Here you have my Mister Furry-Britches, aka Kanoko, accompanied by Miss Soot Sprite, aka Susu. Filmed in 720p HD for your viewing pleasure. I’d just gotten the handheld camcorder, so hadn’t yet changed the settings to 1080p, but well, it’s cats. I hope to catch Susu doing her “throw my own toys” trick soon, and some of the funny shenanigans she and Kanoko get up to. As you can see even in this short video, they get along pretty well.

I also hope to film things in my part of the world – this is just a little camera, but I’m already impressed with how well it films. Plus, as it’s so small, it will be easy to put in my purse and take everywhere.

We’re in the middle of a cold snap in France, the Riviera included. A couple of days ago we had snow, though mainly in the back country. I walked up a nearby hill to photograph what I could from Nice.

A few weeks ago, an Italian officemate corrected someone talking about carbonara sauce with cream, saying that true carbonara sauce was from the Rome region, and she was pretty sure it used pecorino cheese – in any case, certainly not cream. In France, carbonara sauce is generally considered to be diced-up bacon (cooked), and a fresh egg mixed with cream. The hot bacon and pasta, when stirred with the sauce, cook the egg and cream just enough to thicken.

On a certain social site (which has been great for getting back in touch with friends around the world!), an Italian friend confirmed that the sauce used pecorino, and one of her friends mentioned that a dash of ground black pepper should be added too – that was where the “carbon” came from in the name. It all sounded delicious, so I was very much looking forward to finding some pecorino here in Nice. “Shouldn’t be too difficult, we’re near the border, I bet there will be some at the Libé market,” I thought.

I went there today, and sure enough, there was an Italian shop selling Italian hams and cheeses! With not one, but two types of pecorino: romano and tendre sardegna, which you can see in this blurry photo (taken with my cameraphone). The pecorino tendre sardegna is the cheese with black rind, two of them are stacked on the right. The pecorino romano is in the middle, marked 17.90€/kg. It also has a black crust, which isn’t visible here.

I asked for une tranche de pecorino romano (“a slice of pecorino romano”) in my own Niçois-ish accent, meaning what I said sounded more like “una transha de pecorino romano”. (French people who don’t know me first assume I’m from the area due to my accent… it’s a bit odd, knowing I picked up the accent because it’s actually easier for me to pronounce, being more rhythmic.) Also, having studied Italian at university, I used Italian “r” sounds, in the front of the mouth, not the French “r” rolled in the back of the mouth. “Romano??” the shopkeeper asked, seeming surprised. “Romano!” I nodded, smiling. “È italiano!” he smiled. I nodded, smiling again, happy to have found Italian cheeses.

Immediately after I’d nodded, I realized I’d misheard him: he had said “è italiana“, meaning he’d assumed I was Italian (“a” makes it feminine, me being a woman, whereas pecorino is masculine), and I had just said “yes” with my nod. English, French and Italian jumbled in my mind, I couldn’t say a word to correct the misunderstanding. “Italiani hanno molto buon gusto,” the man said cheerily. Again I understood right away (“Italians have very good taste”), so I chuckled and nodded, then mentally kicked myself for getting into a conversation in which I couldn’t participate. My hesitation made me too late to say anything in any language again: “Dopo?” the man asked. “Next?” literally – in French, market sellers often say “Autre chose?”, equivalent to our “anything else?” I motioned “no” and said “okay” for just the pecorino romano. (“OK” seems to work in 99% of Indo-European languages.) He rang me up, looking disappointed, and I left, feeling much the same way, wishing I’d been able to express myself.

Then again, it’s not exactly easy to explain: as simple a statement as “I’m American” may seem, those of us who live here know that it doesn’t conjure images of multilingualism or “good taste.” I am also “French”, though not born here, and being French does equate to ideas of “good taste” for some, but there’s friendly rivalry between Spain, France, and Italy as to whose taste is “better”, and depending on the person, you never quite know what stereotypes you’ll be running into. In any case, one thing is certain: I speak just enough Italian to embarrass myself. I still remember that stage of speaking French, too!

This morning I had errands to run in Le Ray, a quartier in the northern part of Nice. There are several businesses and buildings with neat typography on them in the area – I had photographed a few with my cameraphone last year, but it doesn’t take very good quality pictures. I thought to take my DSLR along with me on my errands today. You can see all the photos in my new set on Flickr: Signage in Nice.

This morning, the Nice-Cannes Marathon was held. It started at the Jardins Albert 1er in Nice, on the Promenade des Anglais. I left early this morning to try to photograph a colleague who participated, but unfortunately, I arrived a few minutes too late and only caught the end. However, I made the most of the closed Promenade, free of vehicles and drenched in a beautiful morning sun, with wintry clouds still around. This photograph of the Negresco is my favorite. The sepia-toned sunlight is natural, no photo editing, and the wind obliged with a nice gust for the French flag. There are more pictures in my Architecture of Nice set, near the end.

To see the difference light makes, compare the Negresco above to the photo below, taken mid-June 2009:

Lately I’ve been on a sewing spree, and enjoying the nicer spring weather we’ve been having. With the start of the Festival de Cannes (Cannes Film Festival), the usual stormier spring weather has returned, so I have a bit more indoors time.

This morning I had several errands to run, but didn’t think to take my good DSLR with me. In any case, I walked my favorite street for variety of type styles in Nice and took some photos with my cameraphone. Someday I will think to take my DSLR here, since there are some gorgeous villas along the same street, and I really want to get a shot of my favorite little store before it entirely disappears. That would be this one, with the art deco lettering and architecture:

I also get a kick out of this old lock advertisement whenever I pass it. “With the Parade lock, Picard removes [the need for] keys! Come try it – Free entry”. In the past, when you entered a shop in France, you were expected to buy something – if you didn’t want to buy anything, you stayed outside to window shop. “Entrée libre” meant you could come inside without the expectation to buy.

Yesterday, rather than sew, I realized I had better go to the mairie (city hall) to request my French ID. At the citizenship ceremony, our cartes de séjour et de résidence, visitor/work/residence permits, were taken by the préfecture since gaining French nationality meant we’d no longer be “visitors”. We were given our new French birth certificates, which are one of the documents needed to request French ID. Rather than go to city hall on a Saturday morning, likely to be crowded, I decided to use one of my weekday vacation mornings and then make the most of my detour in the old town. After une flânerie (a stroll), I had aïoli, a traditional Provençal dish with a garlic, basil, pepper and egg white sauce. In fact, the name aïoli is the name of the sauce, which, theoretically, could be served with anything that goes along well, but as the name of a dish, it usually comes with potatoes, courgette (zucchini), leeks, carrots, boiled egg, and white fish.

When I got home and uploaded photos, I realized that in all my years here, I still hadn’t created a photoset for Nice’s old town. That’s done now: Vieux Nice photoset includes the photos from yesterday and several older ones.

Tomorrow is May Day, so here’s some traditional May Day muguet (lily of the valley)!

Just a quick post to share the unusual expression of team spirit in Nice this evening. Nice’s football (soccer) team made it to the Coupe de France semifinals, and are playing Lille in Nice tonight. The football stadium is in earshot of my apartment, so I’ve seen plenty of red and black scarves, flags and jerseys in the streets. Much more than for other matches, it’s fun. Even this women’s clothing store got into spirit. The guys below are dressed in Nice team jerseys, I passed them on my walk home, among dozens of others (who were harder to photograph).

Ma cérémonie d’accueil dans la nationalité française took place on Friday, in the palais préfectoral located in Vieux Nice. The “prefectoral palace” was formerly le palais des ducs de Savoie ; le palais des rois de Sardaigne. Just 150 years ago, Nice was not part of France, but part of the duchy of Savoy, which later became part of the kingdom of Sardinia, thus the dual names for the palace. Although the palace is open to visit a few times a year, I’d never been inside, so it was quite a treat to experience the richly decorated salle des fêtes (festival hall) firsthand.

About a hundred brand-new French citizens residing in the département des Alpes-Maritimes had been invited to the ceremony, so it was quite large, and long. The sous-préfet began the ceremony with a nice speech, then we stood to sing La Marseillaise. After that, we were shown a short film entitled “Devenir Français”, which gave a very brief history of la République Française, the Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, some background on the French republic’s values (and official motto) liberté, égalité, fraternité, an additional bit on laïcité, and finally, a rather jarring sequence of ground, air, and naval war scenes with running commentary about how we could be called to defend France.

Once the film had finished, we were each called by name to shake hands with the sous-préfet and our city’s representative, and receive our new papers. There was a verre de l’amitié (“friendship toast”) afterwards, but as we’d all arrived at 8:30am and I was finally called at 11am (they went in alphabetical order), I didn’t hang around to see how it went. Neither did many others – it was kind of a shame that they had invited so many of us at once, since a smaller group would have been more conducive to meeting people. Even the préfecture staff commented on how the group was a bit too large, so I got the sense that they’ll be on a smaller scale in the future.

While this furry canine may not seem to have a strong link to flowering prune trees, daffodils and irises, all heralds of spring, in fact, I photographed her (or him) next door to Graineterie Fiol, a seed and plant shop in Vieux Nice. It’s the time of year to plant seeds for summer growth. Yesterday I picked up some chives, Romanesco broccoli, Saxa radishes, violets, and coleus, a decorative plant, then planted them today. Radishes grow quickly, and this Saxa variety should be ready to eat in less than a month, after which I’ll plant some more regularly. The broccoli take longer to mature at 3-4 months, and I’ll be able to cultivate the chives for quite a while. The violets will decorate the fence border, and the coleus should be a nice addition to my potted plants. Both are plants that do well in the shade. Despite living on the French Riviera, I don’t get a lot of sun, since my apartment’s terrace is a northern exposure. This is a good thing here, however, since it makes a huge difference in summer temperatures at my place. The only downside is that I can’t grow any of the showy flowers that require full sun.

Another sign of spring’s arrival is the annual Carnaval, held around Mardi Gras each year in Nice. As a humorous link between my Oregon hometown and my current home in Nice, I snapped this shot of Brice de Nice holding a “Nice” brand surfboard. Nice’s Greek name was Nikaïa, from the Greek goddess of victory Nike — you can probably think of a related sports brand. It was founded in Eugene, Oregon.

I do my grocery shopping at a small shop in Nice called Diététique Malausséna, located on the avenue of the same name (Malausséna). Having gone there for seven years now, I know the owners and employees well — they’re really nice people, and very helpful, which is great when you have food allergies and/or intolerances. In addition to foods for those with special dietary requirements, they carry a lot of delicious organic foods that I rarely, if ever, see in larger stores here.

Last week they brought in red and rosé wines from Bellet, for instance. Bellet is part of Nice. All the Bellet wines I’ve tasted have been wonderful, quite unique compared to other areas, even those from nearby Provençal vineyards. The store also had olive oil from Bellet, which I’d never seen before. I didn’t even know olive oil was produced in Nice, but one of the shop owners told me it was hard to come by. The color was stunning, and it smelled good, so I bought a bottle today.

This olive oil is from Saint-Roman-de-Bellet. You can see it’s a very green part of the city:

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