On vacation? Go Riviera!
It’s time to pack again, load the car, attach the camper, take the train or go by plane. Down south, where the sun shines and the blue of blues blinds your eyes. The French Riviera. The Côte d’Azur. One of the few privileged places left on Mother Earth. In other lands, not that far away, people shoot, bomb, murder, torture, rape and curse in the name of Allah, but here only peaceful nature, calm and serenity prevail in the name of sanity. Not that the rush in July-August to get here does not take its victims. It’s a bit like that baby turtle race to the sea. Some make it, others don’t and get tragically squashed on the highway. But once you are there, heaven awaits you.
Let’s start in Nice. How privileged its citizens are: all that splendid wealth of nature handed on a plate for free. Only take your swimsuit and an inflatable pad, take the bus and you’re on the beach.
This is how the beach looks like when nobody is there.
Or like this, still early in the day or a weekday when everybody is at work.
Or like this when it’s weekend!
Granted, I would feel more comfortable on Aruba’s or Bali’s sandy beaches, but don’t worry. Travel a bit farther west to the Lavandou, and you find the most delightful sandy beaches ever and a lot less crowded than in Nice. Let’s take a look at what borders on the beach of Nice: it’s the splendid Promenade des Anglais.
The Promenade was started in the early nineteenth century when Nice was still part of a fiefdom called “Sardaigne” and wealthy European aristocrats, especially British suffering from stiff bones and arthritis during their bitter winters, sought the soft climate of the Côte d’Azur to survive. Reportedly an entrepreneurial British reverend among them, named Lewis Way, launched a fundraising effort to finance the construction of a boardwalk along the coast that started in 1821 and was completed in 1824. When in 1860 France annexed Nice, the boardwalk was baptized “Promenade des Anglais”. In subsequent years, the Promenade was extended and its many brilliant villas along it turned into exclusive hotels, such as Negresco.
Now let’s take a side trip to Menton, taking the small coastal road a few miles to the East, past Monaco and near the border with Italy.
The coastal road along the beach in Menton.
On the way, a view over Monaco with a glimpse of the Royal Palace at the very end. Just imagine having that view of the Mediterranean at your disposal every day of your life. That’s why many hills along the coast are built to the knock with villas, apartments and mansions as well.
A glimpse of the Alpes Maritimes in Menton’s hinterland, streets characteristic for the Mediterranean towns.
As in Nice, the beach in Menton is graveled as well. Seagulls are waiting for a snack. I’m sure that in the USA they would have found tons of sand to cover it all. But here, nature is left to its natural course. In fact, the gravel (called “galets” in French) is naturally supplemented by the rivers flowing into the Mediterranean.
Off we go to the Eastern side of Nice: avoiding places like Cannes, Saint-Raphael and Saint Tropez that are too crowded. Two places we really liked: Théoule-sur-Mer and above all: a little village called Cavalière in the Lavandou where you can still enjoy the Mediterranean without feeling you are besieged by hordes of tourists and loud motor cycles.
Théoule-sur-Mer
In the back you can see the snow-topped Alpes Maritimes!
In Théoule, the beaches have soft nice sand and you can enjoy a hearty grilled Dorade at its restaurant if the chef is in a friendly mood. In our case he got mad at us because we took seat at a table laid for three, and we told him in plain French *#! and walked out on our way to Cavalière, where we did have our Dorade on a friendlier terrace.
Unparalleled Côte d’Azur. You may be far away from theater or the concert hall, but what you get in return is peace of mind (if you got the money.)
Yes, Cavalière, our favorite place, about two hours from Nice (if you take the highway A8), where the mountains descend graciously into the Mediterranean, offering you splendid little private beaches where you can feel like the wealthiest person in the world without having to be one. A hidden beach where you can stay almost by yourself. Of course, French women bathe always topless, what women in Africa do because they don’t have money to pay for a bra — back to nature. Our place to stay and never to leave.
Your dream house, for grabs!
Farewell, Cavalière…..our pearl of the Riviera.
The end of a “Nice” Côte d’Azur adventure.
EASTER HYMN
A last meal and blessing hand
Brings us peace in holy land
Make your neighbor a best friend
Hate has no place in holy land
My heart will fold as red as blood
Forgive I will my tears will flood
You were created to be good
An undivided brotherhood
Lavender blue will spread in spring
It’s peace of mind that it will bring
Don’t make hate your tool of life
End your endless words of strife
***
Shout that peace is good for all
Not just you in clustered walls
Tear them down your flags of hate
They are NOT an act of faith
Shaking hands across the line
Sharing meals of bread and wine
Showing trust in someone’s heart
Making one a world apart
[And keep that dagger just in case
The other earthling shows bad grace ]
The Million Dollar Seat
In our days of hustling and bustling we often forget the value of what we have. We constantly want things to change, even without realizing that when they do, we don’t like what changed and want to change what cannot be changed back again.
This reflection dawns on me each time when I look out on Lime Street from my million dollar seat. Lime Street in Georgetown Guyana has not changed since I saw it for the first time in April 1974. It is so refreshing that in 2014, forty long years later, it is still the same. Granted, I would never have sat on this seat had it not been for having fallen in love with the smashing beauty in the house, in a place far away from the million dollar seat, but she took me to the seat and since that happened, I don’t want to release it for a million dollars.
Each time over the many years when I sat down in my million dollar seat, it baffled me that the view remained the same. Oh yes, the green city buses disappeared and made room for multiple vans as a genial replacement of public transport, relieving the city budget from a bankrupt company where nobody paid the fares. More cars appeared in the street, from old Wolseleys, Morris, and Austins to Toyotas, Nissans, and scooters. Taxis a plenty. But the horse-drawn wagons are still there, the utility poles have not changed, the same grass grows along the street, and the same houses border the street, some done-up a bit, but otherwise mostly the same.
I have come to appreciate this view. As an economist, I always deal with “ceteris paribus”, the Latin phrase for “all other things held constant”, as a way of arguing that economic outcomes are expected to be “x” as long as the “variables” don’t change (they always do). The perfect reason why economics is not a science like physics: a stone falls straight and does not zig-zag (as my socialist opponents always purport).
Well, Lime Street in Georgetown Guyana is the perfect example of all other things being held constant. The same beauties come and go and never seem to age.
The same little food carts with their Calypsos blare over the street. The same loud vans with their oversized speakers drum by. The same stray dogs hop from grass poll to grass poll, cross the small street in utter disregard of oncoming traffic, somehow never getting hit. It’s a continuous flow of things that never changes in substance, only in color, number or size.
There are other million dollar seats.
I know a few, such as a terrace on a beach house in Goa in India where you can stare for an eternity at the Indian Ocean rolling in,
sitting on a balcony in the Jura watching the Mont Blanc across Lake Geneva, turning white to pink to blue, a seat under a parasol on a Bali beach where the sea stays forever blue
or a view of a swimming pool bordering the Dead Sea.
But Lime Street is different: it’s not nature, it’s in the middle of a town where hordes of colonialists, World Bank and IMF and other “developers” have come to preach the benefits of change. And it did not. Thank God.
It’s a relief to look at things that remain the same.
Above: Lime Street Early Morning
Middle: Lime Street at Siesta Hour
Below: Lime Street After a Rain Fall
It’s peace of mind. Leave the hustle and bustle to others and other places. Bring poetry into your life. Sit, watch what stays, let it flow and come back into place, while sipping from a glass of rum. Value what is and what you have.
Don’t change. Don’t change. Don’t change.
Are you also of Audrey’s Tribe?
Can I speak for her?
Audrey was famous from 1950 until her tragic death in 1993. Some of you may not have seen her movies, others will remember them fondly. Her first, Roman Holiday, was a marvel, so were Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sabrina, Funny Face, Charade, My fair Lady, The Nun Story, Two for the Road, Wait until Dark, and others. She won a record number of awards, including Oscars, and in 1992 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work as the Ambassadrice for UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund).
I wrote a short story (see right side) 
how I knew her, especially when she was still an unknown young girl,
and how I heard from her mother
how she catapulted to the firmament in Hollywood from Roman Holiday onward. I would like you to read the short story and if you like it, give it a review and your best “stars”. You can access it on Amazon Kindle. If you don’t have a Kindle but still want to read it, you can go to Amazon Kindle and load up Kindle for PC on your computer for FREE!
If we get a sufficient number of positive reviews, it will increase future sales, the proceeds of which will all go to the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund. If you prefer to donate directly, you can do so at the website www.audreyhepburn.com
If you want to read the story and give it a review, please proceed to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IKY4CC0
Amazon agreed to drop the sales price for a few days, so the story is FREE. To submit a review:
- Go to the product detail page for the item on Amazon.com.
- Click Write a customer review in the Customer Reviews section.
- Rate the item and write your review. Note: To post a review, you must enter a title and type at least 20 words in the review.
- Click Submit.
Why now? Audrey “may be a long time ago”, an era gone never to come back, but Audrey remains close in our memory and the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund is still very active under the management of her sons Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Luca Dotti. Many malnourished and orphaned children are helped and saved by the Audrey Fund.
It would be so nice if we could make this a successful drive.
Audrey Hepburn – The Short Story
http://amzn.to/22dYCZH
The few photographs in the short story – link on the right – were given to me by Audrey’s mother in the fifties when I met her at the house of my grandfather’s sister, Aunt Nini van Limburg Stirum, where she stayed sometimes. I had glued them in my scrapbook at boarding school, proud that I was given “personal photographs.” However, on researching their origin, it appeared they were all copyrighted.
Aunt Nini bequeathed to me the photo that is on the cover. Audrey’s mother, Aunt Ella van Heemstra, had told her she should leave it to me. It was an old frame that stood later in our house on my grand piano. To verify if it had a copyright, a professional framer friend carefully opened the fragile back and then we noticed that Audrey’s photo was collated to a photograph of another unknown beautiful woman taken by a high-end studio in Rome! Did they feel at that time that Audrey’s photo was not important enough to buy a new frame for it? Audrey was not “famous“ yet at that time, and that’s probably the reason why this photograph is not as widespread as some of the others.
On the back of the photo figured a stamp stating that photographer Noel Mayne of Baron Studios in London was the copyrighted photographer, but he died in 2011 and we could not find an estate handling his copyrights posthumously.
Noel Mayne had taken the picture when Audrey was modeling and doing cabaret shows in London around 1950, and that was before she was discovered to play Gigi on Broadway.
We found that the photograph of Audrey and Mel Ferrer and their son Sean appeared on the audreyhepburn.com website.
They apparently used it as a Christmas card to close friends in 1962. We copyrighted it to Sean Hepburn Ferrer, as we could not find the original copyright holding photographer. In the process, I became aware that Audrey must have been the most photographed film star ever. Just look at the Wikipedia and Google sites. Even her sons reportedly said that they did not realize how famous their mother was, despite all the paparazzi.
The short stories are published by Willow Manor Publishing of Virginia (www.willowmanorpublishing.com) which also handles cover design. They will be offered to readers in the USA through Amazon Kindle, which sells for the regular low introductory Kindle price of $0.99 cents. On Amazon.ca (Canada), the price may vary around CDN$1. Readers in the Netherlands may want to go to amazon.nl, which leads to amazon.co.uk., which, in turn, is the source for readers in England as well. (I understand that Amazon will open a Netherlands bookstore this fall.) Readers in other parts of the world will have their own directives how to reach amazon.com and get access to the stories.
I would have liked to offer the Audrey short story for free but the Amazon Kindle system does not allow that. Whatever proceeds I will receive from the story will be donated to the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund, http://www.audreyhepburn.com. This site also includes many charming photographs of Audrey throughout her life. She never boasted, had no scandals, was always gracious and seemingly self-conscious about her fame as an actress. Audrey says herself that she seemed to have been floating on heavenly air, unaware what was happening to her. She was a natural, who at the end of her life gave herself completely to the poor hungry children of the world, as the unforgettable Ambassadrice of UNICEF.
I admire the work the Children’s Fund and UNICEF do. In my career at the World Bank, I have seen many destitute children as well, but was unable to do much about it as one person. I was able to lift two young women from their doomed poverty cycle in Africa, but even though two lives saved is better than none, it is a drop on a hot plate.
Readers may, therefore, also want to donate to this Fund directly by going to the website. It is managed by Audrey’s sons Sean Hepburn Ferrer and Luca Dotti. Sean was given a preview of the short story and he was agreeable to us publishing it. I hope you like it, too.
I got to know Audrey when I was seven and she a young girl seven years older than me, and while she had that lovely smile and endearing face, how could I expect at that age what she would become?
I have been fascinated – as so many others – by her star, and it is because she gave me that goodbye kiss at seven that I stayed glued to her till she died. A remarkable woman, or as her son Sean titled her for his wonderful book: “Audrey Hepburn, an Elegant Spirit.” You can get it on Amazon, too. It is published by Atria Books (Simon & Schuster, Inc) and warmly written, as you can understand from a son of a wonderful mother, including most interesting and moving views from those who were close to her. It also contains marvelous photographs not found on the “internet”.
When I saw the book’s advert, I felt I wanted this more than any of the many biographies written about her because of its personal nature. An elegant spirit, that’s what she was.