I admit that I have slight love affair with the Côte d’Azur‎. There is something magical in the air that makes even a rock beach and sun burn sound like great ideas. The last time I was there was this summer and thanks to the conveniently located miles and miles of beach, I managed to sneak in a little time lounging around in the sun. The picture here is after a breakfast of a giant pots of muscles and some chips. The only drawback of course being that I was salty and sticky for the rest of the day, including my flight to Berlin.

Time was that I would regularly change the background for this site. I let me love for the Queen Charlotte Track get the better of me and haven’t changed it in a long time. I’m going to get back into it, so if you have any nice pictures you are willing to share, please do send them along to weldon [at] questingforadventure.com.

I was in Nice for less than 48 hours, but thankfully was afforded a chance to have a take a short break from the tour, meet up with a friend, and have breakfast on the beach – my fourth outing with a local along the U2 tour. I ordered a pot of muscles and chips and took a short swim while waiting for the food to arrive. I soaked up the sunshine while munching down on the delicious muscles.

It was simple and perfect. My friend’s life stood in stark contrast to the crazy pace of the tour. It was the type of morning that makes you wonder why we all don’t just live in beach towns and take every opportunity for a quite morning swim. I know that I couldn’t lead a quiet life forever, but I certainly could stand a few more quiet mornings on the beach like that one.

In 2004, I spent a very bohemian month studying French in beautiful Nice. This week I spent a few short hard working days there, and it was a wholly different place.

I arrived a bit bedraggled and tired after my challenging drive from Paris, but was determined to see a bit of the city that I had loved so well. I headed off in the evening to meet up with a co-worker in the middle of the city, but couldn’t hail a cab from the area around the airport where my hotel was. I asked myself what I would have done 5 years ago if I needed to get across town in a hurry, searching for that carefree mentality that had helped me make the most of my time here. So I whipped off my shirt and joined some people running and rollerblading down Promenade des Angles. It was prefect and reminded me why I loved Nice, a beach town that’s glamorous, but also laid back enough that you can take a midnight jog surrounded by crowds of tens and twenty-somethings settling in for an evening on the beach.

But diving into the town’s nightlife slowed my re-enchantment. We headed back to a couple of bars that I remembered as being good rowdy fun, but found them pack with overly drunk British and American teenagers complaining loudly and falling over themselves. It had been fun when I was that age, but now just seemed a bit sad. It was a lesson that a place will never be the same the second time.

I love a good challenge, and the effort to transport about 6 cubic meters (a large van full) of stuff from Paris to Nice on short notice during a national holiday provided an exceptional series of challenges.

The first challenge was to transport the stuff 1.5 Km from Stade de France to my hotel at 3 AM. Thankfully, there were a load of crew hands around. After chatting with them for a bit and with the people managing them, I received some free assistance pushing all the the equipment (thankfully everything fit on 6 flight cases with wheels) to my hotel – picture of this effort above. About 45 minutes later I paid my cheerful helpers with beer, orange juice, and candy bars, and convince the hotel to let me stash all of the stuff in the hotel conference room until the following evening. One down.

The second challenge was to find a way to transport all of the kit down to Nice, 950 Km away. Something told me that 5 set of helping hands wouldn’t do the trick this time. First thing in the morning my colleague help ring around to various “man with a van” services while some co-workers in London tried to find a suitable rental van. After just a couple of calls we realized that there was no legit service that was willing to do the delivery the next day – Bastille Day, the biggest national holiday in France. A while later we found that there were no vans to be rented in all of Paris. When continued searching all day in vain.

At 4:30 in the afternoon a glimmer of hope appeared as we found the last van in Paris – it was far to large and very far away, but it was something. I hopped in a cab and raced over. Upon arrival at the supplied address however, my heart sank. It was Rue de Rivoli 93 – the Louvre, which, in case you have never been, isn’t a van rental agency. I went in anyway and much to my surprise found that two floors down where the tour buses park, there is indeed a van rental company. I grabbed my vehicle at the last possible moment, loaded up my kit, and went to bed for an early departure the next day.

The drive down to Nice was a bit wet in the morning, but pleasant enough cruising through France and surfing local radio. The truck was a bit unwieldy in the cities, but proved to be a capable beast out on the road. The rain cleared as I left Lyon and found myself driving through Provence on a perfect afternoon. But then 7 hours into my 9 hour drive, the next challenge arrived. With the fuel gauge still reading 1/4 of a tank, the van started to sputter and stall. I was lucky enough to be right next to an exit, and pulled off the road. I hopped out and opened up the fuel tank, which was empty as I had feared. Checking the dashboard again I saw that the fuel gauge now showed 1/8 of a tank. At least it was optimistic.

I was blocking the exit, so I hopped out and with adrenaline surging, pushed the van back 15 meters out of trouble – to the spot you see in the picture. Then I turned to the phones, and with a little help from friends with access to a French land line that could dial local toll-free numbers, managed to explain my situation to the rental agency and also contact emergency services to dispatch a crew that could give me some diesel. I have never been happier to have studied French. A couple hours later I was back on the road with Hertz covering the cost of the breakdown as the emergency services technician explained that there was indeed a fault with the fuel gauge.

It’s the type of trouble that I like to get in while I’m out on the road – challenging, but with no imminent threat to my health or well being. It was stressful, but sipping a beer that evening it didn’t seem like a half bad couple of days.

While the item in the picture may look like a finely shaped poo, I assure that you that it was two delicious flavours of ice cream sculpted into a a flower. This sweet chocolate rose was the nightcap on an evening out in a lively area of Paris with one of my friends in town.

It appeared as thought I was going to miss out on having a meal out with a local in Paris, but thanks to an unfortunate travel arrangement I was stuck in town and managed to duck out for dinner, a bottle of wine, and ice cream. We headed to Rue des Lombards, a lively and lovely strip of gay and lesbian bars near Centre Pompidou. We settled on a crowed tapas place and played a long game of catch up over a large meal, and a bottle of wine that felt too small in the end.

I suppose what you expect to find in a place is what you end up finding, and dinner that evening was no different. I felt surrounded by young couples in love, people smoking hand rolled cigarettes, and beautiful food. Maybe that’s really how Paris is, but every time I’m there I feel like I wander into that same stereotypical dream of cheerful “bonjours” and life lived with time to smile and smell (or eat) the flowers.