S’il vous plait, ou sont les toilettes? Merci! Au revoir!

These are the only French phrases we know. It would be helpful if we knew a few more. But despite the reputation, the French have been very patient, pleasant and helpful. With the Cannes Film Festival and Grand Prix going on, this may be the one week for which they have braced themselves for tacky foreign visitors… and we’ll take it.

We got a pretty late start (for us) this morning. We were in bed last night by 9 PM and slept until around 9 AM this morning. You could say we were a little tired. Charles foraged breakfast for us to eat in our apartment (croissants) and we headed out around 11 AM. We headed out of Old Town by strolling through the market. Today was antiques day, so the market was filled with booths full of (you guessed it) antiques. Our best find was a French man who was whistling “Aux Champs Elysees” (see below) as he straightened the wares in his booth. I’m not sure if this was a show for the tourists, but I like to think that all French men go about whistling “Aux Champs Elysees” and “La Vie en Rose”.

We took the bus to the Matisse Museum. When we got there, they almost tricked us into paying double for a 7-day pass to 10 different art museums (none of which were on our list of things to do in Nice). Then we realized that we are the tacky Americans that the French people hate and thought better of it. It turned out that we were right to purchase the tickets we bought – we spent all of a half hour in the un-air-conditioned museum and most of that was in an attempt not to be rude. I have to confess – I don’t quite get modern art. Admittedly, part of the problem is that most of the information we would rely on to help interpret the art was written in French. And unfortunately, the art was not saying “Hello”, “Please”, “Thank you” and “Where are your restrooms?”

After the Matisse museum, we walked up the street to check out the monastery, which was very peaceful, beautiful, and old, then took the bus to the Chagall Museum. The Chagall Museum offered audio guides in English, so was much more interesting for us since we had some help interpreting what Chagall was trying to tell us.

After the museums, we picked up a few groceries for our apartment at the neighborhood grocery store. The grocery store was one of several indications that I belong in France, as the wine and spirits section was by far the largest section of the store, with the cheese section falling in close second. Charles lugged our groceries back to the apartment and we set out again, this time for Villefranche Sur Mer.

Neither of us had done much research on Villefranche beforehand, other than the 2-3 pages in the Rick Steves’ guidebook. From the guidebook, we surmised that we should check out the port and the Citadel (castle). We made it down a pretty steep hill to the port and since we had eaten a late breakfast and not eaten lunch, we stopped at a wine bar for a snack (and some wine). We are still getting used to the European culture in which it is considered rude to bring the check before the customer asks. Even though we know that we are supposed to ask for the check, it seems so rude when we come from a culture where we assume the wait staff will bring it as soon as they are able. Eventually, we caught our server’s attention so that we could move on to the castle and head back to Nice for dinner.

We took the bus back to the port in Nice to find a waterfront restaurant for dinner. This dinner experience was a first for us, as it marked the first time we encountered a server that was not (or pretended not to be) fluent in English and the first time the menu we were given did not have a direct English translation. Charles cheated and used his phone to translate the menu. I decided to be adventurous and pointed to an item in the “les poissons” section of the menu. It turns out that both of us happened to make good choices, though mine was a little intimidating at first, as I’d apparently ordered some sort of giant praun; shell,  head, legs, and all.

We walked back to Old Town by way of the sea wall/Promenade de Anglais during sunset, which was very beautiful. We stopped for a few pictures of the sunset and some ridiculously large yachts. Then, 2-3 more gelato flavors later, we are back to the apartment, resting our feet, and ready to call it a night.