Mark, Simon, and I took the train back to Nice this morning, just to pick up a rental car.
The rental counter was easy, and we were helped by a friendly staffer named Jean-Félix (I introduced Simon, whose middle name is Felix, so they had something in common). We need a big SUV because we have rather a lot of baggage, and one thing about European cars is they don’t often have a lot of trunk space. Back when we traveled with all seven of us, we had to get a nine-seater van.
Our first challenge was getting it out of the rental company garage. You know those tight spiral ramps? I was frankly amazed someone got it in.
So Mark carefully maneuvered it into the helix and drove excruciatingly slowly down to the next level to the sound of one beep-beep-beep warning us that the right passenger door was about to scrape the inside wall and another beep-beep-beep warning is that the left headlight was about to scrape the outside wall. Mark threaded that needle all the way down. Whew! Time to drive in the center of Nice, France’s fifth-largest city!
We made it out with only one wrong turn and got on the A8 back to Menton. That part wasn’t hard at all. Highway driving is not much different from at home, and after 12 days here we knew how to get to the garage we were aiming for.
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After finishing up at the rental counter but before fetching the car, we needed to get lunch. Originally we planned to do a little sightseeing in town, but Simon was hungry now so we just went to the first open pizza-and-panini shop we found.
We ordered a pizza for Simon and paninis for us, and while Mark did phone searches to try to confirm that our rental SUV would not exceed the 1.8-meter height limit of our parking garage, I studied the placemat menu to learn about the types of pizza available here. Many were familiar from Menton or other places, but a few were novel. I posted a pic straight to IG.
If I had noticed the Alessandra I might have wanted that. Bacon, goat cheese, potatoes, onions? On a pizza? Yes please.
Instead I got a wonderfully garlic-buttered tuna tomato panini.
Anyway we decided not to sightsee and just fetched the car after that.
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We got it parked in a great spot in the garage—end of a row corner, nothing behind or in front—and over the course of the evening Mark got several suitcases into it, rolled in ones and twos across the street and down the block.
Then we went out for one last drink at a seaside bar, and listened to the roar of the waves. I looked out over the sand, lit by the spillover lights from the patios, and watched the waves break once, twice, three times, reaching foamy fingers into the air. I thought about them breaking like that over and over for hundreds of years, polishing the stones, dragging them out, tossing them up again. And here we were to watch only a few rounds then turn away.
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