Menton
…Why are you not coming? Me and Sofia Andreevna are waiting you here, let me say, with outstretched arms. Our place is quite and nice, the sea is blue and mild, splashing as a baby near our feet; roses and jasmine blossom everywhere, and the air smells sweet. Rush, Luisa, and bring with you your relatives. Alexis Zhemchuzhnikov is here now with his wife and children. Our house has a flat roof that does not require climbing the drainpipe. Sitting on it and eyeing the hazy view of the sea is not bad! Downstairs there is a room prepared specially for you, the waves reach its windows when it is storming.A.N. Tolstoy, letter to E.V. Matveyeva, January 1874, Mentone
Menton in French, Mentone in Italian is the nearest French town, if we only count normal car routes. If we take into consideration mountain paths as well, then La Brigue (Briga) is the closest to Triora, only about 20 kms. But since I still haven’t bought a 4-wheel motorcycle for driving along these paths, Briga is not suitable for business trips to France.
This time our journey was purely practical: B. had to visit the dentist. It seems that dentists in France are almost 3 times cheaper than italian ones, and also they are not so tough in squeezing money out of you. A couple of months ago I visited this dentist myself (in Menton), and yes, it worked: he didn’t find any problems, and didn’t charge any money at all. They say that in Italy this is hardly possible: in any case you have to pay something for the visit. In B’s case, they only had to re-shape a bad filling (from an english dentist) and the bill was 40 euros. Actually it should have been 48, but since they didn’t accept credit cards (as in many other places in Cote d’Azur - a rather unpleasant surprise for tourists), and he had only three 20 euro notes in cash, he payed 40.
When I went to Menton alone after the dentist I went to the sea coast. And I was astonished to find myself in an almost empty beach. Just behind the Casino of Menton, that is, in the very centre, and in the middle of high season! To the left and to the right I could see plenty of people, but this particular part of the beach was deserted. It turned out that this was a dog beach. People can go there with their dogs. I was moved and thought of Grusha - my dog that I left behind in Moscow with my dad. She would love to jump through the waves.
When B. finally was able to chew, we started to look for a place where we could get a “socca”. Wikipedia declares that it is the same as italian farinata, and I was convinced that socca is more like a pancake, so I wanted to check it out. Helas: all the restaurants that had socca on their menu were closed. So we were forced to eat “galettes” - buckwheat pancakes, followed by a lemon cake.
On the whole Menton is a nice and vivid town, but without anything outstanding. Lots of bright flowerbeds, sometimes decorated with sculptures, like this awful-smiling mushroom:
Menton is a twin city to Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
