Friday, 23 June 2017 to Thursday, 29 June 2017
After missing a few items during our first round of grocery shopping at Carrefour I was sent to collect the rest from our Casino Supermarket located directly below us… very convenient. Without Adri breathing down my neck and back to hurry up at the liquor location I had time to marvel, imagine and fantasize.

And so I remembered that Adri asked whether I missed a brandy and Coke, strange, but she did. Truth be told, I have not thought of that combination in months and the mere thought of it made me drool all over the place, I got into trouble for that. And just then I spotted one, hiding in single file between a whiskey and another whiskey, a French Napoleon Brandy. I lovingly cradled Napoleon in my arms, nearly forgetting the other stuff that I really came for.

Today I spent 40 minutes on the phone with Stanlib to try and get them to pay out a few bucks that belongs to me. I have been trying to get this done for two months now, each time my payout instruction is rejected with a brand new nonsensical reason, one baby step at a time. Frustrating… Argh!!

We went to the local Society Sociale l’Assurance Maladie, about 2km from us. After having all the necessary documents copied at the copy shop next door we entered, stood in line and five minutes later we were at the information counter. After spinning my “Sorry, no French…” rhyme the lady looked at me smilingly, made two big zeros with the thumb and index fingers of both her hands, signalling a really big “No English spoken by her” and asked that we wait while she gets English assistance, for us, not her.

While waiting we watched people come and go, in quick succession, the customer service in this place was really great. After about 10 minutes we were ushered into a cubicle and a young girl by the name of Virginie assisted us. Her English was great and she assisted us in more ways she cannot imagine.

We found out that, for one, we brought far too much documentation with us. But, we needed to have the invoice for the place we’re currently renting, the invoice of the place we rented in Sète, we had to have our birth certificates translated to French, and we must have a French bank account. For the latter, her suggestion was to go to La Poste, the local post office, where it should be easiest to open an account. And, the fact that we’re travelling around the country does not preclude us from having a Carte Vitale, it would be quite fine. As I said, she helped us in more ways she cannot imagine.

It was late afternoon and my hand was shaking when I started to prepare my brandy and Coke, maybe it was the after-effect of shaking out those ice cubes from their habitat, maybe not, there was no point or time in contemplating this. Before too long I had an ice-cold brannas and Coke out on the patio… sublime, pure magic.

Something was missing though… With all the wifi worries over the last week, which we have now learnt to deal or live with adequately, I had totally forgotten to hook up our music, and that was what was missing. After connecting the portable disk to the TV it started blaring out Yazoo’s Upstairs at Eric’s. When Bad Connection came on it brought back the frustrations of our bad wifi connection, and that’s when I poured my second brannas and I settled back into my sublime, pure magic mood.

Wet Wet Wet with their album High On The Happy Side was up next and listening to the tracks as they rolled on by I realized I had forgotten what a great album it was. There are some magic songs on there like Goodnight Girl, Make It Tonight, Put the Light On and that beautiful More Than Love.

Supper was a store bought pizza from Carrefour with a starter of a green salad with anchovies and black olives. On the side, on the other side that is, there was also a very fresh baguette with Camembert and fig jam at the ready, as and when required. Man, this was a feast!

And talking about pizza, La Romana Pizza is situation right across the road from us. This place opens daily only between 18:30 and 22:00, quite weird hours, huh? Be as it may, the couple that runs the place sometimes bring their toddler along to the store. This kid, I’m afraid to say, was un-blessed with a very high-pitched screeching voice which it excises at various pitches and decibels far too frequently for our liking. And of course, neither the parents nor the grandfather, interferes with these rehearsals, probably thinks it’s cute. Parents if you’re reading this and your kid falls into this category, it’s not cute, it’s not cool… capeesh?

My Saturday was started off by watching the New Zealand/British Lions rugby match, and what a game it was! The All Blacks won 30/15 but the game was much tougher than that… much.

I went into town to get a bank account, came away with none. The bank I went to had no English although it does have English connections, the reason I went there in the first friggin’ place!

I then went to La Poste, as was suggested by the lady from Maladie, but they were closed. I went to another branch where a most friendly fellow assisted me. His English was not great but he was eager to assist, a really nice guy. Long story short, he could not assist me, I had to go to my local La Poste where I live, a few blocks up. As I left he insisted on shaking my hand and wished me well in my endeavour… what a great guy!

I walked to the appointed, or anointed one, but it was closed; it was Saturday afternoon after all. It was hot, scorching hot; I was sweating from my toupée to my toenails. It was just yesterday that I told Adri “If this sun catches you alone it will have you for breakfast”, the reason we always move around in a pair. It now caught me alone and it was having a hearty petite déjeuner. I cursed Adri for letting me out on my own.

Getting home I started watching the South Africa/France rugby match and Adri soon enough presented me with, as Mikey would call it, a smorgasbord of delicacies. There were chips and peanuts, and baguette, and Camembert cheese and Compte cheese, and green olive and black olives, and sardines and… and… Of course there was a big ice-cold tin of Hoegaarden with which I have become fast friends since our meeting two days ago in La Ciotat, tin and all.

Halfway through the first half things got a bit patchy, not the game, the internet. John Lennon once sang “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, I really love to watch them roll”. Like John I watched that wheel turn, unlike John, I didn’t particularly care for it. It was frustrating that my teams were doing battle without having me watch over them.

I tried and I tried again and again and finally admitted defeat. It was frustrating and in that frustration I reached for the bottle, yes, the bottle of Napolean brandy, with a dash of Coke. And it was probably that strong brew that jolted my memory and I remembered the TuneIn radio app. I down-scaled my enjoyment to listening to the match on TuneIn with RSG blaring out the action, in Afrikaans nogal, and yes, I still could understand it!

Although SA won handsomely I cannot comment on the game, it was too patchy, not sure whether it was the game or the internet.

Sunday morning I read an article about a double-decker bus that got stuck under a Paris bridge when the driver took a wrong detour.

This reminded me of a similar story of Attie and his rented camper van, or RV, which always brings a chuckle and a wide smile to my face whenever I am reminded of it, like now… but I’ll let Attie tell you the story in his own words…

I lived in Lorient, France for 30 months on a ship building project, played some rugby in France and learned a lot of French by default. Many years later (2001), I was on another (IT) assignment in Frankfurt Germany for 4 years, but this time I played golf.

In 2003 I rented a camper van and took my family, including mother, on a 2 week tour through Germany, Luxemborg, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and back… in the midst of the European summer.

 Just before Nice, I had a quick swim in the sea as it was just too hot in the van, and then continued into Nice, still wet from the swim, wearing, inter alia, a semi-dry t-shirt. Now remember, all over Switzerland, Austria, Italy and to some degree France as well, you find plenty tunnels due to the mountainous terrains in these countries.  Most tunnels show signs at its entrances, depicting the actual length of the relevant tunnel e.g. 10km…

 Well, on Nice’s beach road (their busiest road) I met a split (fork) in the road and chose the one with a tunnel ahead and its length was reported as 2.1 km. To our surprise, and with only some 40 meters away, we realised, that just maybe, the 2.1 number actually indicated the maximum height of vehicles allowed into this tunnel. The result of this revelation was that we got half the camper into the tunnel, after which it stubbornly refused to continue.

 A significant traffic jam ensued with much of the van scattered all around. Stacks of spectators, the Gendarme (police), ambulance and tow truck joined us while we all stared at this mess. Fortunately, no one got injured. It took the tow truck a good 30-45 minutes to get our van out of the tunnel, with only half the roof left. The following morning, at the scrap yard where our van came to rest for the time being, the lady showed me the Nice newspaper where the accident was reported, with me photographed with the somewhat damaged van.

 The rude journalist called me a dumb German based on the large DE (for Deutschland) on the back of the van. I could not respond in any other way, except to chuckle at their assumption of my roots…

And as Renate would have remarked, “Now wasn’t that something!”

We were planning on doing a coastal trip starting on Monday but got to bed far too late last night, so decided to postpone it until tomorrow. Ah, the joys of being on a sabbatical, you can change your mind on a whim!

Now you may remember a few weeks back we were in Spain and we visited Salvador Dali’s house in Port Lligat and saw his museum in Figueres. Now apparently Salvador spykered (fornicated) anything that moved. He would even spyker a chair and if that chair didn’t move he’d kick it until it moved… But yarns aside, he was apparently well known for his debauchery and would spyker man, woman, gay, lesbian and anything in-between, and then some…

So it came as no surprise to me this morning when I read that a court ordered his body to be exhumed in order to prove, or disprove, the claim by one of his maid’s daughters that she was fathered by him. The Salvador Dali Foundation is of course dead against this as it probably suspects that it may bring about a flood of paternity suits, maybe from a few rocking chairs as well.

Last week we did the westernmost part of the Côte d’Azur (French Riviera), i.e. from Cassis towards Toulon. The aim of the next two days’ travel was to see as much as possible of the rest of the famed Côte d’Azur, but also venture inland to a few places of interest we had identified. This is a trip that I have wanted to do all my life, and here it was, staring right at me. Now I realize it is impossible to do justice to this beautiful stretch of Europe in two days, but at least it would give us a good indication of where we would like to spend more time in the future.

We were on the road by 09:00 heading towards Toulon on the A50 making good time. We were just out of Marseille when Adri opened our padkos (food for the road), a heavily laden, or was that heavenly laden, baguette with all sorts of stuff on there. Uhm… yup, heavenly!

At Toulon we parted ways with the A50, drove through the city in order to pick up the coastal road along the French Riviera. I could not help but like Toulon, even though we saw such a small part of it, it seems alive, neat and restrained, seems like an easy city to live in.

From Toulon we hit the coastal toad where possible and drove along and through mostly seaside villages such as Le Lavandou, Le Canadel, Le Rayol, Cavalaire-sur-Mer, most of the time with a beautiful blue ocean to our right and greens of all persuasions and mountains to our left.

Our first stop was St. Tropez and I must admit that I always thought the town was overhyped and too clichéd, but of course we had to see for ourselves. And was I was pleasantly surprised? No cliché can do justice to St. Tropez, it has oodles of charm and then some. Major mega-yachts lie silently side by side in the port, blissfully unaware of the admiration from the passersby. As soon as one enters St. Tropez you get that distinctive smell, the smell of money. Even though there were so many tourists, the town took it in its stride and surprisingly still somehow exuded a relaxed type of feel. Tourists came from all walks of life, many well-heeled, many like us.

We gawked at the yachts, and the little cobblestoned streets, and the old buildings, and the high-end shops, and the restaurants overlooking the port, the setting was picture perfect. We were not particularly hungry but we had to have lunch in St. Tropez, yes? Adri had the remainder of our padkos in her bag, so we sat on the quayside, with our feet dangling down close to the water, stealing some shade from an artists’ umbrella. We were guarded over by a mega yacht to our left and another to our right. A baguette never tasted this good!

From there it was a short drive to Port Grimaud, a place I had visited so many times via pictures on the web. The place is truly photogenic but I’m not sure whether it physically delivers on its promise. We should probably have spent more time here as the place left me wanting for more, but maybe there was no more. Or maybe, after St. Tropez, any place fades into a distant second place, not sure.

We moved on up the coast and made a stop in Sainte-Maxime, then it was on to Fréjus and then to Saint-Raphaël where we took another break. Saint-Raphaël also has a reputation of the glitzy and the glamorous but alas, it is no St. Tropez.

 

 

From Saint-Raphaël, still hugging the coast, we drove through Le Dramont and La Baumette and that’s when we hit a gay, or rather Agay, another lovely place for a beach holiday.

 

 

 

 

From there we motored amongst especially beautiful and dramatic mountain and ocean scenery until we reached Théoule-sur-Mer, just before Cannes. It was around 18:30 when we headed inland from there and up the mountains to where we had booked into an Ibis hotel in Mouans-Sartoux. And what a lovely little place this turned out to be, the town, not the hotel so much.

After we checked in we went for supper in the old town. The tiny old town is lovingly cared for and exudes a class of its own, wonderful to stroll through in the remaining rays of the day. We started our search for a place to eat and came upon a place that was teeming with locals, so that was the place to be. A table opened up just as we approached and our weary bodies were plonked down like several sacks of potatoes.

 

 

 

Now this place had a menu that was quite unique, something I have never come across before. It had a variety of dishes of fish, pasta, all types of meat, vegetarian, anything really, but what made it unique is that all dishes were priced the same, at a very reasonable €9.95. Beer and a carafe of rosè wine were ordered with my steak and Adri’s Farcis, which we were told was the specialty of the region. Farcis is essentially peppers, tomato and zucchini, each stuffed with a savoury mince… rather delectable.

 

 

Wednesday morning we woke up to a lovely continental breakfast of espressos, croissant, cheeses, hams, jams, sweet cakes, cereals, fruits, yogurts and what not, a rather pleasant little gathering.

It was when it came time to pay that all hell broke loose. The hotel’s manager, who was checking us out, in more ways than one, could not locate our booking on her system. Hmm, maybe that might explain the strange woman that walked into our room around midnight last night, just as we were about to doze off. Seriously!

Now I do remember when checking in yesterday evening that there was a scurrying for our booking until I produced my email confirmation, and after that, all was plain sailing. I now presented the manager with the same booking confirmation and the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to come together… we were checked into the wrong ibis hotel! Who would have thought there were two Ibis hotels in such a small village?

After phone calls to the other hotel it was agreed that we would not be charged for a no-show there, but we would have to pay the rate of our “new” hotel. Now although that did not break the bank, I was pissed because it was their mistake. Surely the check-in girls yesterday should have seen from our email confirmation we were not where we were supposed to be?

We headed out to Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, which was only some 7km away. Maybe that explains why there were two Ibis hotels in Mouans-Sartoux. Anyway, Grasse is a lovely town in and amongst the mountains. Adri wanted to see the cathedral and after driving up and down mountain village roads and not finding it, she no longer wanted to see it, you know, we had place to go.

We headed off to St Paul de Vence, a beautiful hilltop village. We struggled to find parking and ended up parking semi-illegally in a parking spot that noted that 20 minutes was the legal limit, but we guessed it was for deliveries only… maybe. And that’s why we spent only 20 minutes in this town. But, it was definitely worth every minute and also enough time to know that we’d like to return sometime. It reminded us of Carcassonne, just on a much smaller scale, with high-end restaurants, clothes, curio and artist’s shops abound.

 

 

Then we lost our way, then found it, then lost it again, and then found Èze, very high up on a hillside with the most incredible view down to the ocean below and the mountains around. Because we did not plan to go here we didn’t stay, maybe next time, but it definitely deserves a second look.

We now had to backtrack all the way down the mountain to our intended destination, Cap-Ferrat, or rather Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This place lies on a piece of land that juts out from the mainland; it almost could have been an island. We drove around this lovely area and could almost taste the Euros in the air; there’s a lot of money here.

 

 

And then we hit our second snag of the day. We followed Google Maps’ directions religiously to Villefranche-sur-Mer. What we did not realize at the time was that it selected the shortest route there, right to the centre of the old town. And that’s where cars don’t go, not normally that is.

And so we followed this little road and at some point things became narrow, my vision became narrow, it was almost too narrow for our narrow panda. And then it became even narrower with the anorexic Panda’s rear-view mirrors on both sides almost touching ancient walls. This was a rather harrowing, or narrowing, experience. And of course, there was no turning back, so we soldiered on.

After two decades we eventually emerged in a little square where we could make a u-turn, just, and that’s when we had to go through the same experience, just in the opposite direction with an opposite experience. Once we were on a normal road I shut that Google bitch up, followed plain common sense and instinct of direction and within two ticks we were in Villefranche’s waterfront.

We walked around the waterfront for a while ogling all the little restaurants on the quayside, I would have loved to have had a beer there, it was another scorcher of a day, but it was still too early. Well, not really too early, it’s just that when we’re doing a road trip like this I become pretty useless after a midday beer; I need a rest after such.

 

 

We subsequently passed through Nice and Antibes (pronounced Antieb, and not like your aunty Bess) after which we stopped in Juan-le-Pins for a pint. It was now or never and we were about to head home, it was mid afternoon and it was hot, very hot. We elected our place of battle and ordered a perfectly iced over bière pression. With that coldness in my hand, blue ocean in-front and blue sky above, what more could I ask for other than another beer?

And of course being in Juan-le-Pins brought to mind that amazing song of the late 60s, Where Do You Go To My Lovely by Peter Sarstedt, in which the town gets a mention, as per lyrics below.

When you go on your summer vacation
You go to Juan-les-Pins
With your carefully designed topless swimsuit
You get an even suntan, on your back and on your legs
And when the snow falls you’re found in St. Moritz
With the others of the jet-set
And you sip your Napoleon Brandy
But you never get your lips wet, no you don’t

Now Adri and I had stayed here one night back in the late 90s on a trip that originated in Italy and covered Monaco, France and Switzerland. We also stayed one night in Switzerland in St. Moritz which is also mentioned in the lyrics above. And by the way, it was at Bucherer in St. Moritz where I bought my Rado watch so many years ago.

And staying on the theme of this song, try as I might, I failed to sip my Napoleon Brandy I bought on Friday without getting my lips wet. Just couldn’t do it.

From here we proceeded on in the sun and reached Cannes where we stopped off for a short while. Cannes is a lovely place and definitely lives up to its hype, surely I could spend a summer holiday here; I just need to grow a Euro tree.

 

 

 

And now it was time to head home, it was almost 18:00. As I said before, when we do a road trip I never have a beer until we complete the days’ itinerary, after a beer all my senses relax a tad too much and my faculties shut down. But, today I could not resist that beer with Peter, it was just so damn hot, it was 37°C.

We had just reached the highway back to Marseille with 150km to go, when I felt an overwhelming desire to close my eyes. I needed an Aire (rest areas on the highways) to rediscover my consciousness. Fifteen kilometres further we found such where I took a 10 minute power nap in the car. And after a subsequent strong espresso at the McDonalds I was so wakker soos ‘n rakker (as awake as a scallywag).

This closing of my eyes reminded me of something that happened many years ago. A colleague and I were driving from Johannesburg to Grahamstown for a course of some sorts. It was a long drive through the night but I was fine, I was so wakker soos ‘n rakker, so my colleague decided to take a nap.

My eyes took strain from the bright oncoming headlights and to regain my sense of vision and focus, I closed my eyes tightly for just one second. It was during this one second closing that my colleague woke up, saw me seemingly fast asleep, let out a barrage of swear words, which I cannot repeat here, in an attempt to “wake me up”. I did not begrudge him his tirade; can you imagine waking up in a car doing 130km/h with the drivers’ eyes firmly closed?

Thursday we read and relaxed all day, trying to catch our collective breaths after the last two day’s worth of whirlwind tour. Such a road trip depletes one of all energy reserves and today we used to replenish such. Admin was high on the priority list; it still amazes me at the amount of admin there is to contend with. I thought I had gotten rid of that when I started my sabbatical!

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