L. Lee

Introducing my fabulous, wonderful, amazing couchsurfing hosts

I heard about CS in early 2008.  I joined CS on June 22, 2009.  I waited an entire year before becoming comfortable enough with the idea to actually try couchsurfing.  99% of the people I talked to about doing it pooh-poohed it, with the exception of Chuck.  Some of them explicitly tried to talk me out of it (citing safety reasons, offering to help pay for hotels, etc), and others just gave me this LOOK.  Like, it was nice knowing you!  if I don’t see you again, I’ll know why!  

I’m really very thankful that I didn’t listen to these people because I had one of the best experiences of my life.  I went in with no expectations, and from the very beginning, I was swept up by the kindness and trust of people with whom I had only ever talked to via the internet.  

Let’s start with Sylvie.

Sylvie loves organic stuff.  She’s an artist, a dancer, a musician (plays the djembe!), and works with troubled children as an educatrice spécialisée.  She stops to take a look at every jewelry stand at the markets in Antibes and Nice. She is the kind of girl who, when it gets insufferably hot, takes showers with her dress on at the public beach showers.  In short, she’s quite lovely.

While she is renovating her new apartment in Nice, I stayed at her little flat in Roquebrune.  Her parents built it right next to their house when she was 18.  I think I probably took over a hundred photos of their garden, terrace, and views.  Some afternoons I didn’t even want to go anywhere, so perfectly content was i just sitting on this bench table and reading and writing and taking photos. 

Of course, we still made it to the beach.  A note about this beach: It was the very same one CD and I went to in 2007 on our magical beach day so you can imagine how happy I was to rediscover it. 

Sylvie’s English is excellent, the kind of excellent you don’t expect from someone who hasn’t lived in an English-speaking country for a while.  I love polyglots, mainly because I am very jealous of them, and it turns out that Sylvie is Italian and speaks that language too.  Her father hails from northern Italy, and he kind of reminded me of Marcello Mastroianni.  Her mother comes from southern Italy, and I pretty much gobbled up everything she made for lunch one afternoon.  It included squash flower beignets and homemade melon sorbet. 

We spent so much time together talking, eating, swimming, walking that I felt like I was visiting an old friend instead of making a new one.  I knew she was my kind of person when we spent an hour grocery shopping at Carrefour (true fact: Carrefour is one of my favorite places in France).  I was sad to leave her at the end of our 4 days together, but very excited to mosey on over to Menton and meet my next host, Catherine.

Right off the bat, Catherine is super chatty and laughs a lot.  Plus she has great legs and is seemingly indefatigable.  I wanted to hug her for tolerating my French for two days and for teaching me a new way to say something sucks, “c’est de la daube!”

Catherine lives in a spic and span apartment in the very middle of Menton.  As with my previous host, I was in a superb location with her.  One morning, we took a walk to the food market and brought home an amazing assortment of treats for lunch, and I loved trying each and every single one of them: Socca, anchovy pizza, pichade (a french tomato tart and a specialty of Menton, acc. to wikipedia), Swiss chard beignets, and pissaladiere (a white pizza with caramelized onions).  Dessert was fresh figs. 

She also let me raid the olive collection in her refrigerator.  

We went to the Friday market in Ventimiglia, Italy, where I swore to buy nothing but ended up borrowing money from her to buy gloves!  She is like me in that we are not the kind of person you want to go shopping with when you’re on a budget.  However, they were very pretty brown leather gloves with rabbit fur lining inside.  I don’t feel so guilty about rabbit fur because I eat them too.  Mentally, I couldn’t handle fur from foxes, beavers, raccoons.

I am indebted to Catherine for taking me to a parapharmacie and going through each French beauty brand with me.  NO JOKE, I have been wanting to do that for the last two years.  I left with a Cattier toothpaste containing clay and propolis for my dad and plans to stock up on Nuxe products in Paris.

There is something about traveling that makes people sappy, and so here it goes: Sylvie and Catherine, thank you for your time and generosity.  Thank you to Heidi, for treating me to tea and fabulous views of London at the Tate; and Kelly, the stranger who gave me a ride at midnight on a creepy country road outside of London; and to you, the guy in Nice who bought my train ticket because my credit card wouldn’t work in the machine and let me pay pay you back in coins.**

It’s hard to muster the courage to travel alone without a purpose and to trust that good will come of it, but I think it always does.  

**But no thanks to you, the bus driver who left me on the road somewhere between Eze and Beaulieu because I only had 70 centimes instead of 1 Euro.

Water everywhere

In Menton, France. 

I adore this young-man-cum-pseudo-Jesus.  He says everything I want to say just by standing there. Nice, France

People were jumping off this rock into the sea! CD would have done it, I’m sure.

I’m hazy on this photo, but I think Sylvie stopped the car in Villefranche Sur Mer so I could get a better shot.  I think that little peninsula is Cap Ferrat??

Sometimes infinity pools make me nervous, but it must feel wonderful to swim in them, especially when the backdrop is that. 

Monaco, Monaco.  That little round building near the corner is where the Norah Jones concert was.  Divine!

And of me, in Ventimigilia, Italy.  woohoo!  Just a little ways east is France. i tried hard to apply sunscreen every few hours, but sweat mixed with the sunscreen is not a delicious combination for my skin.  A couple days I kept my bathing suit in my bag and ran into the water for a quick dip before continuing on with the day. 

No theme

I am safely ensconced in a cozy apartment in the 18th arrondissment after two weeks of liberating but wearying travel.  My right hand is callousing from dragging my suitcase in and out of trains, buses, and metros.  The only thing it wants to grab hold of is a nice cup of tea, which I have easily made happen, thanks to the thoughtfulness of the people from whom I am borrowing this flat for the weekend. 

I took nearly 1000 photos so far and have yet to go through all of them carefully, but here is a small group of them, in no particular order.  They are all from the south of France, however.  London wasn’t so easily photogenic. 

Such an inspiring thing to wake up to!  Wouldn’t you want to jump out of bed and fling the windows wide wide open and shout to the world? 

Villefrance Sur Mer from the train.  THE TRAIN. 

If it is possible to be smitten with windows, I am. 

Little Provencal dresses that I want to force upon my imaginary future daughter

Abandoned repose in old Antibes. Was the shopkeeper reading or bubbling in Sudoku when he stuck his glasses in as a bookmarker? 

a fancy schmany hotel precariously perched atop the hills over monaco

I love the grooves and dents of heirloom tomatoes, especially when they’re from the garden out yonder

Already dreams of these

These strawberries were exactly as good as they looked.  I normally do not like eating strawberries plain, but I could not turn my backs on these small, perky, fire engine red sweeties.  There were loads of sellers on Portobello Road selling them, and they made sure to point out that their fruits were grown in England.

I meant to save the strawberries for home, but later that day, I made an impromptu picnic of them with a sandwich I picked up at Hyde Park.  It was sublime.