Viva la di'France

A French road and a French footpath are more or less the same thing.

One has mainly cars and the other mainly pedestrians, but that's mostly a matter of convenience and relative sizes.

After less than a week here, it's no longer a surprise when a Vespa jumps the curb beside me to overtake some jammed cars. And cars will also use the footpaths with aplomb, should the driver need to pick up some dry cleaning, or just stop for a chat about the cigar stink that clings to his jackets.

(This is true: today I watched the local dry cleaner enjoying a stogie in his doorway, smoke drifting back to hang around inside his shop.)

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Hobart to Nice

I'm on holiday. A long break overseas - landing in France, driving into Germany, then flying home via Thailand.

Getting here meant 30 hours in transit with a three year old. He did pretty well, though there's a certain level of exhausting paranoia necessary when you take an adventurous child through an international airport.

We spent a few hours in Dubai airport, which appears to be a massive duty free shop designed by someone with far too much money. 

This is a stone waterfall / fountain, next to the main elevator bank in the 'A' terminal. You can see the curving roof overhead - from outside, the whole building appears to be a tube lying in its side.

And outside it's over 40 degrees and muggy as hell. The minute it took to climb from the bus into the plane convinced me that I really didn't want to live there.

But we finally landed in Nice, which is a gorgeous French seaside city.

Nice used to be Italian and it still has that shabby-chic Italian feel to it. The buildings are all beautiful, painted in lovely colours, but perhaps they're about due for a new coat?

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