Dear Diary,
It is the long Easter weekend and because Monday is a holiday we are missing one day of school. In a way I’m disappointed and in a way I’m glad. Maurice is here and we have been doing a little exploring. My apartment is between what they call the lower cornishe and the medium cornishe-coast roads. This area is very hilly and there are roads cut into the sides of the mountain. There is even the high cornishe. It was on one of these in this area that Grace Kelly lost her life in a car crash.

We climbed up to the moyenne (medium) corniche and caught a bus into Nice on Sunday to see a movie and to also visit Maurice’s cousin and his wife. I have met them before and they are both very nice. I thought I would get a chance to use my French-what little I have-but, although I could understand most of what they were saying, I hardly got a word in in any language. The cousin is very funny and very talkative. I guess his wife would never get a word in if she didn’t start talking over him. So there I was, trying to listen to the cousin when his wife would also start talking. The cousin continued on talking to me-I wasn’t sure if I should look at him or her, sort of awkward-while his wife talked and then Maurice and she carried on a conversation. Yes, Dear Diary, three French speakers all talking at once. I think maybe I said three sentences in all and a few words scattered here and there. Luckily we had to catch a bus to get back up to Villefranche. I guess I got thrown into the deep end of the French swimming pool. I managed to float but not do any swimming, really.

They were discussing the world financial situation-especially the cousin-and American politics. Maurice and I had just seen the movie, Frost/Nixon, and I heard-some-of what they thought about American politics. I thought it was a great movie. I remember living through those days and being sort of ticked that Nixon never really said, “I’m so sorry America”. I think he was more sad that he got caught and couldn’t be the top man in America anymore. Anyway, I enjoyed how the movie was set up and seeing what the insiders were doing and thinking. Looking back on it, it was amazing that an English talk show host and entertainer was able to snare Nixon for those talks.

I’d like to go back to Nice on Monday to see the brochante. At least there is usually one on every Monday. There will either be just a few booths selling their wares or it will be packed by vendors hoping to make some money on the holiday weekend.

All photos taken from my apartment window in Villefranche.

In the village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, not far from Villefranche, is the Villa Grecque Kerylos. It was built by a Frenchman named Therodore Reinach. It’s a reconstruction of a palace dating from 2 B.C. modeled from those found on the island of Delos. I’m not sure why someone would want to live in a place resembling an ancient Greek residence, especially on the Cote d’Azure, even down to reclining on special couches to eat meals but there you go. All of the furniture was designed by the architect, most of it copied from ancient drawings and paintings from Greece. We were given audioguides and it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon wandering from room to room marveling at the lives of others. The Villa is now owned by the Institute de France in Paris, which Reinach belonged to in his lifetime.

The ceiling of the two story high main salon. All of the walls and ceiling were painted, many with Greek murals.

An ocean theme on the wall of the exterior atrium.

And, of course, a killer view. There wasn’t much of a garden compared to the Rothchild Villa that we visited but the ocean was much closer.

A bathtub carved out of marble. There were two of them, one in the huband’s bathroom, one in the wife’s. I remember reading that Oprah ordered a tub like this.

The water spouts made of silvered brass.

Dear Diary
As we get near the end of the second week I’m getting a little worried because I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress with my French. I’m sure I have but I find myself making the same mistakes over and over again, especially with those pesky irregular verbs. Every single time I have to conjugate and use the verb venir, darn if I forget to change it to vu in the passe composse. I’m waiting for it to come out naturally.

And, Dear Diary, I’m lonely too except when Maurice visits on the weekends. I’ve purposively kept myself separate from the other students. I talk, in French, with them during class, on breaks and at lunch but I’ve been very careful not to stay after class to chat. I know too well what can happen. In my very first French class, I couldn’t wait for class to end so I could talk with the other women in the class in English. We were almost all married to French men and were starved for someone to talk to, especially someone going through the same thing we were-life in Paris in a sea of French. I did the same thing with every single course that I took and then I would go home and speak in English with Maurice. This does not make you fluent. So this time, I decided to isolate myself. Not only that, I didn’t bring any books in English with me. I’m trying to totally immerse myself in French but sometimes I want to go find one of the nice ladies in my class and gab in English.

Today we walked into the grand salon and a large table was set up with a tray of six kinds of cheese, two bottles of red wine and some wine glasses. One of the instructors, Julian, gave us a talk on cheese. Where else would you get such a lecture but in France? We were told that the “Saint Trinity” in France are wine, cheese and bread. After the talk we actually got to have some cheese along with a little wine. My, I love French cheese.

All photos taken in Villefrance

Some photos from the interior of the Villa of Beatrice Rothchild. She designed it herself and had many objects shipped to her from all over the world. We realized, while there, that we could see the villa from my apartment over on the other side of the bay. It sits at the highest point on a hill and has a view on both sides of the ocean.

When you enter the villa you find yourself in a large room surrounded by a gallery and with the rooms along the sides. It reminded me of an Italian Villa or maybe something with a Spanish influence. She held huge parties and balls there. It can now be rented for weddings or huge parties.

I’m sure she bought this clock because it was pink.

This incredible ceiling was in a sort of foyer in her bedroom.

This disguised door led to the room for bathing.

They had this dress next to her bed. She loved to dress up as Marie Antoinette when she had guests. I’m just surprised that it wasn’t pink.

Her suitcase just for beauty products.

Dear Diary
I am now starting the second week here at the Instut de Francais. Monday seemed really hard-hard to get started thinking and speaking French in class again even though I did, mostly, speak French with Maurice while he was here on the weekend. We begin our days in the lab where we listen to French phrases in French and repeat them into a microphone -a process I find tiring and rather difficult. It’s hard to listen and repeat without interaction of any other kind. After going through the exercises the second time I finally start hearing and could repeat most of what I heard. The teacher listens in to each of us and I’m sometimes surprised when she says something to me when I’m trying hard to hear what is being said. She usually corrects some pronunciation. The lab has various names among the students, torture chamber being just one.
The second session is with another teacher and it is a discussion on a various activities such as phone calls and all of the special vocabulary that goes with that. Then another short class with more talking and using French with repetition. And, finally, lunch. We always have a teacher at our table to keep us on the straight and narrow although, really, everyone makes an effort to only speak French. I don’t hear people cheating. The teachers are good at correcting our French and helping us when we come to a complete halt unable to find the right French word which happens quite often. Someone can be plugging along trying to say something and then suddenly stop, gazing into space looking for a lost word. Sometimes it comes, sometimes not.

After lunch we have another teacher working on another area such as numbers or a verb tense. We get a thirty minute break, badly needed by then. Then back to our usual teacher for more talking and learning in French and we finally end at 4:45 (we start at 9). Tea is offered but I haven’t gone yet. I go back to my apartment for my own tea in peace and quiet. There is a French movie offered tonight but once I get in my apartment that’s it for me.

The only negative for me is the location of my apartment. It’s great for getting to the school-just two short minutes away-but getting to a grocery store, restaurant or pharmacy is an uphill aerobic workout. I think I’d rather be near the old village for the restaurants and shopping but I’m sure I would gripe about trudging uphill to class everyday. I’m so glad I don’t have to gripe about a whole lot of college students in the school. I’m not sure if they are here in great numbers in the summer, but the school I attended in Aix was just packed with them. On the whole, I really enjoy young people, Dear Diary, but there seemed to be some students who always arrived late even sometimes bearing potato chips in a noisy bag that they ate during class drowning out the teacher-some also did drugs and it was always obvious. I didn’t learn much at the school either. The teaching there just didn’t get through to me.

All photos taken in Villefranche

While attending French school here on the Cote d’Azure, we are free on the weekends. Maurice came down and one day we decided to take the bus and visit the Villa And Gardens of Beatrice de Rothschild in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. To say they are magnificant is an understatement. Beatrice had a passion for travel where she collected many things, a passion for pink which she often wore and her home was painted pink too, and a passion for her garden.

The front entrance.

The back of the villa as seen from the garden.

There were eight separate gardens all blended together. These were in the exotic garden. There was also a Spanish garden, Florentine, Stone, Japenese, Rose, French and Provencal gardens. There were fountains that came on with music every twenty minutes.

I took so many photos but I think I like this simple one the best. There’s just something pleasing about orange flowers against gray.