Jim & Happy : Our first day in Eze

It is 2.49pm on Thursday afternoon and I am sitting on a sun bed overlooking the Mediterranean with the afternoon sun warming my face and toes. It has been a long time since I haven’t had to wear shoes and socks. It feels great. I have to make the most of the sun, as it is starting to go behind the hills (the end of the alps is really what they are, they are massive and very impressive).

We arrived in Eze last night at 8.20pm and Nicola was at the train station to pick us up as promised. The apartment is only a few minutes drive up a windy road above the train station ‘Eze-Sur-Mer’. Our apartment is on the ground floor of her house where she lives with her Norwegian husband, Egil, their 14 year-old daughter (don’t know her name as we haven’t met her yet) and ‘Chloe’ their standard poodle – another one, what a coincidence. Chloe is white and very friendly. Nicola is English and they have lived here for 8 years. They return to Norway to their summerhouse for the European summer school holidays in July & August. Perfect!

The apartment is well equipped and will be a lovely place to live for the next three weeks. I just love this outdoor area, especially if the sun shines for part of the day.

This morning Nicola drove us into Beaulieu, 4kms away (heading towards Nice, the other direction takes you to Monaco and the Italian border) to the supermarket to do a heavy shop as she called it – so thoughtful.

Tomorrow we plan to go to Ventimiglia, which is in Italy, only a half hour train trip away. Apparently the market is huge with everything from clothes to food and everything in between – but Nicola said be careful when buying imitation goods as the customs police can confiscate items at the border if they are inclined – lucky that won’t be a problem for us as we are not in the market for anything along those lines – can’t carry anything extra. It is more the fruit and vegetables we are after but it never hurts to have a good look around, you never know what you might find.

After shopping this morning we walked down to the esplanade to a local café for lunch straight across from the train station. There is a short cut (of sorts) from the apartment to the main road via many flights of stairs between the streets. You can imagine who had to bite their tongue with Jim’s love of walking and stairs.

We ended up having the funniest lunch being entertained by ‘Annie’ a Chinese lady (forties or fifties, hard to tell). The tables were set so close to each other you couldn't help but acknowledge your lunch partner whether you wanted one or not with a 'bonjour'. She was very chatty and I asked her lots of questions. She is married to a Norwegian guy and has been living in Oslo for the past 3 years, prior to Oslo 11 years in USA. She has been on holiday in Eze with friends from China who live in the USA. She is flying back to Oslo tonight and just filling in time today. She says her hobby is travel and spends $70K approx each year on travel – I nearly spat my food out at that remark. Like I said, she was very entertaining. She went on to say she would love a winter apartment in Nice because they are so cheap at 250,000 Euros ($375,000), at this remark I said ‘and why not at that price’, rich coming from the girl who doesn’t have one house let alone a winter or summer house.

Anyway, she liked us even if we do wear jeans (she actually said this in a round about sort of way) and gave us her phone number and invited us to stay in her summerhouse in Norway.

PS. Pieta, if you are reading this, don’t worry we didn’t buy mussels in Beaulieu this morning only salmon, scallops and prawns. The seafood is so fresh and appealing. Jacq told us about your in-house joke of warning Frank against eating mussels while you were on holidays here years ago. Maybe another day, I’ll let you know.