Friday, May 24, 2013

An anxious goodbye, and not all crepes are created equal

Our final full day in Europe started out with a little breakfast omelette down at the "da Aristide." I needed the energy since I had to schlep up the hill to the car that I parked on the street while carrying my camera backpack and one of our duffels. Let me tell you that it was much easier coming down the hill with no bags than hiking up with 45lbs of gear. As I walked up the hill, a tour bus ready to disgorge its passengers pulled in to the upper parking area. Yikes, I had to really get on it if we were going to load the car and get out of town while the streets were still relatively empty.

We got the car loaded and got out of town before the horde of locusts descended on "our" Cinque Terre. It was a pretty easy drive to Nice. I am continually impressed by the viaduct-tunnel-viaduct system on the coastal motorway. The engineering and surveying work required to get all those roadways to line up is amazing; especially when the roads are curving and changing their elevation.

After fumbling around finding the hotel (including one aborted attempt at the wrong "Novotel" which included a full unload of all the baggage), we finally got checked into our "2 room suite" (where the "rooms" are formed by sliding dividers, not actual walls) and I left to get the car washed and dropped of at the "TT Auto Transport" office at the airport. I found everything OK and parked the car, but to my shock and concern, no one was at the desk waiting to accept my turn-in. I had no idea what to do. I waited around for about 10 minutes, called the number (no answer), knocked on the door behind the counter, and was about to call my CA back in the states when a woman politely, but directly (in that French way), asked me to step out from behind the counter. Whew! Relief. Evidently, the man with whom I made the appointment failed to put me on the day's drop-off schedule. Good thing that there were two other ED drop-offs scheduled for that day or they may have called it a weekend.

Unfortunately, during the walk-around, we noticed some very minor curb rash on the right front wheel and some superficial scratches (like from brushing up against very stiff vegetation or very lightly rubbing concrete) on the right-front corner of the front bumper. I sure hope that doesn't delay my redelivery. I sent a note with the pics to my CA asking him his advice.

Since it was still fairly early, we decided to take the bus into the center city and stroll around "Vieux Nice" and try to find a place to eat. Angela had a craving for crepes, so that's what we looked for. Our first place had sweet and savory crepes as well as "doner's" (which I had a craving for). My "doner kebap" was excellent (of course, I was pretty hungry by then, so that might just be the hunger talking), but Angela's crepe with nutella and bananas wasn't up to scratch. Onward...

We walked along the Promenade des Anglais; amongst the stalls that get set up in the old flower market area, and through the warren of narrow streets that is "Vieux Nice." Stop #2 for crepes was a place called "L'Abbaye," where I got a savory crepe with ham, cheese, and eggs, and Angela got one with ham, cheese, onions and mushrooms. The crepe batter here was a wheat flour-based one, and Angela didn't like it at all. I actually liked the "buckwheat" style crepe, but we didn't even attempt to order a sweet crepe, even though there were a couple on the menu that looked quite tasty. Strike 2. Our final attempt was at this place called "Pinocchio" that sold crepes and gelato. I got a dark chocolate filled crepe and Angela got one with mixed fruits; except that it came out as just a plain crepe with all the fruits on top of, not cooked in, the crepe. Strike 3. You're out.

We got back to the hotel a little before 9 and finished our packing. Tomorrow is a very early morning for Angela and me. We have a 4:15 wakeup for a 6:30 flight to Frankfurt. I did manage to blow a circuit breaker trying to plug my US mini-power strip into a 240V adapter so that we could charge all of our iOS devices at once. It even took out our door locks.

No comments:

Post a Comment