Having received and then abandoned a Fitbit, I must admit to a little hesitation when I learned that my new phone could not only tell me how far I had walked today, but also could tell me how many flights of stairs I had climbed. Like… how does it know that? And, how does it deal with going downhill? Since ups and downs in life are generally a zero-sum game, I’m a little concerned that it will all cancel out and I will be left where I began.
We tend to walk a lot more here in France. We don’t have a car and there are so many interesting little neighborhoods to explore. So we walk. From Villefranche to Nice is about 8,500 steps. If I rock back and forth on my feet while I am waiting for the laundry to dry, I can drive that up by another 500. Jann’s look when I tell her this seems to say that those steps don’t count. It may fall into the same category as the time I used Google Translate to complete my entrance test for Alliance Française. I disagree on the French test… if they had not wanted ‘open book’ they should have said so.
I must admit that this idea of tracking the distance covered each day is strangely addictive. Today, after taking a stroll through Cap Ferrat, I was more interested in how many steps we had done than what we had seen. When we get back to the apartment, I have to ask Jann what her phone captured so that we can compare results. Maybe this is all just a bit too much for a vacation, just like the diet. Whoo-hoo, 21,000 steps today!
This part of the coast was colonized, in a sense, by the British who have been visiting here since the late 1700s. Some continue to arrive with an air of proprietorship and refuse to speak French, even after living here for years. The area also is a confluence of artists, retired people, and, of course, spies. This is where my characters Robert Chase and Samantha live. We walk by their house often, but they are rarely home. This week, we have in residence in the village a well-known Scottish painter, an American couple who I’m certain are spies, and Franco-Maine couple Melinda and Jean-Paul, who make sure we meet everyone. Coming soon will be a British rock-concert promoter and assorted writers and indie film producers. Never a dull moment here on the Côte d’Azur.
