Bisexuals and geeks
After four months in France, I think it's the people in California that I miss the most. Vegetarians, bisexuals, Renaissance faire geeks, girls who don't shave, modern hippies in whole-fiber clothes, musicians, people who mix a passion for some hard science with some completely unrelated field, radical environmentalists... Actually, to be honest, the California I miss is probably pretty well represented between Santa Cruz and Berkeley and completely absent everywhere else, but, well, this isn't supposed to be an unbiased report.
Whoever was designing Sophia Antipolis to emulate Silicon Valley forgot one important detail to add to the region: university life. Intellectual stimulation is so completely lacking here... where are the bookstores, the cafes for afternoons of deep philosophical discussion, the hole-in-the-wall restuarants where tomorrow's sexiest startup will be planned out on dinner napkins?
Today I pointed at the tantalizingly close mountains that surround this area and said "I want to go hiking there" and off we went, driving through Valbonne and Opio and going generally in the direction of "up" towards somewhere called Gourdon. After a significant amount of climbing, Ben wondered why the road was still so wide and well-maintained, since random mountain roads far enough away from significant civilization naturally deteriorate into badly paved ways not really wide enough for two cars, with deadly unmarked turns and a 6-inch high stone wall protecting your car from the 1000 foot drop off the cliff.
At Gourdon we discovered the reason: 6 bus-sized parking spaces, and a village with maybe 20 real inhabitants and 2000 visitors daily, every shop overflowing with "authentic" Provencal souvenirs. Ben pointed out the stand selling pain d'epices, since a while back I'd mentioned I'd never heard of it. He said they looked kinda weird, which I reasoned was probably due to the fact they were made for the tourists, until he told me the only pain d'epices he'd ever had came from Carrefour. Anyways, there was nothing of significance in the village except for the absolutely spectacular view over the entire cote d'azur. We saw several signs advertizing the region as "the balcony of the cote d'azur" and at least they were right about the views.