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So I have been meaning forever to show you the famous Cours Saleya market in Nice. The problem is there is SO MUCH TO SHOW that I look at all the pictures I have and get exhausted just thinking about the post it would take to do justice to the Cours Saleya market, and give up and write about chocolate.

I can always find the energy for chocolate.

Almost always. Last night, I was so exhausted from this week, I almost couldn’t do any truffle experiments, but I finally worked up the courage.

So, for Mimi’s sake, oh market-loving Mimi, I am going to tell you, but–in lots of short parts. It will be like The Green Mile, only maybe not such a bestseller–you get a chapter of the market at a time.

And for a prelude, I think you need to see a little of what this city is.

Just a glimpse of this bright and fashionable city on the edge of the sea.

It is unique and distinct, not a Paris of the South as some people say, but it’s own place, very different from Paris, but with its own appeal.

I still remember my first introduction to Nice.

My father went there when I was a baby, in a story I’ve told before.

So Nice formed itself a little in my brain, an image of fountains and orange juice and a Matisse museum.

Then a friend in Tahiti told of living in Nice. “So snobby,” she said.

“Worse than Paris?” I asked incredulously.

“Different,” she said. “A Nice, il faut toujours faire attention � ce que tu portes. Si tu as une jupe mal tournée, ils te regardent de travers.” In Nice, you always have to watch what you wear. If you wear a skirt “mal tournée” (we don’t even have an equivalent for this in English, maybe “not quite well made” is the best way to translate it), everyone gives you looks.

So that was Nice for me, until I saw it.

And I have to say that, given the 180 euro FLIP-FLOPS I saw in some store windows, they might very well be snobby about clothes. ($240!! For FLIP-FLOPS!!!)

But isn’t it lovely?

These are the buildings you see around the Cours Saleya market.

Do you see the shutters with the little opening? This is a classic in the south of France.

A long arcade of arches separates the Cours Saleya from the Mediterranean.

Through the arches, you can see the blue sky, the blue sea, and the palm trees.

People walk and skate along the famous Promenade des Anglais.

My brother is scanning for topless sunbathers and about to go dip his hand in the Mediterranean for the first time. I love it when I widen other people’s worlds, too. But I’m not thinking about that in this picture, because it is one of those moments when I have forgotten what an adventure I am living, when I have forgotten that no one else in my family has ever seen the Mediterranean. I am instead thinking about the market that is just behind my back and also wondering where the good ice-cream is in this city.

THAT IS ALWAYS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.

Coming up next chapter…the market, chapter 1.

I may not be too present for the next ten days or so, because it’s an intense time of year, so I felt a moral obligation to leave you with something you can linger over.

I was, of course, incited by such posts as Laume’s where she claims I am forevermore inseparably associated with chocolate in her mind.

I like this kind of mind. In fact, if any of the rest of you should see me associating with chocolate, I encourage you, for all our sakes, to remember that adverb “inseparably” and STICK WITH IT. NO ATTEMPTS AT SEPARATING ALLOWED.

In fact, it reminds me of when a complete stranger walked up to me among a collection of writers gathered at a Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ signing and said, “Laura? Are you–Laura of the Truffles?”

THAT is the kind of thing that makes my day. In fact, when my agent and I were discussing whether or not I should write some of my books under a different name, I said, very excited: “Can that name be LAURA OF THE TRUFFLES?!!”

And she said, “Umm…maybe we’ll just stick with your real name.”

But personally, I think “Laura of the Truffles” would be good for sales.

And it would only serve to enhance my excuses to talk about such places as THIS:

L’Atelier du Chocolat is a lot of fun, something some of the highest end chocolate shops in Paris sometimes stop being. The chocolate is delicious and the premise would make anyone happy:

You browse among these bins, full of great rippling slabs of chocolate of different flavors and strengths.

If you are very unlucky, you ask your husband to take some pictures while you juggle the baby, and end up with this:

WHITE CHOCOLATE!!! The very phrase makes me so mad.

In fact, if you ever imagined Rumplestiltskin jumping up and down in berserker frustration, you can just substitute VERONICA LAKE

or LAUREN BACALL

for the actual Rumplestiltskin in that image, and you will have a good idea of me reacting to white chocolate.

Seriously. It’s like you’re a kid, all excited for Christmas, and the adults wake you up early and say, “Santa came! Go see!” and you run all happy to the living room and–

There’s no tree! There are no presents! It’s not even Christmas, it’s just somebody’s idea of a bad joke. That’s white chocolate for you.

But Sébastien thought it was aesthetically pleasing, being an artist and not realizing that aesthetics start with taste not vision, and so that’s our only close-up.

Well, and this.

But anyway. What you do is, you browse among those slabs (but NOT the white chocolate bin, which you ignore) and choose what you want, and the person working there breaks beautifully uneven hunks off and makes you–

A chocolate bouquet!

I love it.

And then she says: “Do you want any special color raffia with that? Is it a gift for your mother? ” (It being French Mother’s Day.)

And you say–

“Um. Yes.”

Which is a BIG FAT LIE. It wasn’t for my mother. My mother doesn’t like chocolate; I think she was abducted by aliens when she was little.

It was for my baby girl’s mother. I know she would have gotten it for me if she had a bigger allowance, but she still swallows money, so I had to take care of the present buying for her.

I bought something for Sébastien’s mother, too, though, never fear!

And you know what?

She hid it from me as soon as we gave it to her!! What’s up with that?

And here I thought we were getting along so well.

So I’m the first to say that Paris can be a difficult city to adjust to, especially when you come from a smaller and much more smiling town.

But when in doubt, remember that, past the occasional rude waiters or more than occasional Impossible Bureaucrats, there are plenty of people with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a willingness to welcome.

Plenty of other kinds of people, too, but I happen to like people with a sense of humor and a willingness to welcome. Never underestimate either one of those two traits.

I just wanted to take a moment of silence and quiet for Amy, who lost her mother this past weekend. Amy was one of the very first people to visit my blog, right after I started it, and she came up with the idea of the famous Truffle Contest, and she has been an amazing support and presence from very nearly day one.

As many of you know, I lost my father this year, as well, and all the words of sympathy that came in are why I also know that many of the people who visit this blog have also lost one or both of their parents or someone else very close to them. So…this maybe goes out to all of us. Because I think every time we hear something like this, we all hurt again. But it goes out extra-specially for Amy, and her sister Jill, and all their family, whose hurt is very fresh.

Of course, it sounds as if you are all giving Sébastien CREDIT for his misbehavior, so maybe I shouldn’t be proving my innocence of it, after all.

May I just state for the record that Sébastien needs NO encouragement.

But, anyway, here is what I was doing while Sébastien was going around taking pictures for you.

Seriously, isn’t this the kind of place where you could sit forever?� In the photo, I could swear it doesn’t even look real.� Does it look to anyone but me as if everything beyond the line where the trees are was just painted in?

But no.� And this is still a privately owned castle, I might mention.
Talk about a drain on the family finances.

I wonder what property taxes run to?

So here we are, three generations sitting just ten yards or so down the slope from the lovely Hercules.

WITH OUR BACKS TURNED.� I just mention.

That’s I on the left, my daughter in the middle, and my mother-in-law on the right.

Please note that my mother-in-law, A GRANDMOTHER, is wearing a camisole top and looking good in it.

Just in case you wanted proof she is French.