Ah oui. It’s time to say “au revoir” to Nice. Lots of people will be strolling along the Promenade des Anglais and having moules-frites in Cours Saleya tonight, but we won’t be among them. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’re on our way to Aix-en-Provence.
Aix-En-Provence, or just “Aix” for short, is located in the heart of the district of Provence in the southwest corner of France. (“Aix” is pronounced “ex”, just like the letter “x”). We’re going to use Aix as our home base for a week or so while we make day-trips, driving to places nearby.
Aix-En-Provence is 125 miles, (200 km), west of Nice, and about 20 miles inland. To get there, we drive west on the A57, which passes through Antibes and Cannes before heading away from the coastline.
Antibes
It was a beautiful day for a drive up the coast. We arrived at Antibes, (the “s” is silent), before lunchtime. We didn’t really have a plan, but it looked like a neat place, so we got out and roamed around.
We liked Antibes immediately. It’s so much more laid back than anyplace we’ve been so far on this trip. Everyone is relaxed and easy-going. If you wanted to do some serious relaxing this would be a good place to stay for a while
We’re still in “famous painter” country, so there are lots of art shops around. Pablo Picasso lived here for awhile. The house he lived in is a Picasso museum now.
It was too early for lunch, and we still had a big day ahead, so we didn’t stay long in Antibes. We got back in the car and continued up the coast toward Cannes.
C’est l’Heure du Déjeuner (It’s Time for Lunch)
By this time, we were into the lunch hour. When it’s lunchtime in France, if you want to eat in a restaurant, you have to make a move. At 1:30 or so, they’ll start closing their doors for the afternoon.
We stopped at a restaurant overlooking a marina full of small boats, and sat a table outside. It was a beautiful setting. There wasn’t much in the way of english spoken here, and the menu was full of things we didn’t recognize. As my 9th-grade french teacher would have said, this should be “très intéressant.”
We were familiar with one dish on the menu, though – the “daube.” Daube is like the roast beef and vegetables your mother might have made on Sunday – if your mother was French. My now-hungry Better Half went for the daube without hesitation.
In my case, substantial hesitation came into play. We were steps from the ocean. I could throw a rock and hit 20 fishing boats. Any fish dish here would probably be outstanding.
I know some french, but I don’t know french fish names. And our server wasn’t interested in helping out. (That happens in France once in a while). I ordered something that seemed to me, for some reason, like it might be a fish of some sort
The food showed up, and the daube was gorgeous. You might not be surprised to learn that the French have a pretty good way of making roast beef and vegetables.
Fries with Eyes
When the server set my plate in front of me, I think I let out an audible, “Whoa.” I had indeed ordered a fish dish. Or more accurately, a dish full of fish. It was a plate piled high with a stack of tiny fish that had been fried whole — heads, tails, fins, eyes, and all. They looked like silvery little match sticks. They came with a garlicky aioli sauce.
This was quite a sight, and quite a surprise. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. Each fish was maybe half as long as your little finger, and skinny. There must have been at least 150 of ’em on my plate.
I had no idea what they were. I would have recognized the French word for anchovies, (anchois), but anchois were not on the menu. My bad for not making a note of what they were called.
After a few preliminary tastes, I dove in. They were good! Especially with the aioli. It was kind of like eating a plate full of crispy shoe-string french fries, except these fries had eyes. In fact, if someone ever tries to sell them back home, that’s what they should call ’em: Fries with Eyes.
It took me a while to get over eating something with eyes still in tact, (and looking back at me, if I dared to look too closely). But to my surprise, I cleaned my plate. It would be interesting to see how this lunch “travels”, eh?
Cannes
Next stop – Cannes. It was just down the road from where we had lunch, so we made it there in no time. Luckily for us, the famous film festival wasn’t going on, so the paparazzi wouldn’t be a problem. We didn’t have to wear disguises to keep from being recognized. Ha ha.
We cruised around the town, checking out Cannes from the car. It looked like a combination of Nice and Monte Carlo. Lots of places for hot-n-tots to shop or just hang out. It was a good-looking town for sure, but we were ready to get to Aix, so we kept on going.
The drive from Cannes to Aix was a delight. Not much traffic. Lots of trees and green rolling hills. Church bell towers stuck up here and there along the way. Wherever there was a bell tower, there was a corresponding village, usually somewhere behind a hill, nestled mostly out of sight. Road signs told us which funny-sounding French village we were missing the turn-off to.
Like most medium-sized French cities, Aix has a historic city center, or “centre-ville.” These areas are the best places for tourists to stay, except for those who have a keen interest in car lots, big-box do-it-yourself stores, supermarkets, and other places we don’t usually care about seeing when we’re on vacation.
When we got off the highway, signs directed us to “Centre-Ville”. Our hotel is on the main street in centre-ville. We were without GPS, but we had an excellent map, so finding the hotel shouldn’t have been a problem. It shouldn’t have been, but was.
To be continued…
