Yesterday morning, as I write this, I got up early and went to a nearby hotel in Nice with my mother to take a half-day tour of the area, with the big appeal–for us at least–of visiting the microstate of Monaco. And that we did, although the trip ended up being a bit more complicated than had originally been planned, and we missed out on seeing the border town on the Italian side of Moutin because we were so late by the time we got through Monte Carlo, for a variety of reasons. Our adventuring party include one Nice guide who spoke several languages–including English, Spanish, French, and Danish–and who conveyed enough of his nature to have had some stature as a writer, to have lived in Miami for some years and have a permanent resident card to the United States, and also to have a Danish ex-wife and a son who is now fifteen and lives with his mother. We also had a Hispanic couple from Chicago, my mother and I, a couple from Romania who were living in Denmark but did not appear to speak Danish well–and the wife did not speak English very well, and a couple from Singapore.

After gathering everyone together, we set off from Nice to drive to the heights above the city and look down upon the unusual shade of blue that give the area its name of the Cote d’Azur, where one could see the influence that the wealthy tourists and expatriates of la belle epoque had on the city of Nice and its development. We then went off to a perfume factory, where we went on a tour that showed how it is that this particular perfumer created their perfumes, and we had samples to smell of their various options before people happily bought bottles of perfume in one of four grades or other scented items and got their VAT rebates, before it was off to do some hiking. My mother found a restaurant to sit at that was not happy to have her as a guest, but finally sold us a bottle of water and a can of Fanta so that we could have something to drink after I had hiked and my mother had found herself feeling a bit dehydrated. I found myself that the area greatly dehydrated me, and despite my best efforts it was simply hard to get enough water to feel alright in the heat, especially with all the hiking involved.

By this time the trip had already been delayed by two of our members–the Romanian couple–being lost and going to the wrong location, as well as by the terrible traffic, and it was time to head on to Monte Carlo. As my mother was not equipped for this hike, and was pretty well exhausted after she had climbed the stairs, and was pretty much unable to walk more than a little bit the rest of the day, which proved to be a problem later on, we stayed near the Oceanautical museum and then visited Monte Carlo to see people enter and leave the casino and fawn over the cars nearby. Monaco’s level of crowding simply has to be seen to be believed, as its streets are narrow and there is just about no space between buildings, with very limited parking as one might well imagine. The opulence there is similarly over the top, enough so to be a bit off-putting. Indeed, throughout the whole trip I wondered how it was that the ordinary people depended on to work in these areas found a place to live. The whole coast is made for rich people, and moreover rich people who did not want to work. But people who work need places to live too, and it is a distressing thing to live in the face of opulence while one is struggling to get by, the sort of thing that can easily turn into bitterness and poisonous envy. It left me with much to ponder and think about.

When we returned back to the center of the city of Nice, which is beautiful in its own somewhat crowded way, my mother and I sought to go back to the hotel via the tram in order to save some money, which did not end up working out quite as well as planned because it was hard to get to the hotel from the tram, as one had to know the precise street to do so and my mother’s walking was extremely limited because of the painful state of her own feet, so after an exhausting hike we had to return to the hotel via another taxi and then had to turn around and leave for the airport right away, find some food–which did not prove to be easy because no one eats at sane or reasonable hours in the afternoon–and then get on our flight to Ajaccio, where instead of a luxuriant place inhabited by the wealthy and famous and powerful, we found a quirky small town that happens to be the hometown of one Napoleon Bounaparte, conqueror of much of Europe. But that exploration must await another time.