An American in Provence

I guess it is time to come out of my hot-summer-days induced blogging daze and start posting again.

Alain and I went to San Remo, Italy for a long weekend early July. We left on Friday night (I had the day off from work and spent it doing laundry, preparing our stuff to take, and running errands). When Alain got home from work, we threw everything in the car and took off around 7 pm. I was worried that there would be a lot of traffic, but it wasn't too bad. Stopped for a sandwich before Nice, then got to San Remo around 10 pm. Hauled everything in, made up the bed, and fell asleep.

Boy was it hot! Alain always complains about the beds in their pied-à-terre, but I have found that I can sleep on pretty much anything. Must be the military school training. Seriously. I used to sleep curled up on the floor underneath my desk, just so the upperclassmen wouldn't look in my room and see me napping (not allowed).

We woke up the next morning, wandered over to the Saturday morning market (fake Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Dior bags galore) bought some food, some shorts for him, a dress, shoes, and purse for me (why do you need more shoes and purses!?) . Then we headed back to the house. That was quite a bit of effort, and it was hot, so we took a nap. Then we went down to the beach, swam a little bit, then back to the house.

Had a very Italian meal of pasta, proscuitto, wine and tomatos.

After that long hard day, we went to sleep about 10 pm. Boy, vacations are hard!

Sunday was a bit rainy, yet still hot, and Alain decided he couldn't take it anymore. We had to buy a fan. We finally found one at a nearby store called Conad (I hate that name. It sounds like a mix between Con (french for idiot) and Gonad).

Took another nap Sunday afternoon, then went to the beach. It smelled funny (funny like sewage) and nobody was swimming. Hmm, I guess that is a sign.

On Monday, we went on our annual trip up into the mountains. We went to our favorite town, Triora, and had lunch at L'Erba Gatta, like every year. Walked around the town a bit, and went up to the cemetary.

When we got back to San Remo, Alain wasn't feeling well. He rested for awhile, and I walked around downtown. Bought a carton of icecream (his favorite thing in the whole wide world. well, maybe tied with spaghetti) and tried to cheer him up.

On Tuesday, he still wasn't feeling too well. We walked around a bit downtown by the Old Harbor. We were planning on leaving on Wednesday, but he was sick and tired and hot and I was just hot, so we decided to head back to Marseille. We went back to the house, packed and cleaned, and got on the road about 5 pm. Made it back to Marseille without a problem, unloaded, unpacked, and were happy to be home.

Some years when we go to San Remo we want to stay a few days more, and some years we leave sooner than expected. This was rather an off year. We didn't go roller blading, didn't go out for dinner, didn't spend much time at the beach.

I think we were both exhausted from the long year- me with my studies and he with his work.