The American way of getting things done has no place in the Côte d’Azur, the French Riviera, or frankly, anywhere in France. But you will feel it being rejected most acutely here along the blue sea. Nobody cares that you want your bill. Nor is anybody terribly worried about when your delivery will come. That they close everything down daily between noon and 2:00pm is your problem if you need something. Restaurants might be closed on Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesdays, you know, whenever they feel like it. If you were required to send some documents to the government—God forbid they were the originals—you will most likely forget about whatever it was you wanted or needed when you sent them before being surprised when you hear back. The great blue rooster laughs at your agenda, your efficiency, your pride in getting things done. And his sidekick, Monsieur Soleil, will be sure to sap you of your naïveté, just in case you thought you could just push on through in that way that Americans do when they are confronted with obstacles. Great swaths of azure, blue skies devoid of any cloud cover, offer no protection against his powers, especially at his peak from noon to 3:00pm. You might see a construction worker or two sitting under a shady tree eating a jambon sandwich, or even taking a nap on the sidewalk, and it will all seem fine. Perfectly fine.

It takes a while to rid yourself of the feeling that you need to do things. But once you realize you can’t defeat a culture with your “positive attitude,” and you finally just let go, you can almost hear the time slow down. And let me tell you, it’s wonderful.

We’ve had a couple of American visitors the past couple of weeks. One, was our neighbor from back in Seattle, and she stayed with us for a week after traveling through eastern Europe on a Rick Steves tour. The other was a young colleague of mine from the company I retired from last year. She was here for a creative conference in Cannes that the company graciously sent her to and she decided to stay for a few extra days here in Nice. Both showed up exhausted. Our neighbor run ragged by the unforgiving pace of a two-week long Rick Steves tour and my colleague because they sent her to Cannes but then locked her in a conference room every day for nine hours to listen to speakers and “do” break-out sessions. I think both were extremely happy with their tour and conference, they got a lot out of them, and they got a lot done. But now they needed a vacation from their vacations. Sounds very American, no? Or at least definitely not very Niçoise.

Knowing they were coming for quite some time, we felt obligated to prepare an agenda and to be sure that they were entertained. But then the most wonderful thing happened. Since they were already spent once they arrived here, they were more open to the Riviera time sludge slowing them in their tracks. The first day our neighbor was here we took her to the old city and wandered through the narrow ochre alleyways. We saw the open market and some shops. We swam upstream with the tourists and then back against them. We ate ice cream under the intense heat and later we had the best lasagne in the city. Then we walked along the Promenade in the early evening back towards our apartment. The ever-changing watery blues dazzling against the brown skin of the sun-worshippers on the pebble beach. By the time we got back, she was distorted. We didn’t leave the apartment again for two days. Didn’t she feel bad that she was just sitting inside our air conditioned apartment and talking, reading, and eating fresh fruit instead of seeing the Port, Èze, or Villefranche-sur-Mer? She thanked us for not making her do anything. She needed a nap. I knew the feeling because I take a nap nearly every day now.

ZOU! The regional train system takes us all over the French Riviera quickly and cheaply

After a couple more days we took the train to Ventimiglia, Italy, which is a 45-minute train ride from the Nice Ville train station, that being only a 10-minute walk from our apartment. Ventimiglia has a huge street market on Fridays which I am told is the largest in all of Italy. Once you exit the train and walk the few short blocks to the market, it then goes for a mile in either direction along the seafront, plus several blocks back into the town. They sell everything from clothing, to jewelry, leather goods, luggage, and all types of food. And the best part, aside from the great prices, is that everything is high quality. People specifically come to buy cashmere year-round. But the day we were there linen clothing was far more popular given the recent temps. Chien-hui, who never buys clothes it seems, left with linen pants, a linen skirt, and a beautiful flower-patterned linen top. I asked about a linen shirt for myself, and after being summed up by the man who was running the booth, I was met with a sharp, “No.” Wah-wah. So, I came back instead with Ligurian lemons, still on their branch, sun-dried tomatoes, truffled pecorino cheese, a motherload-sized chunk of Parmigiano, and a couple of extremely well priced bottles of Italian wine, something I have trouble finding in Nice, surprisingly. My neighbor also bought two bottles, one Barolo and one Brunello di Montalcino, for her daughter as a gift. Lucky girl.

A very nice bottle from the Ravera vineyard in the Novello region of Barolo

While we were there we ate lunch along the Mediterranean and had a pizza and pesto linguini with a split of chilled Soave to wash it down. Our waiter was gregarious and kept us laughing whenever he visited the table. Otherwise, we lazily watched the sea, and I wondered out loud if we’d all rather be “doing” something else, or if we should be. That was met with laughter, as well, because by this point our American guilt had long ago succumbed to the time warp that is the Riviera. Watching the sea is doing something.

On the beach, African men, their arms so fully loaded it seemed as if they were two-legged mobile display windows, walked up to every person they could trying to sell them very convincing-looking luxury bags. One of them saw me looking at him and we made eye contact. Damn. He approached our table from the beachside and showed me several of what I call “Faux-lex” watches. Tempting. They were indistinguishable from the authentic watches I’d just seen in high-end mall windows in Taipei. But then I just kept imagining having to explain to everyone that I hadn’t really spent $8,000 on a watch, or worse, that I was the kind of person who unabashedly wore fake luxury products.

However, the ladies at the table next to us didn’t share my hesitation at all as I saw them at first ignore the man holding up his wares above of the railing separating their table from the sand. Not only did he get their attention quickly, they ended up buying not one, not two, but three handbags with ginormous logos on them. No compunction. If people mistakenly assumed they were real luxury items, all the better.

On our way out back to the train, we still had some euro coins burning holes in our pockets, which we converted into kilos of strawberries and nectarines. Now we had to get all of this stuff back to Nice. That night we sat on our porch and ate fruit and cheese while sipping wine in the fading light and diminishing heat and humidity.

The next day, our neighbor slept until 10:00am. I laughed to myself. I understand how being out there can take it out of you. That’s right. You sleep, girl. Nobody here cares.

We put her back on the plane home, she was sad to go, and we were sad to see her go. But she had an entirely new suitcase full of wine, cheese, clothes, and other mementos of her time in Nice.

A few days later, the work colleague I mentioned, Jaime, sent me a very robust travel itinerary prior to her arrival. All the minutes were spoken for in that way they often are for somebody in their twenties who inherently thinks they may never get here again. I wished her luck and told her I’d be available for dinners. Then yesterday I heard from her, and we exchanged a couple of text messages. Her agenda? Out the window. She had thus far only managed to go on a boat ride that stopped and allowed her to jump into the sea. Yesterday morning she had taken the train to Antibes, the next town over, for a couple hours to wander around, but otherwise had spent her time in Nice so far, “…people watching and drinking wine.”

Drinking wine? Well, why didn’t you say so?

So, she came over last night, radiant, glowing, in a summer dress, brown shoulders showing the faintest of tan lines. It was clear to me that not only had the time warp of Nice hit her, too, but that she had immersed herself into it and had dunked her head under the waterline. She was clearly getting it. As we popped a bottle of Prosecco to start we heard all about her time in Cannes and Jaime caught me up on the doings at work. My heart raced a little like it used to when I was working. I instinctively started problem-solving in my head. I remembered it all. Nine months ago, it seems like a lifetime ago now.

I panfried a couple of pork chops and roasted a few apples, then whipped up a saffron mustard sauce with olive oil and a splash of Pinot Grigio. I had some pasta with artichoke hearts, fresh basil, and those sun-dried tomatoes that I’d made the day before still in the fridge, so I reheated that and added it to the plates. A bottle of Burgundy to pair it with as we sat at the big round table on our porch surrounded by 200-year-old stone buildings, trees, and the darting swallowtails feeding on mosquitos, and we ate, and we laughed. Suddenly, a summer rain was unleashed as ice-cold drops fell from the sky. My god, it felt so good to get some relief from the humidity. This wonderful little interlude was brief but it kept the temperatures cool enough after that we stayed outside for most of the night, first eating some delicious pastries that she generously brought with her, but we were also able to finish a bottle of truly excellent Hermitage I had brought out earlier. That bottle kept distracting me from our conversation because I couldn’t stop interrupting to discuss all of the good things that were happening in our glasses.

Jaime plotted how she might stay here for good and continue working, two diametrically opposed concepts, but we’re having dinner a couple more nights this week at good restaurants, so we’ll have a chance to work out that plan.

I liked that both our visitors adjusted so quickly to the pace of life here and seemed to embrace it. In the time warp of the French Riviera, if you accomplish one or two things a day, then you’re doing well. Those things can be anything. Or nothing. Nothing is good, too. This morning, I was up early to meet an IKEA truck driver who was delivering us a simple wood-topped desk for Chien-hui to use for her French studies. She diligently practices for hours every day. After we attached the black metal legs using a screwdriver, we set it up in our bedroom where it sort of just disappeared into the corner not taking up much precious room at all.

Then we walked a few blocks to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, that itself took a few days to come in, and also some mosquito spray. I guess in our time on the porch last night, the swallowtails didn’t eat them all and Chien-hui was serving up blood gelato to those silent little flying demons.

From the pharmacy it was a couple of blocks to our favorite place for a quick French breakfast of coffee and pastry and to buy some bread.

From there we went a block to the beach and sat in the shade of one of the huge white public pergolas, and we watched the young, tattooed, and agenda’d humans who run and sweat their way to feelings of euphoria pass us by. So many of them. Just off shore we saw a phalanx of jet skiers racing along the horizon line. Others dangled from parachutes as they were pulled by speedboats, and still others learning to paddle board, but mostly falling into the Mediterranean over and over. I bet all of them were American, but at least they were doing something.

Once we tired of watching it all (not really possible), we began our 15-minute walk home. Along the way, we stopped into the nearby flower shop and allowed ourselves the luxury of getting blasted by their ice-cold air conditioning. Oh my, it must be something to be a cut flower, I guess. Your life is short, but it is sweet and tres cool. I spotted two houseplants while in there and took them with me. Now my apartment has living things in it besides we humans and bottles of wine.

Let’s see. IKEA, building a table, walking to the pharmacy, coffee, bread, the beach, the flower shop, and back home. That’s seven things. That’s a week’s worth of tasks. No wonder I’m exhausted, and I still have dinner tonight.

I think I’ll take a nap.

The Distortion of Time in the South of France

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The Distortion of Time in the South of France

Adjusting to Life in Nice

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