French Riviera
The first full day in Nice, after arriving at noon Monday, mostly refreshed from our lie flat biz class seats from PHL to NCE. Although it needs to be said that from anywhere to anywhere, from economy to biz class, American Airlines is definitely the ghetto of the major carriers. I have a couple of million points on American from back in the day (part of my 14,000,000 reward/points/miles portfolio earned with construction purchases over the last few years) and it’s no wonder I still have them - American sucks. Even when they try hard like a transcontinental biz class arrangement, it still feels like a class-climber with aged attendants, shitty website and food quality that could generously be labeled lackluster. I like that I’ve been around enough to tease out differences of 1st class life. At this point, I’m half tempted to trade in the miles for pennies on the dollar, just because I’m not a fan of the delays, cancellations, etc… that seem related to each and every American experience, though to be honest, the soggy kinda gross breakfast might have been the final straw - I should have slept through it.
I'm gone for 10 days and during that time we will sell $2m of real estate. That will be house 4 and 5 up in Ashokan, monetizing like crazy after 26 months of outlay.
Through a small party that got smaller still as people's lives got in the way the day before leaving, but it was a nice day and the grounds were looking good.
me.
The Riviera. Of course, it didn’t take long for me to dig into Nice’s role, and position in WW2, since France was such an unfortunate victim/player/collaborator/resister in the war.
As always, I spend a lot of time walking around new cities and I think we put on 8 miles yesterday, in a pretty small city, so we saw a lot. I’m here with my nephew, who I’m travelling with since my 15 yr old would be rather home with his friends, and I’m pretty sure hates me. I’m exaggerating - he might not hate me, though it seems like it, but he definitely wouldn’t relish 2 weeks with me, solo, traveling.
So we are getting a lot of ‘wow, I wish I had a uncle llike that’, who flies them biz class transatlantic to a swanky airbnb 2 blocks from the Med Sea for a mostly paid for trip. He’s 27 so in a perfect position to take in the scene. Ballers do what ballers do, right?
Sitting on a 6th floor walk-up balcony getting baked by the sun around 11:30 am. Pigeons and dove dive bomb and squawk. Large planes descend into the airport. Fitzgerald’s ghost haunts the alleyways. Lot of English speaking among the natives. Bought some flowers, baguette and chocolate croissants this morning (and my nephew didn’t even notice the flowers! Men!).
We’ve been careful to clarify he’s my nephew since with his mustache he’s sporting he can look a little freddy mercury if you know what I mean, but even that gets complicated since the role of ‘nephew’ took a dark cultural twist with season 2 of White Lotus.
Day 2 - yesterday - was spent in leisure, with a slow morning, some mid-afternoon beach time, some time killing this and that, then a 10 mile electric bike ride, and then a 4 mile hike along the coast heading north out of Nice to Villefranche-Sur-Mur. I’m a bike rider but had never used an electronic bike - I’m hooked, super fun.
Day 3 with a 13 miles day trip to Antibes by electronic bicycle along the dedicated sea-side promenade and we found ourselves in the cap d'Antibes, little inlets carved into the land from the Mediterranean. Just so happens, just the area where Fitzgerald wrote Tender is the Night, literally. With characters of Rosemary, Dick and Nicole Diver, and a host of others, whittling the way the deco summer in the late 20's. In my final culling of my packing, which were only carry ons, I left that book at home since it seemed unlikely I would read two books while away with my reading pace these days.
