The sun dawned…well, it came up anyway. Saturday was a humid day so it wasn’t awful in the morning but it wasn’t whatcha call “pleasant”. What did dawn all shiny and dewy was Lisa who awoke as, officially, The Birthday Girl. It must be noted that she was almost completely in the dark on the details of this trip. She usually plans the vast majority of our travel, with input from me of course, but a) she likes doing it usually, and b) experience = expertise, she’s very good at it. That said, we realized awhile back that now that we are traveling so much more it would really kind of stink for her to be burdened with all of it. So, this trip is my big coming out party as a maker of happenings on the road. The big logistical things (flights, car rentals, accommodations) all seem to be in order, so all of my panic is reserved for day-to-day plans not going well. I’ve done the work, though, and all should be well. Just before we left, however, a couple of friends recommended the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco (think super-fancy aquarium) and we belatedly added it as a possibility. Based on the weather forecast for today, this seemed to be the right day. How glamorous we thought! Jaunt to yet another country to see something exotic and fun, maybe find a cool place to have a meal. Now that is a heck of a birthday!

Yeeeeaaaah… no.

It all started out well enough, we plotted our route in GPS and made for the mountains. It was a beautiful drive with lots of grand scenery we wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Truly beautiful. Going into Monaco is actually kind of interesting, it required the blasting of some serious tunnels to make a route that didn’t require either mountain goats or helicopters. There’s a second tunnel a little while later that is like a giant spiral staircase that goes down hundreds of feet; pretty clever, it would have required a lot more space, or a lot steeper tunnel, to lose that much altitude. Once we got into Monaco proper things got… well, bad. Imagine a baby with a little bowl of spaghetti on the tray of their high chair. The baby turns the bowl over, spilling the noodles into a complicated pile. The baby then spits up a little onto the pile.

This is the system of roads and tunnels in Monaco.

Google maps actually did a credible job of navigating us through the mess, but there were two serious problems. First, sometimes the instructions were so bizarre or inscrutable that we simply didn’t trust them. “There’s no way we’re supposed to go in to that parking deck just to exit it heading in another direction, right?” In hindsight yes, that’s exactly what we probably should have done. The second problem was that we coudn’t follow certain instructions, because the police had key roads blocked. We still don’t know why; our French is still pretty rusty and the officer we spoke to, while responding “yes” to “tu parle Anglais?”, proceeded to explain the situation in French. What we know is that it took almost two hours to not navigate our way to the Museum and by that time we were running at a very high frustration level, plus we were hungry, and we were still no closer to going to the Museum(!).

Trying to salvage the Big Day, we made for Èze. Èze is a teeny village on the coast with some absolutely bonkers views of the sea. There is a medieval walled town on top of one hill, full of winding streets that just ooze with character. It actually is on our agenda to go to Èze tomorrow, but by all that is holy if we can make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear we are grabbing an ear and some string in Èze. The lynchpin of our itinerary was lunch at Château de la Chèvre d’Or (house of the golden goat, more or less). What the hell, maybe they can seat us a day early. O ho! It is to laugh! As far as I can tell the place is perpetually booked, and only my reserving a table months in advance had got us in tomorrow. So, after a mildly harrowing drive up way-too-narrow streets, Èze was basically a bust. Cool cool.

At this point we’re just hungry, so I dig into my bag of restaurant potentials for the coming week and settle on Babel Babel, a med-esque tapas-esque joint that was supposed to be casual but yummy. The day had one last kick in the jimmies for us, though; parking in Nice was not… ahem… nice. (I get one. That was it. Be grateful, we’re spending several days here.) In fact, it wasn’t just bad it was treacherous. For example, they have those very modern signs that not only direct you to different municipal lots but also key an updated tally of how many spaces were available. It’s smart, allowing drivers to make good decisions about where to park and spreading the cars over many areas. The problem is, they lie. The lot we settled on was close and supposedly had 80-some spaces free. Great. It takes 2 minutes or so to go around the block. The sign above the lot itself indicates that there are 54-some spaces available. Wow, that was fast, but ok. Then you enter the lot, and the indicator for the floor says “zero, keep going”. Down we go, four levels, each one saying no spots were available. Finally, on the bottom level, after circling a couple of times, we manage to secure a spot. Up we go and off to food at Babel Babel. Thank all the gods, they came through with a decent meal. The tide begins to turn!

We make it back to our lodging and just go to ground for a little bit to recuperate until dinner. We hang out, we listen to music, we chat… basically we reset ourselves. The day isn’t over yet! We dress ourselves as nicely as we can on this trip (i.e. a nice print dress for Lisa, slacks and a golf shirt for me) and make for the hotel restaurant. Dinner was divine. I have no idea what Michelin currently thinks of the joint, but we loved it. As is tradition over here, we had the table for as long as we wanted it so we dawdled, nursed our drinks, and sauntered through the menu. The weather was accommodating and the view was spectacular. One last kick in the teeth (from my point of view) was that I’d forgotten her actual physical birthday present back in Portugal, so instead we visualized opening it up as I described each step to her. Honestly, not sure it would have gone over better if the actual item had been there. We turned the day around pretty well by the end, I’m pleased to report. It’s a long trip still to come, there will be plenty of chances for greatness.

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.