i try to be a good American in the south of France

breakfast at la mas de capriers
Originally uploaded by Ffoggy

Sorry for the dearth of posts this week. Nick and I took the TGV to Nice on Tuesday, rented a car, and then spent the next few days tooling around the south of France.

We started our adventure off in a hostel in Nice, where I discovered that I am too old for hostels. All the other girls there had at least three times as much skin exposed as I did, and all the conversations I overheard were about X-treme sports. Also, the staff was too busy tanning and being charmed by the beauty of life to bother with things like towels, or change for the bus.

The next day we drove west along the Cote d'Azur. We went swimming in a scenic little inlet off the side of the road, and discovered that in addition to being very very blue, the Meditteranean is very cold, and very salty. After drying off, we made our way through a whole mess of sunny valleys and scenic villages to Le Mas de Capriers, a little B&B on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Our room was a rennovated gypsy caravan from 1898, complete with a million candles and an outdoor shower. For dinner the owner Christine directed us to a local Provencal restaraunt, where Nick and I ate our first five course meal. (We thought about you, Josh -- you'd be proud. We're really making an effort to sample the finer things in France, instead of just eating falafel every night. And sometimes I really want to do that, because everything in France is expensive, and the falafel here is both relatively cheap and really delicious.)

When the sun woke us up the next morning, we went for a run through the lavender fields and vinyards, and then a swim in the heated pool. Afterwards Christine and her husband Bernard brought a breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice, bread, and a cherry cream tart up to a table outside our room. It was exactly what I'd hoped Provence would be, one of those great travel days when you stumble onto a place that's perfect and you know you'll never come back, because it'd never be as beautiful as it was the day you discovered it. I tried to capture it with a photo essay on breakfast, but just ended up with 30+ pictures of a coffee carafe.

We remembered in the middle of our trip that it was the 4th of July, and felt like crummy Americans for having forgotten. I mean, seriously, the south of France on the 4th? We might as well turn in our passports and burn our bras. We did penance, though, by visiting a Provencal McDonalds for some fries. (Have they also launched the "Big & Tasty" in America? Does the ad for it there feature a picture of a cowboy, a boxer, and a Native American chief?) We also made a list of things we love about America over our pre-dinner apertif. Our list included the Grand Canyon, fried chicken, excellent customer service, Bob Dylan, and American confidence in our ability to make the world a better place. Sometimes misguided, obviously, but also sometimes awesome. Superawesome, even.)