Tu vuo fa l'Americano...

May 31-June 02

We had our last class with Nate on Thursday! He had to fly back for the Peabodies—which we all understand and which many of us hope to pull some strings and attend next year—and we’ll miss him this next week despite a lineup of fun meetings with Allison. We read a few reviews of the more popular movies, but then Nate called on me to read my write-up of Les Chansons d’Amour to bring a French one into the mix. I was pretty nervous, because it was my first review and pretty awkwardly written, but even though I skipped around and stuttered a bit it seemed like everyone liked it OK. After a lot of sarcastic reviews, mine had some self-effacing humor that made my point without being mean, and it was a goofy enough movie to get a few people interested in seeing it.

I wanted to go into Cannes at least one more time, so after a few meetings with Charley several people joined me on a pilgrimage. It rained and tried to make us feel sad for the now un-decorated town, but Cannes has a lot of character anyway. Tolu and I watched me eat/ate a salad at FNAC before meeting everyone else at Subway, and then we wandered around the few stores that had souvenirs for the film fest. Lots of knock-offs for some of the kids’ parents and friends, and a new issue of Empire for me for a well-worth-it 7.80 euro. We got back around 6 and everyone had to write the rest of the night to finish up the final two reviews (!).

Friday took Tolu and me to Italy! We had heard about an outdoor flea market in Ventimiglia, the last stop on the French train and the first city across the border, and shopping fanatics as we are we could not pass it up. It cost 13 euro for a roundtrip ticket and 1:30 hours each way, but the trip was too fun! The train snakes up the coast past Antibes, Nice, and Monaco, so we got tons of beautiful pictures of ritzy beach houses and mountains falling into the sea (all, sadly, with the mark of bird crap that was on my train window :P).

Ventimiglia was a very interesting little town. There were liquor stores seriously every two steps, with cute little “Eurodrink” signs and bottles upon bottles of grappa and limoncello and absinthe (but no Jager!). We also saw a ton of groceries each with their own special Nutella snacks: a weekly pack of seven mini Nutella jars labeled for each day of the week, a bottle with a section of orange juice to drink with your Nutella, and a 3 kilo boulder of Nutella with a golden lid for 22 euros. The best grocery shopping took place in a three-aisle, covered farmer’s market, where you can find every possible kind of produce for really cheap (wish I got either those figs or the red bell peppers the size of my head!). The open-air market stretched up the beach, and while we got some nice views of the hills of Ventimiglia in the distance there was little good shopping to be found. Tolu got two jerseys of some of her favorite soccer players and an incredibly cute I-don’t-know-what-to-call-it outfit that looks kind of like overalls but club worthy, we both tried about every nasty-ass type of bitter Fanta the Italians have come up with, and I gorged myself on a huge piece of focaccia before we caught a train home in the rain.

Today was the first day completely open to my wanderlust, and after getting up at a leisurely 10 am I caught a morning train to Cannes. Sadly, after all of my gushing about the amazing white trenchcoat, I came to my senses (or just got enough buyer’s remorse/need for the extra 80 euros) and returned it. It was fun to see Cannes again on a sunny day, with nothing but locals milling around in no kind of film-industry rush. I felt like the heaviest weight had been lifted off me with the 80 euros restored to my credit card; I had stopped by my favorite store, Les Freres Mariages (a tea shop), just to do some window-licking, but when I saw that the tea I liked was 13 euros instead of 18 I bought some, guilt-free!

I got a ticket back to JLP, but I remembered making plans to get lunch with Kaison and Tolu in Nice and decided to just ride a little further than I had paid for. They actually got on the same train with me and we had a good 30-minute ride up the coast, and then we went to *~*KFC*~*! Ah, how wonderful it was to return to civilization (or, at least, capitalism)! No mashed potatoes or biscuits or macaroni & cheese or anything too Southern, but my chicken tenders and fries made a little oasis of Southern-style comfort for me amid all the yelling French teenagers. Oh yeah, we had found Ryan and Jill on the train, and in exchange for my “curry sauce” (spicy French-fry dip) Ryan gave me some extra ketchup, so I really went to town.

Tolu was mad excited to go shopping for cheap and awesome clothes at H & M. It was just a few steps down the strange rue Jean Medecin (lots of pretty old six-story buildings, but under construction in the middle and very cluttered), and when we got there all of the shoppers in the Cote d’Azur had already descended upon the little three-story shop. After a while I knew I wasn’t going to buy any more clothes, so Kaison and I left Tolu to her devices and went two doors down to FNAC. Oh. my. god. Love! Pure and simple, I could live at FNAC. This one was FIVE STORIES and lit with strange red blacklights, achieving the look of a fancy bordello. I am a technology ho, after all, so I drank in all of the plasma TVs and French video games and even the BDs on the top floor. Got to remember though that the quaint, rooftop-café variety of FNAC in Cannes still holds a very special place in my heart, but I truly lost my FNAC virginity today when I *~*bought the Chansons d’Amour soundtrack*~*. Tolu, after rejoining us, got pictures of every stage of my purchase (freaking out in line, saying hi to the cashier, pulling out my money, and getting a receipt), which I will make you look at once I see you in person.

Bill, Laura, and Mandy, as well as Ryan and Jill on their own, met us to trek over to the Virgin Megastore. Pretty, and much lighter, but not as awesome as FNAC. It had a weird, smoky café full of fancy-looking people sitting with their dogs. INDOORS. The French are weird. They were even weirder at Nicetoile, the four-story indoor mall closer to the train station. No shops that were particularly cool (I told Jill later that it was more Gwinnett Place than Lenox Square), but Kaison and I had fun getting fancy soft-serve from a chocolate store, seeing both a monster-sized baby in a carriage and a four-year-old with a pacifier in a home goods store, and looking for strange teapots. The rain eventually drove us out of Nice too, but I will be back tomorrow to see the old city and find the gelato shop with beer-flavored ice cream.