic)

But now we’re in Nice, and, though tonight we didn’t really see it (it’s December, it’s after dark when we arrived), we hope it lives up to its name.  So nice they named it once. :). I might sell that slogan to them. :)

Au revoir.