Soap in France

The French take a very strong stance against animal testing of products such as soap, and the Lush chain of wildly overpriced soaps makes sure to advertise its rigorous chemical testing policy. They would never stoop to testing their products on defenseless animals.

Special Posting for Mallory from Southern France

Yes, they appear to have gelato, and they have found original Roman designs showing Cupid with an ice cream cone.

Religion in France

It is not true what people say, that the French have become a post-religious society.  It's just that there may have been a minor modification in the nature of the deity.

Cats in France

 There was also a brand of kitty litter, which we did not buy nor take a picture of, which advertised itself as "pour la grande soiree."  I'm not sure what kind of evening the cat had in mind, but this litter apparently plays an important part.

You Know You're in France When

The dogs are dressed more fashionably than you are.  Don't worry - it gets worse, much worse.  I have more photos in this vein.

First Day in Nice

We woke up before 6, which isn't surprising, since was a Saturday, a work day, and we were still 2.5 hours ahead.  We walked the distance to the old city, which was basically the entire length of the Promenade des Anglais.  That takes about an hour, though to be fair, we kept stopping to look at things.  We had a coffee in the plaza near the Palais de Justice, where they had an old book fair set up.  In keeping with our tradition, we bought a book for our granddaughter, Les Aristochats.  I don't remember the movie very well, but according to the back of the book, it ends well: ils retrouveront leur maison et le bonheur.  So that's good.
We had moules et frites for lunch, one with Provencale sauce, the other with Thai curry sauce.  Then we lounged by the rooftop pool for a few hours, then had our own tapas and happy hour on our room terrace.  It's too early to tell, but I believe, if we pay attention, that we are going to notice subtle differences between Cote d'Azur and Afghanistan.  If so, I will report them here.

Nous Sommes Arrivees

After what was quite possibly the worst flight ever, we are finally in Nice.  It is warm, it is humid, it is green, it is not Afghanistan.  We took the Ariana flight direct from Kabul to Frankfurt in order to avoid Dubai's inane airport flight schedule.  Almost every flight there seems to either land or leave in the very early morning or after midnight, and the whole idea seems to be to force you to stay at least one day in Dubai.  This flight was long, 7+ hours, but it gets you direct into Frankfurt, where you can make any connection at all.  But for starters, some of the people in our group chose not to show up for the shuttle to the airport, so we lost nearly half an hour waiting for them.  Next, there was some security issue as you approached the airport, so they wouldn't let the Embassy cars drop us off.  Instead, we got dumped in some parking lot far from the airport, and there we had to get on an Afghan bus that took us to the airport terminal itself.  By then it was only an hour before our flight was going to depart, and the lines were interminable.  Kabul isn't exactly a highly automated airport.  So we got our boarding passes about ten minutes before takeoff, and we still had to go through the passport line.  That took about half an hour.  Luckily, the flight was delayed an hour and a half - except that we were sitting on the tarmac during that time, in a packed plane with no ventilation at all, filled with more screaming kids than I have seen the entire year here.  It was like 200 Afghan families had packed up the entire clan and were ready to emigrate.  One father put a plastic bag over his kid's head to get him to be quiet; I don't believe I ever tried that with ours, but it's never too late to learn new techniques.  So we got into Frankfurt nearly two hours late, and time was short.  We stood in yet another passport line behind several hundred Japanese in a tour group, but then finally, finally, we were in Europe.  The machine to print out your boarding pass worked, easily and instantly.  The airport was clean and quiet.  The Lufthansa flight to Nice boarded and left and arrived on time.  And as we walked into the airport, the signs said, Welcome to the French Riviera.  So now, it's time to explore.