Today we took care of a task that we put off from yesterday, Deb wanted paper copies of our train tickets Paris to Amsterdam and the back from Amsterdam to Paris. They are sort of insurance if we lose my phone or it fails, because that’s where they reside. Given our seeming incompetence this trip, it seems like a reasonable precaution. And in truth, it’s been about an equal fight with the world this time. Taking the emails to a print shop, there was a very nice young man who was able to sort out what needed to be done. At 30 centimes a copy it was a bargain. Today followed yesterday in that it was chill and the wind made it seem colder.
Nonetheless we walked down to the promenade and found a couple beach chairs in the sun. The beach was very sparsely populated and those actually on it were in coats and mufflers. We have taken an interest in how the sea will change color based on what is happening in the sky. Today we had a sort of aquamarine strip that went out maybe 100 meters and abruptly changed to a dark blue. It was quite pretty and followed the curve of the seaside all along the bay. We sat until it was time for lunch and then went back to the apartment to eat.
The chicken we bought yesterday needed to be finished along with the open wine and some aging olives, etc. On the way we stopped at the boulangerie that I discovered just around the block. It has been kind of hidden from the street by construction scaffolding, but it will be my go to spot for bread. But on this occasion we bought a couple pastries to serve as our dessert. A chocolate eclair for Deb and an apple tart for me. They did have a blette tart but I’ll save that delicacy for another day. We also stopped for a jar of mayonnaise to go on our chicken sandwiches. Over the last day or two we’ve been concentrating on finishing up the little bits of left overs still in the refrigerator to make room for more. The service here is a little spotty but in the end we had a very nice little lunch. Frankly a couple days of simple meals will help the creeping waistline syndrome.
A few days ago we became aware of a museum of musical instruments that in all of France is second only to the one in Paris. Called the Palais Lascaris, it is housed in a 17th century ediface built for the Counts Lascaris-Vintimille. The Counts were the nephews of the 57th grandmaster of the Order of Malta, the knights of St. John. The family lost it in the French Revolution and it was basically derelict until the city bought in 1942. It has been restored and is now a national historic monument. Regarding the interior, the ground floor is given over to administrative offices and a temporary exhibition space. The next floor up has what probably were public reception rooms in the day. In these are a few examples of musical instruments, primarily harpsichords. The walls display portraits of the family predecessors and the ceilings are all frescoed. On the third level is where the bulk of the musical instruments are on display. These lean heavily to early violins and violas, guitars, harps, and more harpsichords. One eccentricity of the house
is how the doors are mounted. Some genius carpenter figured out how to make hinges such that when the door was closed the bottom of the door was close fitting to the floor. But when the door was opened the hinge pivoted such that the free side of the door was raised above any sort of obstruction that may have been on the floor, like carpeting. Having been to both musical museums now I have to say that this one is a very distant second. But if one adds in the building and rooms they are displayed in, it substantially closed the gap. And for us the chance to see the interiors of these historic buildings is an opportunity too good to let pass. The day was winding down when we finished our tour so we took time to walk through the old part of the city on some streets that we had not walked previously. As we came out of a small alley directly across the street was a wine shop.
Deb has been searching for some of the specialty liquors that are produced in this area so we went it to see if they carried any. The one she was hunting is called ‘Rhin Quin Quin’, and they did carry it though only in 750ml bottles. We don’t want a bottle from hell to be transported all over Europe so for the immediate future it’s off the table. However, ‘il est arrive’, the Beaujolais Nouveau came out a couple days ago and is being offered in the restaurants. That we can handle because it won’t be going anywhere but down the gullet. The restaurants are offering it up at 8 euros a glass but for only 9.5 euros one can have an entire bottle. And I’m pretty sure that this is likely a better example too. The proprietaire and his assistant were very nice, they asked us where we were from and we told them Colorado. The younger one amazed us by knowing all about the sports teams in Denver; the Broncos, the Nuggets and Jokic, the Rockies (how horrible they were), and the Avalanche. He could remember Elway very well, so we told him about Nix and how he might become the next great Bronco quarterback. Once again we get a lesson in what a small world we live in, for all its differences.
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