Pizza and Crêpe

One of the best things about Nice so far is the people watching. The city is very busy all day (and night too in our neighborhood!) Yesterday I tried out three different locations for their people-watching potential:

#1 Sitting outside the back balcony (in our very own apartment!) while having breakfast. Our second floor balcony looks onto high apartments with rows and rows of pastel coloured shuttered windows – some closed and some open. Every now and again someone would wander out onto their balcony to see what the day is like. One woman next door even came out with a vanity mirror to apply her makeup by sunlight. I knew that anyone could be watching me too from any of those hundreds of window…although I still decided to lick the last bit of mango yogurt from the bottom of my bowl.:)

#2 From a café: My Welsh flatmate (I’ve decided to adopt this British term) and I went for real French espresso at a café near our flat. It took a while to decide what to have from the menu: café, café restaurant, noisette (don’t know what this is yet), cappuccino, grand café etc. We both were curious about the café restaurant and ordered that – but were told that it was the same thing a café anyway. We turned our chairs to face the street (French style) and watch people shop at the market and pointed out who looked like tourists and who did not. I’m sure that we both still fall into the tourist category.

#3 Having dinner on our front balcony: After cooking our first dinner in our apartment (rice and stir-fry) we decided to eat it on our table outside in the front. Our apartment is also very hot and outside is a lot cooler!
Across the street there is a ‘Pizza and Crêpe’ shop that was entertaining to watch. The three employees would spend their time sitting out side, looking bored, chatting, folding pizza boxes and sometimes getting into heated arguments with cars that would try to park in front of their store and disturb their garbage bin – lots of yelling and hand waving!
Three motorbikes with red boxes on the back also sat out front and occasionally one employee would jump into action and speed off for a delivery but return in just a few minutes. Most of the time though, they seemed really bored…we were tempted to order a pizza (or crepe!) ourselves to give them something to do.
It wasn’t until later I noticed that we were also being watched - the man in the balcony above us to the right would also pop his head over with his cigarette too see what we were up to as well.

So far my favourite is #3.

Où est la piscine?

The name for my blog comes very uncreatively from the title of Julia Child's autobiography. Not that I'm comparing myself to her at all (I'm a terrible cook) but I'm hoping that living here in Nice for a year will inspire me to get better at this.(I'm also hoping to see the movie 'Julie and Julia' sometime soon for further inspiration!)

Today is my first official full day on the French Riviera. I arrived here last Thursday evening but left early the next morning for a week of cross-cultural orientation in Otford, England. As I don't have an apartment yet, I'm staying with my team leaders and their children for a couple days. We also share the apartment with a slim black cat with a Spanish name I can't remember who has her own European passport. For real. Her previous owner was a Spanish woman who moved countries with her cat so she had to get all the paperwork done. I am totally jealous of this cat. It does not seem fair that she can get an EU passport when I can't.

This morning M (my host) took me to the open air market in town to buy fruits and veggies. The market is open every morning except for Monday. It was super hot in the sun as we walked over (which I think is typical for summer). The market was made up of rows and rows of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, fish and other products. I bought myself a bag of seven yummy figs for only .90 euro! I ate them for lunch with fresh goat cheese on top :) An elderly man tried to talk with me but unfortunately my French is a bit out of practise and I couldn't catch everything he was saying. Hopefully I'll improve quickly over the next few weeks.

On the way home, we stopped in the health food store so I could look for 'gluten-free' bread. I was so excited to find that they had gluten free baguettes(!) - and the brochure in the store also promised gluten-free 'pain au chocolat' - which would be amazing! I also loved the health food store because it was the first store we visited that felt very familiar somehow to me - I guess that health food stores are the same around the world.

I haven't seen any celebrities yet...although there was a whole 'parking lot' for private jets at the airport here in Nice so they must be around somewhere... On the bus ride back from the airport yesterday we passed the clinic where Angelina Jolie gave birth to her twins. It is also the place where A (M's daughter) goes to the dentist :)

The rest of the family has gone to the pool this afternoon while I opted to sit and rest for a bit. This reminds me of one of my favourite 'Flight of the Conchords' episodes when they sing the French song...and look for the pool (la piscine). ;)