Ciao Italy, Bon Jour France, Again

We drove out of Certaldo with somewhat mixed emotions this morning, following our last stop at our favorite pastacceria. In addition to our pastries and our cappuccino and machiato (always 3,80), we also got a couple of sandwiches to take with us on the road. While we are eager to be on the next leg of our journey, and certainly eager to be enroute home, we enjoyed our stay in Certaldo a great deal and were somewhat sad to see our long-planned adventure come to an end.

As we approached the Mediterranean, the color of the air seemed to change. It’s always amazing to me how the atmosphere feels and looks so different when you are around the ocean. We drove past the Pisa and the Cinque Terre and finally stopped at a little roadwide service station on the Italy side to have our lunch.

Around 1:30, we finally crossed the border into France. We had no sooner crossed the border when we saw our favorite road sign, the exploding car. Our readers will remember that road sign as the one and only sign that we have not been able to figure out. We noted this time that it was just prior to the entrance of a tunnel. Perhaps, I speculated, it means no exploding cars in the tunnel. Bill reckoned that was a possibility. He noted it could also mean that any cars exploding in the tunnel would be subject to eviction from said tunnel. Nevertheless, it remains a mystery.

We made our way to Nice, that pretty city on the Mediterranean, and easily found our hotel. After checking in, we caught the bus that took us to the old town, Vieux Nice. We looked around a bit, and then made our way to the Mediterranean. That really is the most beautiful body of water anyone can imagine. Even with hundreds and hundreds of people on the beach (not all of them entirely clothed I must note), the water is clear and the air feels, well, so French.

We stopped at a little café near the beach in the Cours Salaya and had a glass of wine and a glass of beer, and then began thinking about what we would like for dinner. I had my handy dandy Rick Steves France book, and he talked about a place very near where we were at that exact moment that specialized in all-you-could-eat mussels and frites (French fries). That sounded pretty darn good to us, so we found the restaurant, and each ordered a dish of mussels. Bill got the mussels with garlic and white wine and I ordered the mussels marniere. We each got a pile of mussels so high you would think we couldn’t possibly eat them all. Of course, we did. That, with the French fries so hot you could barely touch them and a bottle of ice cold white wine made for a wonderful dinner.

We found a bus that we were pretty sure would take us home. We were right. We got off the bus, along with a pit bull and its owner. Hmmm. I can’t say I’ve ever shared a bus with a pit bull. Another notch in my adventure belt.