Oh Very Nice (“but maybe in the next world”)

What a gorgeous day.  What an insanely beautiful day.  What a nice day.  I set out for a coastal walk.

Clear blue skies, hot.  October 28! Although I’d scheduled the Chagall museum today there was no way to justify spending such glorious weather indoors.  So I took the train east to Cap d’Ail.  There is a coastal walk from the town, the Mala Beach Footpath, which I took east, to Monaco.  It’s not long, takes about an hour, but there are no bikes or scooters, just walkers and joggers, with the surf crashing up against the path, and you feel a million miles away when in fact you’re rarely more than a 100 steps from a decent glass of rose pretty much the whole way.  Super nice.

I finished that path around 11.  It wasn’t exceptionally arduous, but I made the decision to walk from where the path ends, as it hits the border of Monaco, to the train station, which is halfway up the mountain.  If you’re a local, you’ll know there are secret elevators hidden away in odd alcoves that whisk you up six or seven stories to other sections of town.  But I walked.  Uphill.  And it was a slog, especially in the heat.

Hitchcock, in a cameo, took a bus to Monaco.  As if!  Grace Kelly left Hollywood to call it home.  The BBC called it, psf, the most expensive real estate on the planet.  But in the end, if you’re not rich, if you don’t need to evade the tax collector, it’s really just a hodge podge of concrete.  Monaco fun fact: Monegasques are forbidden from entering casinos in the principality.

For the afternoon I took the train back to Beaulieu sur Mer, walked to the beach, the baie de fourmis, then walked the whole perimeter coastal path of Cap Ferrat, counter-clockwise, aka the Sentier Littoral.  This was much, much longer than I anticipated, although a map shows it’s just six kms.  It starts on the tony eastern side, mansions, estate agents, luxe cafes, a port.  Then it wends its way to an outcrop off the peninsula, like a thumb, which is a park with a cemetery and home to the Chapelle de Saint-Hospice.

From there, after rounding Cap Ferrat proper, the final stretch of the eastern side begins on a long seawall which you enter off a private drive; thank goodness for the French ambiguity with rights of way and “droit public” if you will.  Then it comes round the furthest southern tip of the cape.  The western side is unexpectedly rugged; rocky, craggy, sometimes steep without guard rails, often muddy, with myriad inclines and declines. 

Eventually, you end up at a lovely beach, plage de passable, a few minutes outside Villefranche.  From there you could either “cut across” the cape and walk back to Beaulieu for the train, or simply wait for bus 15, the milk run, which takes you (eventually) back to Nice (which is what I did).

 

At this point though, I could have taken my pants off and they would have walked across the room on their own.  I was just soaked from the heat of the day and the exposure.  Back at the hotel I packed up laundry and washed two loads.  But of course I wouldn’t take a picture of the laverie.

The sad news is I won’t get to the Chagall museum, whose art I adore, and which I was really looking forward to.  Why?  Because it’s closed on Tuesdays.  Why Tuesdays?  Because France.  And while I had an hour, at the very end, to squeeze it in today, I didn’t bother.  So that bucket list item goes back in the bucket.  Je suis desolee Marc.  But what a nice day.  I’m grateful the rich let people like me traipse through their real estate.