Getting Started

My first step in escaping to France: deciding when to go and for how long. On both these questions there are a number of considerations. Sure, the best time to travel, hands down, is early fall or late spring, but then there’s that whole winter—rather, that how to avoid winter—question. So the answer is clear. Escape all those frigid, snowy, icy, not to mention grey, days in Canada (and much of North America) and go in the winter.

But, head straight for the south of France. And, sadly, that does not mean Provence where, contrary to what many people think, it can be pretty bitter in January, even in that infamous clear sunshine. (Of course, it wouldn’t seem so cold if I could have somehow figured out how to heat up the house above 14 degrees Celsius. Those wonderful thick stone walls seem infinitely less charming by the time Christmas rolls around. Wood fireplaces are really tiresome, I don’t care what anyone says. And turning on a few electric heaters is like taking out a mortgage.)

Daytime highs in Nice and Menton in January are often around 15 degrees, and since there is not much wind, you can even eat lunch outside (on the Cour Saleya, near the Promenade des Anglais, at the wonderful Monday flea market, but more on that later.) The only thing is that once here, I end up never wanting to leave the region during the winter. We have sometimes taken off to Paris for a few days, but there is nothing colder, and more dreary, than a rainy winter day in Paris. You start thinking how boringly, uniformly grey and grim all the buildings look, and ask yourself why it is that people want to come here at all. Of course, if you watch the television news, you will be warned away from heading up to Paris during the winter anyway, with the frequent reports about the terrible “vague de froid” sweeping France, when temperatures lurk shockingly around the freezing point, and there is as much as an inch of snow on the ground. No, the Cote d’Azur is the place to be in winter, as the English (and the Russians) figured out over a century ago.

The “when” question answered, the next matter is the “for how long”. As long as you can manage, of course. Here, however, many obstacles will be put in your way, particularly by your friends, at least if they are as punitive, and grinchy, as some of mine. After all, what right do you have to try and escape the particular hell they have all so carefully created around them? They will try anything. First, you should be working as hard as they are, preferably in as hideous and stress-laden an environment as they have managed to establish. Forget your protestations that you are willing to forego some of the wonderful consumer accoutrements that their continual striving has managed to land them—renovated kitchen and bathroom (again), new car, plasma TV (whatever that is), great wardrobe. The next line of attack is how irresponsible, indeed, heartless you are being, to extricate yourself even for a short time from your old parents, grown children, extended family, and especially them, these same friends.

I go through all of this each time we decide to head off, and it doesn’t ever get easier. In fact, the friends just develop more and more sophisticated and subtle lines of attack, which I don’t seem to get any more adept at fending off. But so what. We’re going away, and soon all of that will be left behind (until the emails and phone calls and, of course, all the bitter recriminations upon our return—“Oh, you weren’t here for that, Oh, you missed that, Oh, it’s too late now for you to do X about that”.) Hang in, and remember you are going away, to France.

Introductory Note

I first spent an extended period in France in 1986-87. Of course, I had visited a few times before, first discovering Europe on a whirlwind, and low-budget, trip between my first and second years of law school. But it was in the summer of 1986 that my spouse and I packed up our four children (ranging in age from almost 16 to 2) and headed to Haute Provence to spend a year. It was a sabbatical for Jim and, for me, a somewhat justifiable excuse to temporarily escape from the legal career (of sorts) that I was already finding quite daunting.

Our plans for our arrival were as mad as the adventure (one often to be repeated, as it turned out) we were embarking on. After all, who would not, with four children, two strollers, two car seats, fifteen suitcases, and a few boxes of books, first make a detour to London, then take the train to Luxembourg, then pick up a van and spend a few weeks traveling through France in the height of summer before ending up at the place we had rented for the year (about 20 miles north of Carpentras in the valley of the Mont Ventoux)?


It was a love affair from the start. Our 400 year old house (a mixed blessing, as it turned out) looked onto a lush valley of fruit trees and vineyards. The tiny village, made up of several hameaux, had several (but not too many) foreigners, like ourselves, and even an English lending library (very fortunate, given that the closest English bookstore was about 70 miles away in Aix-en-Provence). There were over a dozen artists as well, French and foreigner—some better than others, most amateur, but all keen.


Schooling was soon resolved, helped by the fact that in France, everyone has the right to send their kids to school, wherever they come from (unless, of course, the government in power tries to expel them). Our oldest balked at the idea of being thrown into the local high school, ten miles away in Vaison la Romaine, so we sent him to the Universite d'Avignon (two hours each way by bus) where he learned how to smoke and spout left-wing ideology (in French). Our second oldest bravely attended the tiny village one-room school where she was the oldest student, and soon picked up not only French but the Provencal accent. The third one got fired into that most wonderful of French institutions, the maternelle, where she spent all day and was served a hot lunch (for the grand sum of two dollars a day). Angry at us for about three months (it's hard for a very verbal person not to be able to communicate) she ultimately resigned herself to her fate, and threw herself feverishly into aping every other child in the valley. And the youngest, just under two, was regularly dropped into the very maternal and efficient hands of the women of the local garderie, where he was finally forced to become toilet-trained. At about a dollar an hour, and available when we chose (even at the last minute), this was a godsend.


So amazing was our life here that we returned for two more years, when leaves could be arranged or sabbaticals arrived (with fewer children, of course, as the older ones headed off to university). My spouse wrote books—on Europe, on North America (finding being away from the scene very inspiring). We traveled a lot and entertained seemingly thousands of visitors. Tell people you are going to live in Provence for a year in an old stone house and everyone lines up to come. One year we had 35 visitors (not counting a few repeats). When we weren't picking up and dropping off people at the train station ( Avignon) or airport (Marseilles), we explored all the restaurants in the region, from high end to down home. Naturally, we also trawled the wineries, cheese stores, monasteries (for eau de vie, of course) and ceramics studios (with Patricia Wells as a spiritual mentor) .


One year, when we thought (wrongly, of course) that we had exhausted our local area, we rented an apartment in Menton for six months during the winter, with our two youngest. It was an entirely different scene. Instead of the bucolic beauty of Provence, in its pale earthy tones, there was the riot of color of the Cote d'Azur. Our apartment looked out over the exquisite blue-green water of the Mediterranean (from a few hundred meters up). Italy was literally a block away, Monaco (and the casino) twenty minutes by car, and just beyond were Nice, Antibes and Cannes. Here we were urban, but also anonymous. No more baskets of freshly picked melons and cherries left at the terrasse gate by the neighbor, no more snakes or hand-made bamboo guns passed through the window to us, as we coasted along the dirt road home from school, by another 85 year old friend. But beautiful, and lush, with lemons and oranges, and brilliant purple bougainvillea flowers blooming, in winter! And no mistral, that powerful wind that sweeps down the Rhone valley (often for days, in multiples of three, or so the locals say).


Since that first year we have returned to Menton (and, for shorter visits, to Haute Provence), for brief escapes from the increasingly less appealing Canadian winter. Now there are no more children in tow, to be persuaded (or forced) to attend the local school. I am no longer toiling away in the law firm (each day overcome with fear of the negligence lawsuit that must surely be my fate). I have published a book about one of the passions I picked up during all those years in France, called "Exploring the Flea Markets of France". It has sold reasonably well; what a thrill to see it occasionally in a bookstore in Paris. Currently I am trying to write a book about the Fifties in North America, inspired by my insanely huge, and overwhelming, collection of Fifties kitchenware and other memorabilia. (Not surprisingly perhaps, my obsession with French collectibles spilled over to North America on my return, with Church rummage sales and charity shops filling in for those beloved French flea markets.)


And now we are about to embark on yet another long sojourn to France, again to Menton (thanks to yet another sabbatical for my spouse). And to the same bright, airy apartment (but where nobody in the building ever says more than hello). I've got big plans, to really take my French up a notch (seriously, this time), hike, explore, take Italian lessons, work on my book, visit places in France I have never seen, and write this blog. I'm hoping to make it a daily account of life in France, a place where one can have extraordinary, inspiring, hilarious, frustrating and downright hideous experiences all in the same day. Maybe it will give you some tips—if only as a "cautionary tale"—for your own travels to France. So here goes.