Have you been wondering how I’ve been faring since I bade farewell to les vaches?
I am slowly adjusting to life on the French Riviera.
Slowly.
My drive here was uneventful, except for that time my GPS became my enemy and led me in circles for two hours in downtown Nice during the height of tourist season. Navigation systems don’t do well with pedestrian-only streets. That’s all I’ll say about that.
And now I am perched on a hill overlooking the uppity town of Villefranche-sur-mer, with its uppity yachts, BMWs, and fake hedges. Why anyone would need a fake hedge in this lotus land is beyond me, but there it is. Why water a real hedge when you can buy a fake one?
No, to be honest, I’m missing the friendly, down-to-earth charm of my village in the Alps. Well, okay, the cows were not so friendly. But there was an endearing honesty to that place, a sense that life had substance, and that everything else was somehow false.
Not so with the French Riviera. Everything here feels half-empty, like the soul of the place just drained out into the Mediterranean when the people all arrived. I’m sure at one time it was quaint and delightful and historically significant; but right now, it feels to me like a toy neighbourhood, constructed out of blocks and toothpicks and dotted with plastic accessories. Doll houses, all, papered in Euros…
But I, too, am a falsehood, here on the French Riviera.
