going to Italy for lunch

I write this flying along the Mediterranean coast of Southern France on the TGV. Its nearly 18h00 (6pm) on the opening weekend of Nice’s Carneval. My seat faces the opposite direction we are traveling, leaving me to look back towards my latest adventures while the red rock and villa strewn coast line of the deep blue Mediterranean zips past me in reverse. The setting sun dances colors off the craggy red rocks and white sand beaches, while an all to eager moon already sits full on its fast climb high into the sky. The sky is a clear blue with a few strings of purple clouds stretched across the sky. The pale blue of the sky is a nice backdrop for the shadows on the moon’s face and the orange purples hanging low above the horizon. Rarely does the TGV stop and it’s incredibly smooth slowing and accelerating is barely noticeable.


This morning I woke in the mountains behind Nice at my cousin’s house. He was jetting off to Switzerland for work and I was thinking that I wanted pasta for lunch. So, I decided to head to Italy, the home of pasta. The Italian border is mere minutes from Nice on an old commuter train so I boarded it and set off on my Pasta-driven quest. My realization of barely knowing the language wasn’t brought to my attention until I started up a conversation with some other Americans who came from Seattle and were traveling along the Italian coast for 2 weeks. They saw me speak French and asked if I knew Italian. My Italian, I told them, is limited to the names of pasta dishes and a few designers. We talked standing in the space between 2 crowded cars as the old train rocked back and forth on its way across the French-Italian border. A quick 20 minutes later, I arrived at Ventimiglia, a small Italian border town on a beautifully rocky coast. I had been told to check out the indoor market, so after depositing my backpack in a very suspect lock room, I left the station and made my first step out under the beautiful Italian sun en route to the market. Weaving my way between stalls of bulging red strawberries, barrels of aromatic spices and tables of freshly made flour-covered pasta I heard laughter and snippets of conversations in both French and Italian. The market was crowded with as many French people as Italians (the French frequent the markets of Italy to take advantage of the significantly less expensive produce) and I loved it. Leaving the market I head for the beach. There was commotion ahead of me and I saw a very new helicopter take off as a very old fire engine drove off along side it. It is this mix of old and new that I have found so appealing about Europe’s Mediterranean coast.

The beach was covered in small rocks long smoothed flat by the lapping waves of the ocean. The Mediterranean is not an ocean that is prone to noticeable tides so it was clear how far up the beach the small waves came. As I walked along the beach, picking up flat stones to skip in the surf, I would often stop to admire small pieces of green, pink and yellow sea glass rubbed smooth just like the flat stones that they rested with. Not hungry yet and with nothing on my mind, I skipped stones for nearly an hour as I watched sea birds fly low above the water stopping to rest on small rocks jutting out of the water. Every so often an old couple would walk past stopping to say hi to me. The men would be in tweed coats and hats while the womyn would have large sun glasses with billowy fur (or faux-fur, I couldn’t tell the difference) coats tightened around them against the cool sea breeze. I, meanwhile, was sweating under my sweater and loosely tied scarf. I left the water’s edge to continue on my walk on the passegiata (walk way) along the beach. The sun had yet to reach it’s noonday peak and the passegiata was largely filled with old couples. Old men sat talking on benches or leaning against the railing, smiling at me as I past (we were all dressed largely the same, one of them commented on my black newsboy hat, but as he was saying more than the names of Italian menu items, I didn’t really understand his complement completely). Groups of bright spandex clad cyclists would zip past on the street shouting Italian words of encouragement (I think) to each other. I aimlessly walked for quite a while, peeping at the menus of the various restaurants that dotted the beach. The restaurants were just starting to open for the day but as I wasn’t hungry yet, none of them looked too appealing. I eventually turned back on the passegiata to head back to the center of town (I had gone far into the residential area), fishermen were now pulling their boats in for the day and I watched them unload their catches from their small bright wooden boats. I watched 2 men pull fish out of their small red wooden boat and carry it up to a small cart on the street where a crowd had already formed. The fish were still alive as the man at the cart sold them to the people waiting. I kept walking to a destination I didn’t have and soon my feet carried me cross a bridge into an older part of town built around a small hill with an old church perched on top. I trekked to the top, at some point gathering a crazy old womyn who clucked and mooed as she tailed me up the slope. I would stop to take photos of the vue and she would stop a few feet behind me continuing with her farmyard reenactments. She eventually tired of me and my photo taking, and with a final “cluck,” she turned to walk down a steep side street. I walked past the church over the hill of the old town and found myself above another part of the beach. By now a hunger was starting to growl in my stomach and I could see 2 beach front restaurants down below. I followed the street around the hill to the beach waiting down below. The first restaurant that I had spotted from the hilltop town had a gorgeous white terrace outside that rested right above the beach. People were dressed very well and all smiling amidst their conversations. They were old French people and old Italians. I knew that the restaurant would be high for my tight student budget but as I had finally found the destination of my day’s wanderings I sat down and ordered a fresh seafood plate, gelato, bread, wine and a plate of parmesan dusted gnocchi in red sauce. Sitting on the sparkling white terrace under the afternoon Italian sun, I looked out across the Mediterranean’s soft waves and settled in to enjoy my delicious lunch in Italy.