Author Archives: mdw

Statue of a Pregnant Woman Next to a Saguaro Overlooking the Mediterranean

R4TS4&T2Mash and TWH Recap and Riviera Notes

The Mash (and Mash it clearly was, despite some peevish braying from the less adventurous) has concluded, and the Mash attendees have gone their separate ways, better for the experience, except possibly for the experience of watching Dondi, which was even worse than expected.

Seborga is beautiful and charming and slightly odd, and almost exactly as I remembered, except that the weather was much nicer this time around. Lobo’s choice of a house was perfect, even to the point of accidentally renting from someone I had met and talked to 16 years ago.

We rented the top two stories of the house in the center of this photo.

It has beautiful terraced grounds.

We parked the car at the upper corner of the steep driveway. (Note the Seborga flag.)

Further notes:

Motorcycles and motor scooters in both Italy and France pass on both sides wherever and whenever they feel like it. Almost nothing they do would be legal in the US, but here you can just ignore them and it seems to work out.
The toll roads are pretty darned expensive.
Limoncino is tasty, but very strong. I was going to get a bottle, but thought better of it. I’d probably drink the whole bottle and have to be treated for alcohol poisoning. Besides, who wants to carry a glass bottle through the Alps?
Nice is nicer than Cannes.
The most useful languages to know in this area are French, Italian, and Donkey.
That song from Birdemic is always funny, and it always will be.

Twingo Selfie

Final Afternoon in Seborga

The Quest for Al really took it out of us, so we drove along the coast one last time, ending up at the same Doner Kebab place in San Remo for lunch. After lunch we bought some gelato and walked down to the harbor. It was a beautiful sunny day, as it has been almost the entire week.

In the afternoon we did laundry and hung around the house. Lobo cracked a cascarón that he’d been saving for 35 years on Alcalde’s head, as one does.

We had our final dinner at Marcellino’s, with a final round of limoncino shots, although we had to buy them ourselves this time.

The Quest for Al

We hadn’t heard as much braying as earlier in the week, but we knew Al was out there somewhere, so we decided to embark upon a Quest.

We started by driving off randomly with no real plan, and quickly found ourselves halfway up the mountain on a dirt road called Passo del Bandido. We searched high and low, but did not see anything that looked donkey-like, so we drove randomly some more.

We didn’t know where Al was, but we knew we were on the right path.

Eventually we found ourselves down a valley road with a truck blocking our way. No one was in the truck, so Lobo went to find the driver. We thought he was going to ask him to move the truck, but instead he asked him if he knew where the donkey was, making donkey noises to get his point across. The man directed us to a farmhouse/B&B down a long gravel road, but there was no indication of a donkey. Lobo knocked on the door and we talked to the proprietor, who spoke some English and told us that:

He had no donkeys, only sheep.
The sheep were “on holiday.”
The donkey was “on the other side,” on Via Casette.

We set off to the other side of the hill, looking for Via Casette. If we’d heard any braying, we might have had an easier time, but Al was curiously silent, so we had to use our investigative skills and gut instincts. Working as a team, Lobo and I quickly lost track of Alcalde, who was using Google Maps. Lobo talked to some people in the post office, but they didn’t know what he was talking about, so we walked a little farther and then split up, circling around the village from opposite sides.

When we circled back to the car, Alcalde was waiting for us about 50 yards away, at the corner of Via Casette. We had parked within sight of it, and, as a team, we had managed to triangulate on it, each bringing our own individual skills to the effort. “The other side” turned out to be the other side of the valley, not the other side of the hill.

Working as a team, we walked down Via Casette until we saw a fenced area with a stable.

And there was Al.

Côte d’Azur Ramble

We decided to get an early start, and were on the road to Cannes by the crack of 9:00. Lobo failed to find the Cannes Starbucks mug he wanted, due to the fact that they had never existed, and then we wandered around for a half hour or so before finding a cafe/boulangerie to procure croissants and espressoses.

This was across from a farmer’s market, where Alcalde treated us to fried zucchini flowers, which are a real thing that I’m not making up. He also bought some peppered goat cheese.

That was the high point of Cannes. Then we drove to Nice. We saw some Brazilian guys with musical instruments discussing something with the local police. They appeared to come to some understanding and walked down the street, occasionally glancing back. When the police were no longer in sight, two of them started playing their instruments. The other two were apparently capoeiristas, and did flips and martial arts moves whenever there was a break in the crowd.

We walked around and looked at things for a while, then looped around and ate lunch right next to where the capoeira dudes were, but they were gone. We can only hope that they stayed ahead of the gendarmerie.

We had some very good pizza, and we learned that when you say sans anchois, you pronounce the final s in sans, because you gotta do the elision before a vowel.

Continuing down whatever corniche we were on, we discovered that the GPS that was built into the car was in fact not that hard to turn on after all, thanks to Alcalde’s quick-thinking techno-wizardry. So now we had three navigational systems to choose from. Lobo started to set the car’s GPS, then switched to the radio and immediately found the Village People. Then we started singing pop songs in Inspector Clouseau voice and things sort of went downhill from there, made worse by the goat cheese, which was becoming more aromatic by the minute.

But we made it to Monaco anyway, and eventually found parking and wandered around in an area that wasn’t really the area I was thinking of. Alcalde and I had a little trouble with a recalcitrant escalator, but we eventually outsmarted it. I bought some Gérard de Villiers novels that I can’t actually read, and we headed back to Seborga, windows open in a futile attempt to air out the car.

Then we picked up some groceries at the market in Seborga and went back and watched Bride of the Monster and Night of the Ghouls. A day well spent.

Seborga Circumperambulation

In the afternoon we ambled down the road to Seborga.

There was a dog.

And narrow passageways.

Lobo tried to hide behind a pillar near the church, but he wasn’t fast enough.

We discovered that the previous prince’s house is for sale, and Lobo went to the real estate office to find out the details. Because Lobo does things like that. It’s €1,500,000, so if we save out of the housekeeping money…

Then we bought some souvenirs, but nothing for Al. Maybe tomorrow.

We had dinner at Marcellino’s, which Sabina had recommended to us. There we met Carly, from Santa Rosa, whose mother is an artist who lives in Seborga. Sabina was also there, and comped us to limoncino shots. On the walk back to the house, we talked to a German couple who had been in the restaurant. They asked, “So do you prefer Clinton or Tr…” and we all went, “Aaauugh! No! Aaargh!” by way of expressing our subtle and nuanced thoughts on the election. So we talked about the weather in Germany instead.

Diving Tony!

Road Trip to San Remo

We nearly couldn’t decide what to do today, but then Lobo started going on and on about focaccia–and not for the first time, I might add–so we drove down to whatever the Lower Corniche is called in Italy and found an Italian bakery that sold focaccia.

And Lobo bought a croissant.

Actually, we all bought croissants, which are not particularly Italian, but at least I got a real Italian capuccino. Lobo and Alcalde got Americanos.

But it didn’t matter, because we were sitting at a cafe on the Mediterranean on a beautiful Fall morning, wondering how far beyond help a person would have to be to pass up a trip to the Italian Riviera because he’d rather stay home and watch TV.

But we had no time for people who can’t keep up, so we continued down the coast to San Remo. Alcalde redeemed himself navigationally by efficiently directing us to a Carrefour, where we stocked up on groceries. Lobo, appropriately chastened, even sprung for a bag.

We wrapped up the morning by getting some doner kebabs at a little place down the street and headed back to watch Birdemic 2, Sharknado 3, and other masterpieces of modern cinema.

Dinner in Dolcedo

After the day’s meanderment, we took a short break to allow Alcalde time to recover and then went to dinner in Dolcedo. Lobo had stayed in Dolcedo with his family in 2009 and recommended it as a typical untouristy Italian town. It was about an hour from Seborga.

We ate at La Fontanella, where we ordered pizza from the charming waitress Emmanuela. Alcalde ordered the house specialty pizza; Lobo ordered one that was intended for children.

Then we wandered around for a few minutes and drove back to Seborga.