Celebrating Life on the Riviera

SEMI-MARATHON MARATHON

On my way to the Cours Saleya Sunday morning, as is my usual routine to visit the market, have a coffee and then land at Le Safari for lunch, all the other pedestrians and I had to gingerly cross through the runners along avenue Félix Faure who were partaking in the 32nd Nice International Half Marathon. The race is made up of more than 10,500 runners from all over the world. The distance for the run is 21.1 kilometers, but there were several different runs for a variety of participants—a family run, a teen’s run and even one for kids.

The runners were everywhere to be found in Nice, under blue-blue skies, but gusty winds, sporting their jerseys and number tags…adding lots of additional color to the already colorful landscape. The sea was so blue, that everyone was out taking photos along the Promenade des Anglais, in spite of the winds. Meanwhile the sky couldn’t have been bluer.

Yes, Nice is nice.

CELEBRATING LIFE

Have you ever written a eulogy about someone you loved? It can be a very cathartic experience that helps with the the raw emotions of grief.

I did that on Saturday in advance of the memorial we planned for Sunday afternoon in Nice to celebrate the life of my niece, Shari, who died this past January of a very aggressive unstoppable cancer. It had all begun in Nice, on Bastille Day, when a tumor of massive proportions was discovered, the likes of which were inconceivable.

No one should have to bury their child. I have always believed it would be the worst thing that could happen to me. This was a close second, as we were personally very attached, as both family and friends.

This kind of a loss was the catalyst for my discovery of Eckhart Tolle and The Power of Now about 20 years ago. A friend told me his story of having lost one of his 16 year old twin boys in a motorcycle accident. In order to deal with the loss, he subscribed to Tolle’s philosophy of acceptance: “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”

What choice do have anyway?

There were about a dozen people in attendance, upstairs at Oscar Restaurant in Nice. It was hosted by Shari’s widower, George. I had prepared a rotating slide show filled with fun pictures of Shari that we technically never got to work, so instead I went through them manually, but only after I delivered the eulogy. It was difficult to get through it as I couldn’t help but get teared up at almost every sentence or thought and I could see George was tearing up, too.

After the slides, with comments about each one, I showed an FYI TV episode in which Shari, my daughter and myself played ourselves visiting three tiny apartments, one of which Shari purchased. The apartment was a studio in Le Marais that I had owned and she had purchased from me. It was fun and funny, so that helped lighten the mood, but then others wanted to say a few words, so they did.

It was all recorded for the family to see, but it’s not for public viewing. Sorry.

By the end of the event, I was quite drained. It was bitter sweet in that it was both sad, yet cathartic and cleansing…a way of saying goodbye that was meaningful. Everyone appreciated the opportunity.

FILMING IN THE PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur)

This morning a driver picked me up to head to the Jardin René Cassin in Antibes where our filming begins of our 56th House Hunters International episode. The garden was named in honor of René Cassin’s work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It features some thirty exotic, Mediterranean and special species, including the albizia or silk tree, the catalpa with its atypical bean-pod-shaped fruit, and a camphor tree dating from the 1912 Antibes World’s Fair, when the garden was created as a classified wooded area.

Our four-day filming adventure will take us to the villages of Biot, Valbonne and Antibes. The contributors are a mother-daughter team who are here so that the daughter can attend the prestigious Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in Biot. It’s a big deal to be accepted there. Patrick Jean André Mouratoglou is a French tennis coach, sports commentator, and businessman who founded the Academy in 1996. Since he’s coached many up-and-coming players, including such tennis luminaries as Serena Williams, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Aravane Rezaï, and Yanina Wickmayer, as well as Laura Robson, Jérémy Chardy, Grigor Dimitrov and others of international renown.

Biot (pronounced “Biotte”) is a tiny village northwest of Nice. Its inhabitants are known as the Biotois. Although the town is highly urbanized and increasingly integrated into the urban agglomeration along the Côte d’Azur coastline, it has retained its historic hilltop village almost intact. New districts have been built below it since the second half of the 20th-century, at the expense of agricultural land that was used for greenhouse horticulture. The Sophia Antipolis Technology Park occupies around a third of the commune’s territory.

The Musée National Fernand Léger is located in Biot, the only museum in the world dedicated to Fernand Léger, a major artist of the 20th-century, who lived and worked in Biot. I visited Biot, the museum, as well as Valbonne and Antibes during a “A Four-Day Adventure on the Riviera” last September. You can read all about that in a past Nouvellettre®. I am looking forward to revisiting this very beautiful part of France.

The Musée National Fernand Léger

You’ll be hearing more about it this week as I discover even more.

A la prochaine…