This vacation is a little different than ones we’ve had in the past because Patrick is in his last two weeks of marathon training before the Chicago Marathon and I’m a month away from my first half marathon. That means that 3-4 times a week we’re out there at 7:30am-8am in the morning trying to find a good route to run. Patrick’s mom, who run/walks 4-6 miles every day back home has decided she will come out and run with me to get some exercise, which I’m very grateful for.

Our 4.5 mile run in Auribeau sur Siagne was a little nerve-wracking because of the cars that zip by, but still pleasant on the whole and a lot less hilly than we anticipated. We saw two camping grounds (nicer than any in the U.S.) and some very nice homes until we hit a dead-end. Our run in Portofino yesterday was a bit more comical. Portofino road is a curvy two-way road that is scary enough to drive because cars zip by. It also doesn’t have a sidewalk for the first 1.5km from the port, which makes it a suicide mission to run.

In Tuscany, we stayed at an agritourismo, essentially an auberge at which most of which they serve is grown there. It was a beautiful property except they neglected to mention that there was a natural gas plant right near by (The parts they don’t mention in books like “Under the Tuscan Sun”. My eight mile run there was a hundred times better than the previous runs, but naturally, I would be the one to figure out the one route that took me right by the gas plant. Twice.

We’re sitting on the patio of our hotel, Hotel Nazionale, right in the port of Portofino, sipping a bottle of local white wine, eating strawberries and listening to the piano music coming from the restaurant next door as we watch the world go by — the women in completely impractical heels trying to walk on the cobblestone, the huge boat that dominates the tiny port, and the man in the orange pant and 70s haircut. This must be the life.

I say “Part I” because when we started on this trip, I was informed that Dennis was coming along just for the gelato. Oh, and the pastries. So it was to no one’s surprise (okay, maybe a little) that he made four purchases at various gelateria on our first day in Nice. Actually it was three purchases at one place and a fourth at a second place.

At the first place, when we walked in there, we only had a 50 euro bill, which the man grudgingly gave us change for. Fortuitously for him, it turned out to be the best investment ever because Dennis fell in love with the homemade popsicles they had. He bought himself a strawberry (before lunch) and then made me buy a lemon five minutes later, so he can try that. After a delicious and filling lunch (during which he carefully avoided dessert to leave room for gelato), he went back a third time for a a scoop each of pistachio and banana gelato. When I look back on that day, it feels a little bit like our walk in Vieux Nice revolved around this one gelato place. I wish I remembered what it was called, but I know exactly where it is because we must have passed by it at least a half a dozen times.

Of course, on the way to the car, he found another gelateria and decided to go for a second dessert — vanilla gelato. That one was disappointing, but we quickly decided that a gelato connoisseur had to have a dud once in awhile to refine his palate. Luckily, Dennis was able to recover from that with a tasty cherry gelato in St. Paul de Vence yesterday.

Today we cross the border to Italy — hopes are high for even better gelato.

We’ve been in Nice for three days now, and it’s abundantly clear that we would be lost half the time if it weren’t for the Gamin GPS system that Patrick brought on the trip. We’ve been staying in Auribeau sur Siagne a 13th century commune (=smaller than a village) about a half hour from Nice where passages (=smaller than a street) have no names, roundabouts take the place of street lights or stop signs, and the directions even on the GPS consist of something like “2nd turn on the next roundabout” followed by “first turn on the next roundabout”. That’s difficult enough to follow because sometimes — just to mix things up — there are stores right by the roundabout with entrance ways that don’t count as a turn.

What makes our drives even more “interesting”, “entertaining” or “terrifying” if you’re Kathleen, is that our GPS appears to have a personality of its own. We’re still learning about its eccentricities, but so far, one appears to be that it doesn’t like to take the same way twice. Two nights ago, for example, we got to Mougins, the utterly charming village about 30 min away that we went to for dinner two nights ago, by the tollway. On the way back, it decided to take us on a windy two-way cliff-side road, the width of a one-way road in utter darkness. It loved that road so much that the following day, it wanted to go back again on the way back from St. Paul de Vence, the beloved village of artists like Picasso, Matisse and Leger. We suspect there was an easier route to get back. But that wouldn’t have been way too boring for the GPS.