My Eyes Are Bigger Than My Stomach: How I Ate Everything In Nice

Warning: I’m about to indulge in a little layman’s foodie talk again. I apologize in advance to those who don’t care enough about food to put too much thought into it (which was me until recently), and also to those who are far beyond my level in food appreciation. I just think that food is such an important part of a region’s culture, so it would be fruitless to have a travel blog and investigate other cultures if I skipped this part.
             Our culinary experience in France had been fairly . We have been hugging the southern coast for most of the trip, so sushi from locally sourced fish was a necessity. Baguettes have been a constant savior: a quick and easy breakfast, a thank-you-for-your purchase at the convenience store (I love France). And one rather funny experience: my significant other has an affinity for beer, as individuals of his gender are wont to have, and he has been enjoying the super cheap local beer from the area. In Marseille, however, he got more than he could handle when he asked for a “Monaco”, thinking that it was a brand of beer from Monaco perhaps. When the waiter arrived with a tall glass of pink liquid, he stared in awe for a minute and then started for the bar to clear up the confusion. I read the menu more closely, and saw that a Monaco is actually beer with lemonade and grenadine. My boyfriend decided that it would be better off for him to skip the beer rather than be caught consuming a pink one. It really would not have even tasted too bad if it weren’t for the grenadine. It was pretty much a grown up shirly temple.
              Today however has been my stomach’s favourite day of my adventure so far. The hostel that we are staying at has 12 different types of cereal for breakfast (between the “Le Petit Prince” décor and the fun cereal AND coffee, housed in a common room/bar that used to be a chapel, this is probably one of the most interesting wake-ups I have ever had travelling). After breakfast, we headed down for the hostel the Vieux Nice, walked the Promenade de Anglais, and climbed one of Louis XIV’s old forts. Thankfully, we worked up quite an appetite.
             For lunch we continued on to the Port in Nice and found a little sandwich shop to try pan bagnat, which loosely translates to ‘wet bread’. I am thinking that this sounds super unappealing to most people, but my Italian grandmother always makes me this Italian specialty called ‘a chaled’ or ‘manzanella’, which is basically baked stale bread, wet, drizzled with olive oil and tomotoes, but its so good. Pan bagnat seems to be the French equivalent of this: a bun or baguette stuffed with tomatoes, tuna, olives, anchovies, and dripping olive oil. I really disliked olives before this trip, but I am actually obsessed with different types and tastes of olive oil just two weeks in. My partner and I split a sandwich to try it, but were still hungry so we found another little stand that was selling ‘socca’, another Nice specialty. Socca is pretty much a crepe of chick pea flour and olive oil. The socca was cut off a pizza tray and warmed in an oven, and coated in salt and pepper. My favourite part was the sheer amount of it for 3 euro! Best deal in Nice. We nibbled a little, saving the rest for later, and continued on to the Museum of Modern Art Contemporaire (pretty underwhelming after the Reina Sofia in Madrid,  a pretty easy comparison to the Hamilton Art Gallery.)
             For dinner, we sat on a warm patio in Old Nice. I have discovered that patios automatically make anything taste good. I ordered ‘petit farcis nicoise’, stuffed mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini on a plate of tomato sauce, and my partner ordered ‘salad nicoise’, which seemed to be ‘pan bagnat’ without the bun: lettuce with tuna, anchovies, cucumbers, tomatoes and olives. We were both so full after dinner, but I just had been talking about a specific ice cream shop all day, so I finally bullied my boyfriend into going there. This was not procrastin-eating, or emotional eating, or hungry eating. This was eating because I am in the South of France and who knows when I will be back?
             We wandered through the winding streets and shops of Vieux Nice until we found it: the best ice crem shop in the world. Fennochio—featuring more than 50 different flavours of ice cream. They had an entire panel of chocolate flavours (chocolate pepper to almond biscuit with icing), fruit flavours (rhubarb to pear), flower flavours (rose, lavender and jasmine) and more bizarre flavours like tomato-basil, olive, beer and thyme. My partner chose orange chocolate on baileys, while I chose kinder surprise on cacao.
             The cuisine is only a small part of the reason why France is so far my favourite country in Europe. There does not even seem to be a single reason that I can ever put my finger on. The only common denominator that I can find when I think about it is the passion that the French infuse into every aspect of life is something that I admire. 

Take Me To The Riot

            As we were arriving in our hostel in Marseille, a man came running past us yelling, “the election results are on”, and crowded around the television. Sarkozy is out. Hollande, and socialism, is in. We asked a French man watching the results what he thought of the news, and he said, “I had a really hard time getting here. I am glad that it has changed. Now it will not be so hard for my friends.” Another man says that he knows people working in Paris who have been submitting millions of euro in fake invoices over the past months to try to cover up what Sarkozy supposedly stole over the years. We realized how lucky we were to have ended up in France today of all days. We quickly threw down our bags in our locker and went back to the TV. The people watching asked if we wanted to join, but we heard cheers and honking erupting in the streets. So we followed our ears.
             Soon enough, the flares in the sky led us to the crowd gathering directly in front of Marseille’s Vieux Port. Fireworks, flares, lighters and flamables, signs, and poster flew in the sky. Horns, cheers, yells, whistles rang through the streets. People poured onto the sidewalks, and then finally, all at once, through the wonder of group think, poured onto the street. Police were on the scene, fully decked in their riot gear, but they did not try to intervene. Instead, they let the people have the street, and set up blockades at either end of the street to prevent traffic from coming through.  
             I climbed up on a cement divider to try to photograph the scene, and quickly realized that my shots were not translating what was happening truly, as it was in the air. It was an intangible feeling that permeated everyone around in Marseille. An elderly lady walked in the opposite direction of the crowds and said in French, “It is good you are recording it. Change needs to be recorded.”
             Internalizing this scene, I try to imagine such excitement over a change in political leadership in Canada. Another fellow Canadian at the hostel stated that she “riots over sporting events, not politics”. This quite succinctly summed up Canada’s mild political climate. In a sense, I feel lucky enough to live in a country where the degree of misery over political leadership never stoops too low such that an election would elicit rioting in the streets. At the same time, I am also lucky to be in a country that is passionate about politics on the day of seemingly revolutionary election.            
             As I write this now, the celebration in the streets is changing; a darker side of the crowd is manifesting itself. The bars have stayed open late. The crowds and cheering have turned rowdy. Not that there was any semblance of order before; but now the scene is decidedly more chaotic. People are jumping on the hoods of cars, breaking things. A local states that “in Marseille, the crowds start spontaneously… but they often end in fighting.”
             It is hard not to be optimistic while drunk on the atmosphere of mass celebration; however, logic and rational thought must follow eventually. I am not an expert on political science, nor am I student of economics, but I wonder about the repercussions of electing a socialist President for France right now, in the world’s fragile economic state, and right here, in one of the countries that is essential to the redemption of the world’s economy.
             Conversely, a change of leadership might be what is necessary to help Europe out of its rut, rather than more of the same. Listening to the excitement in the streets, I know that at least for tonight, the French are sure that this change can only be a sign of the great things to come.