The Readiness is All: Southern France, Days 0-1

Here’s the thing about a morning departure from the Lisboa airport – it’s no fun. The airport is fine; good, even, in a lot of ways. But, we live approximately 4 hours from that airport by train, so what you’re really talking about is going to town the night before. You can get a connecting flight from Porto, but when you factor in time for making your connection, plus getting the bus to Porto, it’s not really any better; for one thing, you’d have to wake up even earlier in order to catch a flight that would connect you in time for your Lisboa departure. And so, the couple-few times we’ve flown out of Lisboa we have stayed in a hotel the night before. “Fun” fact – we haven’t really visited Lisbon or Porto yet. Other towns in Portugal, sure. But for whatever reason we’ve given no thought to poking at our two central cities. Anyhoo, the point is that the beginning of our trip for Lisa’s birthday kicked off with the train ride, then dinner and a quiet night at the hotel.

“Lisa’s birthday?” you ask? Why yes. While I am mezzo-mezzo on birthday celebrations they are something that her family always took seriously and the tradition has passed on to the husband in matrilineal fashion*. To be clear, she doesn’t demand extravagance, she just likes to do something on her birthday. It can be dinner out with friends, or even having people over, or a little trip somewhere fun. So, naturally, we’re off to the south of France to spend a week in Nice and then a week in the Loire Valley. NBD. This is actually making good on some missed opportunities from our January trip to Paris that was supposed to include the Loire, combined with our hunt for a good beach spot that doubles as an easy get away. As exotic as Nice still sounds to us, the reality is it was a two hour flight to Marseilles and then a rental car drive for an hour or two.

And so, with the Lisboa portion of the trip going off without a hitch, we scoot to the airport at O-dark-thirty and flap our way to Marseilles; it’s a lovely place that comes highly recommended by friends, but it just wasn’t in the cards for this trip, it was simply one exciting place too many. Instead we grabbed our rental and headed east. As the timing worked out we were actually getting hungry and so we made a detour to Fréjus, a lovely little town also on the coast, to eat at a spot called Les Sablettes (that’s “the Sablettes” in English. You’re welcome.) This is another piece of evidence in my burgeoning theory of there being no bad meals in Europe. (A broad over-generalization to be sure; we’ll talk more later.) It was lovely, and as a bonus we were sitting about 20 yards from the water. Worse ways to spend a lunch.

Full bellies achieved, we pressed on for our first accommodation: Château Le Cagnard. It’s a fine old place, initially built ~1300 CE, and naturally renovated throughout the years. It now serves as a lovely hotel perched up above the coast in a teeny little micro-village that is largely pedestrian-only. The original narrow roads, winding up and down between the buildings, would be treacherous on a moped never mind a car. With a late lunch we had pondered skipping dinner altogether, but room service was limited to a cheese plate and that sounded insufficient, so we made for a town square just a couple minutes away. It is the gathering spot, with five restaurants on or just off of the plaza. We still almost struck out on food because there was a jazz concert series in play there, and hundreds of people were anticipated. We hoofed it back to the hotel and asked the proprietor if he has any strings to pull, and he did; we were seated almost immediately at Le Village. The hostess was charmingly off-beat and the food was tasty, plus we were out in the open air on a car-less plaza, and eventually there was music. There are worse ways to end the day. But end the day we did, snug back in our room at the chateau, and ready for the big B-day itself on the morrow!

*Just crossing off a square on the Pretention Bingo cards we sent out to subscribers last month**

**This is a joke, there are no subscribers***

***Not that we wouldn’t listen to offers.