Now that we're here--after a fourteen-hour drive broken by a night in Dijon (where we purchased, of course, mustard) I can tell you the sky and the sea area just as blue as their name. Azure. Yes, like lapis lazuli. The view alone is worth our astronomical rent. But we've saved on plane tickets and confidentially our rent is not as !@#$RTYUlly high as it would be in St. Tropez. Which is not far. The best supermarket's in Monaco, a fifteen-minute drive. But we went to the one that's only a ten-minute drive. Wine from Bergerac. The perfect poulet. Cheese, enough to plaster the house. A lovely pebble beach a short walk from the house. The sky, the sea, as blue as the Mac icons at the bottom of my computer screen, or as in the "fair use" photos of the region that decline to load. What more could we want? I wish I hadn't stubbed my toe. I wish we were all perfectly healthy. Other than that: swimming and books occupy me: David Sedaris, Tobias Wolff, Philip Lopate, Asne Seirstad. And more.
I hadn't spent much time in France since the nineties--a trip to Euro Disney when the kids were little does not count--and back in the nineties, it was still impossible to find a bad meal. Now it's possible. What's different? Back then, the French were stylish, but unwashed. Now they're washed, but un-stylish, and they eat American fast food. Their supermarkets still boast the fantastic arrays of cheese, wine, and seafood for which we longed, but the French themselves? Here's the dirty little secret: I can't tell some of them from the Americans!
Makes me, well, a little blue.
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