How I wish I could take a year out like Elizabeth Gilbert in her best selling autobiographical book, 'Eat, pray, love' and do exactly what I want to do, which is to spend a year in Gressoney, in the Val d'Aosta in Italy , learning to speak Italian and also walking the old Walser paths, and skiing the famous off-piste runs around.
Instead, Monday morning sees me driving in pouring rain to pick a friend (called the scatty blonde) up for my annual trip to Ikea in Toulon. The drive is easy enough, straight down the A8 motorway, and we treat ourselves to a breakfast for 1 Euro when we arrive. The place is pretty deserted, so we enjoy filling up our shopping trolley over the next couple of hours. Just before the checkout we have a repack to see what we REALLY need from the items that have made it into the basket. Out goes the vanity bag that I doubt I would ever have used, out goes the lantern for the terrace. What was wrong with the old one? Out goes a pair of red curtains. Isn't it amazing what you can buy when it is in front of you? The plates, and mugs, and candles, and plants, and boxes stay however. Ikea is definitely the best place to go if you need to organise your life, and that is what I am always trying to do. Every trip to Ikea sees me buy more boxes, for more sorting and organising. Once I HAVE filled the boxes I wonder how I ever survived before I had them. 300 Euros later and we head for the restaurant to have some Swedish meatballs. Then my scatty blonde friend buys some meatballs to take home with her. I see a cookbook near the check out for Swedish dishes. It has a lot of recipes with meatballs in, and lots with rollmops, so I don't buy it.
Back home, I sort out my purchases immediately. The boxes go up to my walk in wardrobe where I am having a major clearout for a clothes swap session next week. This session is a good thing as it has made me open all the boxes I had packed the previous year (using Ikea boxes) with stickers such as 'Winter work clothes', 'Winter jumpers' on them. I've discovered I had no need to go to the sales and buy some jumpers now I have rediscovered these boxes. I've found a couple of lovely suits which I had forgotten, and took them out and put them in my 'professional' area of the wardrobe. I have found a brand new pair of jeans in one of the boxes, and I have just bought another pair of jeans 1 week ago.
I pull all my summer shoes out of their boxes from last year and actually decide to give 4 pairs away to the clothes swap. I have never worn 3 of the pairs, ever. They were super cheap on a trip to Paris, so I bought them. False economy! The rest of the shoes get placed in groups, 'Sandals', 'Espadrilles', 'Evening sandals', 'Sports shoes'. The winter boots and shoes get sorted into boxes and labelled up. The winter clothes get replaced in boxes and tied up (I chide myself; winter is over now and you didn't even get these things out!).
I try on a couple of black evening dresses I bought about 20 years ago that were tight the last time I tried them, and now they hang beautifully! They are placed in the evening clothes 'to wear' section, rather than the 'evening clothes to store' section. I feel good, because I have a large bag of clothes to swap and a large bag of accessories to swap, AND some space in my wardrobe.
Then I go to my chest of drawers and pull out all my lingerie and my tights and socks.. this makes a very big pile on the floor. I take my new Ikea boxes which have lots of compartments in them and I sort through the pile, compartmentalising all of them. I am appalled at how many pairs of tights and socks I have. There is no way I will ever, ever, wear all of them, but I still compartmentalise them. I couldn't possibly throw them out, as they might actually be worn one day. At least they are all tidied up now! The bad news is that my new Ikea boxes will not fit in the chest of drawers, so now they have to go under the bed. My wardrobe has now grown to another space.
Tuesday morning dawns reasonably bright and SOH and I set out on our hills cycle ride. Usually this happens on a Monday but due to the Ikea trip it has been postponed to today. We cycle up hills around Nice for around an hour. I absolutely used to hate doing this, but now I love it. We always start with what we call the 'Short, sharp, shock' hill, the one on the far side of the Port of Nice running up to Bvd Carnot. Then we either cycle along the Basse Corniche to Ave Hesperides just at the Nice limit roadsign, and climb up there to Mont Boron and then Mont Alban, or we cross over to the Moyenne Corniche and head up to the Col de Villefranche and then up towards the Parc de Vinaigrier.. this is a real killer of a hill. But the views from the top are truely wonderful, and the cycle down is so refreshing, it makes all that effort worthwhile
We stop for a coffee on the way back home. The best coffee in Nice is served by the Italians, and our favourite coffee stop is Punto Break and/or Via Flavio both in the Zone Pietonne and owned by the same owner. I always hear Italian being spoken in there, which is lovely. I have just started to use Rick Steves French/Italian/German phrasebook to learn some useful Italian phrases. And I have started reading his Europe through the Back Door Guide Book, which is aimed at the American market but which has some fun things in it. His totally honest report of Great Britain basically says do London, Cambridge and the Cotswolds, and give Oxford and Stratford a miss.
Wednesday morning I rush into Nice Etoile with my younger son to buy a birthday present for a 6 year old; a kite is my choice. Another quick coffee stop, this time in the coffee shop on the lower ground floor of Nice Etoile, then off to pick up elder son from his gym class and back home for lunch. After lunch we get in the car and drive to Cannes La Bocca where my elder son is due at Fun City, a huge indoor playground, for his friend's birthday party. As it is raining heavily again, the place is bursting at the seams, but the kids don't notice and I have to climb up 3 stories of padded steps to get son to leave when it's time to go home. I arrive home just as the scatty blonde friend arrives to pick me up to go to dinner with the Vino-Gossip group of ladies in Nice. A quick re-make-up and I'm out the door, and heading for Mother India in rue Jules Gilly in Vieux Nice. 10 of us congregate, including my friend the Swedish blonde, and we enjoy a chat and a gossip, and some good Indian food. It's been interesting to watch the proliferation of Indian restaurants on the Cote d'Azur over the last 10 years, particularly in and around Nice. My favourites are Delhi Belhi, Noori's, The Shalimar, and Mother India, but I find that none of them match a London curry house, if what you want is a real spicy curry.
Thursday I have to take the 230 bus on the Promenade to Sophia Antipolis as SOH has taken the car for the day. I am due at a lunchtime meeting of the EPWN Nice Network (European Professional Womens Network), to talk about Elevator Pitches. The bus service is amazingly quick, calling at a couple of stops before the airport, and then speeding along the motorway to Sophia. Over a casual lunch 12 of us work through each other's potential pitches and where we might improve them, and we enjoy bouncing ideas of each other. Then it's back on the bus, to Nice. I am really tempted to stop and check out the Musee Massena, but remind myself of all the paperwork I have to finish off and head home.
Friday my nanny calls in sick so I am on baby duty all morning, and decide to go for a walk, which becomes a very long walk along the Prom, sliding into lunch at Le Cote in Rue Biscarra just behind Nice Etoile. This is the road where the locals tend to eat and the tourists don't. Always sunny if the sun is shining, you need to be seated by 12 o'clock to get the seats outside. As it's Friday, it's fish for the plat du jour, which I have. Then a stroll home, hand baby over to SOH, rush to get on with my paperwork again, and at 4.45pm SOH reminds me that I need to pack for skiing as we are due to head straight off to the mountains after picking up elder son from school. I rush upstairs, throw everything in a blue and yellow Ikea bag, which actually has to be one of the greatest packaging inventions ever, and we are out the door at 5.05, and heading for Valberg by 5.15. A MacDonald's stop to keep son happy en route, means we arrive at Valberg by 7pm and can enjoy the last rays of daylight now the clocks have changed. The snow-covered mountains and the silence never cease to work their charm on me, and after a glass of red I am relaxed and looking forward to a good day's skiing tomorrow.
Useful links;
Vino-gossip; see yahoogroups.com/ vino-gossip
EPWN; see www.europeanpwn.net/ Nice
Indian restaurants in Nice; see www.fra.cityvox.fr
Valberg; see www.valberg.com
