Happy France Day!

I'm dusting off this old blog in order to record some thoughts about our trip to France in 2023. Feel free to read along. Some of the entries will be quite long, like this one, and others will be shorter. I'll try to include photos as well. Apologies for any typos and spelling mistakes; turns out French keyboards are arranged differently. Thanks for reading!

Back in 2019, Rebecca and I started discussing/planning for our upcoming tenth wedding anniversary in 2020. After some ideas were bandied about, we landed on a trip to France. We had developed a pattern in our travels of going to various cities and trying to find the art and the nature in those cities, (sometimes just the art; sorry Buffalo), so France struck as an opportunity to turn that up to eleven, so we started planning. We mapped out a two week itinerary that would take us around the country that would let us explore and celebrate. In early 2020 there was a record scratch heard round the world that, let's say, interrupted those plans.

Here we are in 2023, and, instead of traveling to France to celebrate ten years of marriage, we're here (holy eff! We're actually here!) to celebrate our thirteenth anniversary with a thirteen day tour. I'm going to attempt to ramble here about it as we make our way around; feel free to read along, if you're interested.

Day One: The Longest Day

Nice beach

I woke up bright and early on September twenty-seventh and set about getting ready for our trip. Make no mistake, our flight (ugh, more about that to come) wasn't scheduled to depart until 4:50pm, but my internal clock (not to mention the two furry alarm clocks that like to be fed at 7:00am) won't let me sleep in anyway.

The trip to the airport was uneventful, as was the time in the airport, so let's get to the airplane. I don't want to single out any particular airlines here so I'll use a clever alias that some of you might be able to decipher if you follow the clues. Our flight was with Air C; no, that's too obvious, let's go with Heir Kanata. Good luck, sleuths!

After the usual airport shenanigans of people crowding the gate as soon as priority boarding starts ("You never know; zone five could be next! There's no way to know what order they'll go in this time!") and people completely bungling boarding the plane, (I have thoughts about overhead luggage storage that I'll spare you from here), we were all in our seats and ready to fly for seven and a half hours to Frankfurt, where we, specifically, had a one and a half hour layover before moving on to Nice. (Obvious foreshadowing.) It seemed like a short layover window but I had booked many flights with windows that short before and had not had any issues, besides why would the airline let us book such a short window if there could be an issue? 

I only noticed two of the three babies when we were boarding but the concert they put on together was one for the ages. Initially, I think most of us felt bad for the new moms that were wrangling these newborns until... "Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologise for the warm temperatures but we cannot turn on the air conditioning system until we pull back from the gate. We had a couple passengers not show up at the gate, so our team is now pulling out all the luggage to locate their bags and remove them from the plane. We will be pushing back and departing as soon as they are finished. Thank you for your patience...Madams et Monsieurs nous voulons..." After the fifty minute delay, we finally took to the skies, which is when the concert really hit its stride, of course.

Day Two: Day One Continues

The calendar flipped over to the twenty-eighth but, for us, who only managed little pockets of sleep on the flight, it still felt like the same day. The flight itself was largely uneventful, concert and some minor turbulence aside, and we finally landed in Frankfurt with thirty-five minutes to sprint to out next gate. The cabin crew asked that anyone staying in Frankfurt stay in their seats so that those connecting could get through and catch their connecting flights. Everyone, of course, stood up and started gathering their things. Frankfurt is a hub in Europe and is largely used to connect to other flights, a fact confirmed by the flight attendant we were chatting with who told us that "ninety percent" of the passengers were moving on to other destinations and that "nobody stays in Frankfurt; is it weird to feel bad for a city? Undeterred, we grabbed our things and exited the plane.

Upon exiting, we noticed we had arrived at gate B78 and I said "that's good; we're at gate B10, so it can't be that far" like an idiot because no. After walking halfway back to Toronto and passing through EU customs, we arrived at security with fifteen minutes to takeoff; not great. We went through security and were then each pulled aside for different reasons. Rebecca had a "knife" in her bag that had to be removed (Rebecca told them it was likely her nail file and she was told it was "definitely" a knife and the nice agent then pulled EVERYTHING out of her carry on, revealing the aforementioned nail file to which the agent said "oh, well, that's ok"). I had a refillable water bottle full of water, that I had filled after passing through security in Toronto. I was told that I had to take my bottle, my passport, and my boarding pass outside of security, empty the bottle and come back through. Ten minutes to take off.

I went outside of security, drained the entire bottle in one shot like I was on spring break, and went back through security where I was randomly pulled to get a pat down (the agent that patted me down was very thorough, leaving me feeling like maybe he thought that he and I were on a romantic trip together rather than my wife and I).

We arrived at our gate, strolling along, planning to speak with the gate agent about our missed flight and where we needed to go next. We rounded the corner to find they were about half way through boarding, despite the fact that we were there five minutes after "takeoff". We couldn't believe our luck!

A short, cramped, flight later and were flying in over the water to land in Nice (around 9:30am local time). The view was incredible from the plane. Looking out the window as we approached, Rebecca spotted a pod of whales swimming. All our issues were behind us and we were on our way.

When our bag wasn't on the luggage carousel, the feeling was more of exhaustion than anything else. Luckily we packed some emergency things in our carryon (hopefully the bag gets here today; Spoilers: it did!). We picked up rental car and headed for our hotel.

Our hotel is outside of Nice so we got to drive along the gorgeous coast as we made our way there. When people tell you that you will need to navigate and get comfortable with roundabouts in France, they are underselling it. So. Many. Roundabouts. (Note: I counted after we returned to the hotel from Nice later on; there are nine between the highway and our hotel. I think that's three more than there are in all of Canada.) The hotel is great. It’s a “young, hip” hotel chain, owned by Marriott, called Moxy, so we fit right in. One of the ways they appeal to the youngins, is that you check in at the bar, where you are given poker chips to cash in for free drinks later. The staff are lovely and it’s great here, even for us more seasoned folk who don't drink (the non-alcoholic cocktail I had was very nice).

Check-in bar

Hotel perks

After a quick power nap, we were ready to explore. We had a walking tour booked to take us through Old Nice so we headed down but needed to get there quickly if we were going to make it on time. We didn’t. Luckily, the tour folks let us reschedule to Saturday, so we set out to explore Nice on our own. The views are incredible and the temperature was in the high twenties (eighties for my American friends). We walked through the alleys and roads, stopped in shops, and marveled at the architecture. Worried about our luggage situation, we popped into a few different shops and Rebecca bought herself a new dress. While she was trying them on, I got the chance to practice my moderate French with the clerk; I held my own, for the most part, and we went on our way.

Food is always a little tricky when traveling when you eat a plant based diet. There’s a great app called Happy Cow that lists vegetarian and vegan restaurants so I consulted it and found that we were just steps away from the highest rated vegan restaurant in Nice so we started in that direction. At this point, I had only had the in-flight meal many hours before (a decent veg biryani) so I was excited to see what this little shop had to offer.

It’s a modest shop called Caju and they specialize in burgers and smoothies. Rebecca ordered a black bean burger with a strawberry lemonade while I opted for the beetroot burger with water. Both burgers were amazing, especially the beetroot. The desert we ordered, a carrot cake, was incredible as well. We ended up chatting with the two folks working there for awhile, (they were absolutely lovely), and then left to wander through the city as the sun set.

We drove along the coast, toward the sunset, back to our hotel where the party at the bar/check-in counter was already started. We went up to our room and went to bed, ending a very long "day" both exhausted and exhilarated.