It's Nice to be in Nice (and Marseilles, too)

Our last couple of months have been busy with ongoing Italian language school, some additional French travels during the school holiday break, further adventures in Italian bureaucracy, and partaking in local artisanal passions. Unfortunately all of this busyness has been bookended with illness. Sam got COVID in mid-November and now we're both achy, fevered, and exhausted from the flu despite getting our flu shots over a month ago. So far the flu easily wins for being more unpleasant than COVID (in case you get to choose your ailment). While we rest and recover, we finally have time to recount recent activities.

The Nicest Place

Our language classes took a two-week break for the holidays and we decided to use the hiatus to explore. We opted to travel like we used to, so we made a reservation for a few nights and then ad-libbed our trip from there. We've been curious about the French coast and Nice in particular so we used it as our starting point. Nice is famed for having a mild winter climate and lots of sunshine. The sunshine alone is a selling point for us because of how gray and rainy Lucca is in the winter. We enjoyed our leisurely train journey to Nice and were soon enchanted by this mellow, stylish city. It's filled with gorgeous art deco buildings, is surprisingly easygoing for being so big, is a delight to walk in, and has an incredible city beach.

Sam has been intrigued by cold water swimming for ages and Nice presented a perfect opportunity to take a first dip into this world. She's now hooked. She enjoyed a couple swims in the clear blue Nice water (water temperature around upper 50s). She wasn't the only swimmer either. Each day there were a handful of hardy people taking to the water. More people did what I did--enjoyed basking in sunshine on the pebble beach while wearing a coat. A flirty older French swimmer, while in the water with Sam, told her that he swims every day year-round when the weather is calm. We easily could envision living somewhere like this. And maybe we need to invert our swimming calendar. Might it be better for Sam to swim in the winter when beaches are empty? It's certainly easier to find a place to stay and less crowded at the beach. And the cold water is a thrill, too.

Marseilles is Surrounded by... Greek Landscapes

As we left Nice by train for Marseilles, we struck up a conversation with a Frenchwoman on the train platform. She was heading back to Paris after Christmas with family in Nice. She told us that every time she leaves Nice to go back to Paris she cries. She loves Nice and hates the grey Parisian winter weather. We only spent 4 nights there but we get it. On the train ride an older Italian couple sat across from us and complained (in Italian) about French train service their whole journey.

Gritty Marseilles is a great counterpoint to the art deco movie set of Nice. They're both pleasant cities but in different ways. The area around Marseilles is also especially attractive. We spent a day in Cassis and felt like we had been transported back to Greece. The coast around Cassis looks very much like places in Greece, with dramatic cliffs dropping into the deep blue sea. It's a bit like the Pelion peninsula but with French food.

We spent New Years in Aix-en-Provence which felt too much like Lucca for us to want to go back. That's really not its fault, though! Among other things it's known as the birthplace of Paul Cezanne. After having spent time in southern France, we can definitely see how the environment, and especially the light, basically engendered post-Impressionist art. The quality of the sunlight really is amazing there. We stayed in a teensy top floor apartment with a Cezanne painting view.

France and Italy--Compare and Contrast

We've spent about 3 weeks in France over the past few months and certain themes emerged in comparing it to Italy:

In general, the French seem to speak more English than Italians, and they also seem to enjoy speaking it whereas Italians have a disdain for English;
The French population seems younger;
The French seem much more open to multiculturalism;
Around 20 percent of the French population seems to be carrying a baguette at any point in time;
The French don't immediately insist that they do everything better than the rest of the world; and
Perhaps the French are a smidge more friendly than Italians?

The grumpiest person we encountered during our French trip? An Italian running a restaurant in Cassis! But maybe with more time anywhere you see the less attractive traits of a place. Greeks like to say that it would be a great country if it weren't for the Greeks. We know Belgians who complain about their compatriots. We recently heard from an American who lived in the Netherlands for 15 years that the Dutch are passive aggressive and all about money. And a Canadian who lived for a long time in Ireland told us the Irish are mean people. In what country or region do people boast about the wholesome, nurturing, and generous qualities of their neighbors?

Liguria Loveliness

In the spirit of comparing and contrasting, we decided it would be good to spend some time in the Ligurian coast to see if Italy has the same things we now liked about the French Coast. We spent a few days in Sanremo and one night in Santa Margherita Ligure. Both are much smaller than Nice and Marseilles but maybe the same grittiness-versus-glamour comparison applies. Santa Margherita is all glam and Sanremo has a faded glitz to it. We'd hoped to get Sam a swim in Sanremo but the weather had turned and the waves were big. We did get to take an enjoyable bike ride along the coast and through a mile-long bike tunnel in Sanremo. I'd return to Santa Margherita sooner, but it suffers from the weight of tourist season like much of Southern Europe, so that next visit would need to be in the off season. After a last night in Santa Margherita we took a rainy day train ride back to wet Lucca.

Chestnut flour, Sourdough Mothers, and Bureaucracy

In the early part of December, there is a food festival here in Lucca. Artisans from the surrounding area bring their wares to sell. Lots of little stands offer samples of their products. The amount of delicious things is astounding--chestnut liqueur which tastes like a sweet and smoky whiskey, rare types of honey (note: I need to write something about Italian honey which is even better than the great Greek honey), artisan beans (yes, beans!), pesto, panettone, wine, beer, and many more things. They also convene lectures about a variety of food topics. We attended two talks--a lecture on chestnut flour and one about sourdough starter. I'm sure you're wondering who would attend a lecture on chestnut flour. Not just us! The room was full of other chestnut nerds. Chestnut flour might be my favorite of the diverse products derived from the chestnut. It's almost like the best, natural instant pancake mix ever. It's smoky, sweet, and nutty and you can make necci, chestnut crepes, with just this flour and some water. At the lecture, they even made necci for the entire audience to sample, along with a special chestnut cake, called castagnaccio. The next day we went to a lecture on sourdough. At the end of the talk, the lecturing baker--who also grows and stone mills the wheat--gave every audience member a (recycled glass) jar of his sourdough starter. And perhaps this is the duality of the Italian thing--they can be a bit annoying in telling you how to do things the right way, but: 1) they've been perfecting many things for centuries, 2) they take great pride in doing things by hand; 3) they are often correct about how to do things, and 4) they want you to do it right and they will generously spend their free time to teach you, too.

Amidst flour lectures and learning the language, we also have undertaken a bunch of necessary steps for life in Italy. We have another type of European identity card (good for 10 years although I'm not sure what this accomplishes!) and we also submitted our yearly residence permit renewal. We've also just gotten access to the national healthcare system after 5 or 6 trips to various offices to get forms, get more forms, and make a payment. The predominant theme when you talk with locals (and foreigners) about Italian healthcare is that they feel like they have really good healthcare service here. How often do you hear Americans say that about the overall healthcare delivery service (rather than a specific doctor)? But hopefully we can recover at home from this bout of flu without it necessitating our first lesson in nationalized healthcare.