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Eat Club Med Cruise, Day 11:
Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
Monte Carlo.
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Last year, Mary Ann and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in Belgium, where we went on our honeymoon. Afterwards, we met with some of her family for a cruise, mostly around Italy. The day we were in Monaco, the four sisters rented a car and drove around the area, having a time so grand that she has talked ever since about doing something like it again. Today, she did it. She is off the ship first thing in the morning. She rents a convertible in Monte Carlo with the idea of tooling around all day in some swank places on the Mediterranean.
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Eze-Village. barely in France.[/caption]
The only problem with this plan is where I fit into it. MA's idea was to work her way east, stopping in a series of charming Riviera towns. The first was in a magnificent hotel and restaurant in Eze-Village, 1401 feet up in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean. A lot of restaurants are there--mostly small cafés, but also one large, expensive dining room in a very spiffy hotel. We walked around the grounds of the place and felt the luxury and beauty soak in. I have no doubt that Mary Ann will return here to spend the night someday.
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Villefranche-sur-Mer, as seen from the beach.[/caption]
Our next stop along the stunning road (lofty mountains on one side, blue Mediterranean on the other) is a town where we have some history. In the Eat Club's first Euro-cruise, the ship put in at Villefranche-Sur-Mere, a little French town with a beach and a large marina. But our memories of the place are not vivid enough for us to find it easily this time. We drive back and forth along the waterfront, falling into absurdly narrow dead-end streets, not finding any of the many restaurants that I recall seeing on our first visit.
Suddenly, while an argument rages among us as to what to do next, we find the place we remember. It has changed. We pull into a large pay parking lot and take a fateful ticket from the machine at the entrance.
The Marys walk down to the beach and take a dip in the cool blue waters. About half of the other bathers are at least partially unclothed. That's how it was last time, too, say the Marys--although I never saw it myself. Then and now, the Marys kept their covers.
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La Caravelle in Villefranche-sur-mer, France.[/caption]
Meanwhile, I walk along a row of restaurants. Many years ago, the Frenchness of the menu interested me. The eats are still quite French, but they seem less exciting. The high points on the menus I peruse are about at the level of Cafe Degas and La Crepe Nanou--very good, but lacking the far-away quality that I was hoping to find. I guess that's the trade-ff one makes in a restaurant where the staff speaks fluent English.
The restaurant I choose for lunch is La Caravelle. "The pirate." Most of the tables (and all of the ones occupied by other diners) are on a side. I don't like Al Fresco, and I sit inside, where I am the only customer in the house. The sole waitress is working with a young chef. When they are not busy cooking or serving, they keep up a heated conversation in French. It seemed a little discordant. Or maybe it came across that way because MA and I have been speaking the same tones to one another today.
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Mussels with a butter-and-herb sauce at La Caravelle.[/caption]
La Caravelle's menu is that of the standard French bistro, but a little diluted. The menu du jour, for example, is set in stone on the colorful menu. It is not a sheet of paper with the day's specials written by hand. You get the same list of the restaurant's most popular dishes. Pick one each from three courses.
I begin with a half-dozen mussels in a garlic and herb butter, hot enough to sizzle, and therefore something like escargots. I gobble these up, along with half a loaf of baguette and all the garlic butter it can soak up.
Now a filet mignon au poivre, with a creamy sauce riddled with crushed peppercorns. Frites on the side, of course, complete the classic French bistro entree. Creme brulee about half and inch deep and covered with a crusty caramel for dessert. I drink a glass of Provencal red, taking my time, trying to tune in the staff's palaver, and removing from my list the need to finally dine in Villefranche-sur-Mer.
The Marys have a fine time in the water and join me just as my two-hour lunch is done. MA is ready to move on to the next French Riviera town. We point the convertible towards the gate. I am the official parking-ticket holder for our family, because I have never lost one. I hand it over to MA, who pushes it into the slot at the gate. She follows it with her credit card.
And then the trouble begins. Not only does the gate remain down, but the machine keeps both the ticket and the credit card. She tries to make something happen as cars back up behind us, honking ever more loudly. But the electronic box offers no Plan B.
We pull out of line to let people through, and try to figure out what they do right and we did wrong. MA tries to find someone who can finish the transaction and let us get on with our tour. Nobody seems to have any authority or knowledge of who to call to get the gate working. I'm thinking, as always, "How will we get back to the ship?
A few people come over to offer ideas, none of which work. One particularly crazy-looking guy speaking mostly French swears to us that if you pull under the gate, with the steel pole a barely in front of your windshield, and then just sit there, the gate will open. We'll try anything now. Not only does the gate open, but the credit card spits right back at us. Yes! But then our spirits sink again. There is another gate to pass, and it is down. We try the trick a second time. And. . . I'll be damned, the thing rises and lets us out! Must have been the language problem. Or maybe it's the mystery of French mechanisms.
After that very unsettling episode, whatever pleasure we enjoyed in Villefranche-sur-Mer has been trashed by the tension of this modest but very problematical malfunction. We extricate ourselves from the absurdly narrow streets and get back on the main road.
The Marys turn their attention to me. The next idea from MA seems to be that they have to get rid of me. She knows that I will be anxious about getting back to the ship on time and that this will drive her nuts, which in turn will make me further nuts. She suggests that she let me out of the convertible in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where I can walk to the train station and take the next run back to Monte Carlo.
I know this train well enough. I have traveled on it three times before, from Montecarlo to Nice. But how often it runs and where the station is are mysteries. I am hesitant about being abandoned in a small French town with no clear plan as to how I will make my way back to the port.
In the long quiet that follows, I realize how much I have changed in the past five or ten years. I am a guy who did all sorts of semi-dangerous things on my own for decades. When I was thirteen I frequently bicycled up River Road to the spillway and back solo. I bicycled to Chicago from New Orleans in 1986, again all alone. Long hikes in the Big Bend desert with just my canteen, with nobody else knowing where I was. Now what Mary Ann is suggesting is anathema to me. I can't figure out how to get somewhere on a train? Have I really become such a gimp? No wonder MA finds me boring.
So they decide to drive me back to the famous gambling capital of Monaco. The Marys let me out of the convertible, then resume their tooling around. The ship does not sail until around ten--a very late night for a cruise ship. They are thinking about taking two of our regular Eat Clubbers to one of the fabulous restaurants in Monte Carlo, but the couple is too tired for it. So am I.
It is now around four. I catch a nice long nap, then at seven head down to Deck Two for Tom's Pre-Dinner Cocktail Club. I continue to be surprised by the inability of the bartenders on the Queen Victoria to make Negronis. For most of my cruising career, I found that the floating bars usually handle that classic cocktail without flinching.
We have a widely varied but still less than wonderful dinner. The vegetable cream soup with pesto grabs me away from the consomme with barley. I have talked several people--Mary Leigh among them--into sampling the goodness of consommé. Tuna sashimi seems the best appetizer for me, with seaweed salad and rice.
My entree repeats that of the first night, but prepared much better: sirloin strip, trimmed out twice to make it tenderer. It comes with "Pont-Neuf" potatoes, named for a bridge over the Seine in Paris. They look like scaled-down wooden beams, very regular in their cut, and very good. I realize that there has been a lot of steak being served in Britannia. And that I have eaten two steaks today. The menu is getting boring as rapidly as I am.
A lot of good desserts tonight. I somehow miss out of the Florentine basket with strawberries and orange mousse, going instead with dulce de leche and pistachio ice creams.
I join the Giancolas in Commodore's Café after dinner. I have a gin and tonic, mainly because Barb has turned me on to a variation on the theme. It's a martini with bitters and muddled cilantro. Better than it sounds.
