On day 3, I exceeded expectations on trying to became French by eating all the French foods. And also, I ate something that a) should not have been eaten and b)I will never eat again. As soon as it happened, we both screamed, “well, this will be a great blog post!”
The day started nicely - we walked around more. We went back to the beach and got our toes in the water. It was perfect. I couldn’t help but notice the women on the beach were perfectly golden. The Mediterranean skin! So lovely. And then, we had our first nude beach experience. And when I say ‘we’ I mean me. I assumed Jason saw her too, because he was standing right next to me looking in the same direction. But later when I excitedly said, “man! We went to the nude beach today!” Jason was like, “what???”
We stopped at this lovely outdoor cafe for lunch and there was a guy playing the guitar and singing. This is really all I need to convince me to sit down and enjoy the day.
Now, generally speaking, the portion sizes are exactly right. So, with that in mind, I ordered a starter of fried smelts and a Caesar salad. Wouldn’t you know somehow both of these things were large? Anyway, the singer was so terrific. I kept saying, “he must be American. He spoke English with no accent. He sang in Enlish perfectly.” But then, he also sang and talked in French perfectly. As it went on, I started to think- oh man, the perfect scenario here would be if he sang La Vie en Rose. Guess what? Sometimes you win.
So there I am. Drinking this gorgeous French Chardonnay. Eating delicious food. Sitting outside in this tiny French Riviera town hearing someone sing La Vie En Rose. I have peaked.
We later found out that he was born in Paris but his mother was American. What a delight!
Oh, I forgot to mention that the rest of the wedding crew went to Cannes for the day. We opted out because Antibes was so cool we hadn’t yet exhausted the fun we could have right there.
Anyway, later in the day we were back at the apartment and decided to assemble some things to eat for dinner. We had remnants of yesterday’s wine and then more foie gras, bread, a Brie, some Spanish ham…and last time we were at the grocery I picked up some real butter for our baguette.
When I opened the little rectangle of butter covered in gold foil, just like we package our butter pats here, we both said, “ohhhh.” And not because it looked delicious. But mostly because it was gray. And…somehow sort of chunky? But, nothing can deter me from eating things I shouldn’t eat. So I said, ‘well, that’s weird but I’m going to eat it.” Jason said, “babe.”
I smeared some onto my baguette slice and it didn’t exactly smear. It just sort of…plastered? I smelled it again and I thought - this isn’t right. But it also wasn’t wrong, if that makes sense. unfortunately, I’ve eaten rancid butter before so I’m acquainted with the smell and the taste. This wasn’t that. So I thought, well, how bad can it be?
When I ate the piece of bread, the texture surprised me. It sort of spread out and kind of just wrapped itself around my tongue and mouth. It was very unbuttery. In no way was it butter. But this also did not stop me from trying to eat it.
About this time, I looked at the little golden rectangle. I saw the French words written there. My brain started to do its thing in trying to interpret the writing. I know a lot of words in a lot of languages. What was this?? For whatever reason, at exactly the same time, we both realized what it was.
I was, in fact, at that exact moment, enjoying an entire mouthful of baker’s yeast smeared onto my lovely French baguette.
As I realized it, I also noticed my mouth starting to foam. I was creating an amazing starter in there, apparently. At this time, I felt it was safe to abandon course and I spit the whole thing out into the trash.
So, man. That happened. I never cease to amaze myself.
We went to bed excited for the next day. The wedding! The yacht!
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