Back Again | French Riviera

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written here. I have been back in… well, Europe, for over two months now (actually today is day eighty(!) so I told myself I absolutely had to get this posted today). Not just France, as some travels have already been had. (More on that later.)

I am going to start with a more current update, and later I might post about the other travels I haven’t told you all about yet.

I landed in Nice first, and spent a few nights there, not wanting to need to rush somewhere after my twenty-four-hour journey. Twenty of those hours in the metal tube.

My bag was too heavy really for the stairs, it felt ridiculous — but basically a year’s worth of my life needed to be in that bag. I had to stop and remind myself that other people potentially viewing me as a really crazy tourist wasn’t actually my problem.

I haven’t decided specifically when I’m coming home, but, for a variety of reasons, I have already decided to be in Australia for 2026.

I don’t go right to sleep once I’m in the hotel. The jet lag is easier east to west than west to east – gaining hours instead of losing them. And after a shower, I was feeling human again and ready to go.

In Nice, I wander my time away. Really, I always do. I like it that way. I only have one real plan, which is Fennochio’s gelato on the Promenade, and it will always be something I do, every time I’m in Nice. My usual store was shut, but they have a second store further back. I opted for half violet and half poppy this time – this is one of my supreme delights in France: floral flavours. I panicked over the pronunciation of “coquelicot” (poppy), chickened out and ended up pointing, saying “ça” (that), but the server was nice and let me practice with them a few times.

As usual, I have a perfect time in Nice. It’s just a relaxing and peaceful place to be. To walk the old port and then sit with ice-cream on the Promenade is really all I am looking for in a day.

But real life must begin at some point and soon, it was time to catch a train to my new coastal home.

The next bit did not go as I would have liked. I spent two weeks in an AirBnB followed by a hotel stay that I had to keep extending. There was no real reason for this except a lack of contact from the person in charge of the flats I had been emailing about.

The agency had multiple rooms sitting empty (and still does, as I write this, I now have a four bedroom flat to myself, although that will change again soon), and I had been emailing for a month prior because I am familiar with how schedules work in France. Another language assistant described this as having “no sense of urgency” with is the perfect phrase for anything involving paperwork in France. So, it was down to the wire and I moved in the day before my work contract started.
During this time, it became apparent I am not meant to live in a hotel (at least not without fore-planning) and I also do not like eating out every night. It turns out, I’m quite domestic. I have learnt to love the cycles of cooking and all those sorts of life maintenance activities. I don’t relish having to choose what to eat each night, especially when I have no income coming in and the exchange rate is wildly against me!

I wanted desperately to just be settled already and being in limbo made it difficult for me to enjoy being in a new place.
On that last day, when I asked the hotel owner if he could store my bag for the morning, he actually laughed when I confirmed that I wouldn’t be extending for any more days.

But the important part is that I did, in fact, get an apartment. And two weeks is not that long really in French time, although I do think it’s wild that they can have so many empty rooms and not make a point of filling them when they could.

So, at last, I had a kitchen, a washing machine, and my own bathroom. I slept between my coats for a night or two before I finally got bedding sorted, courtesy of several very generous colleagues who have leant me some things for the seven months I’ll be here.

Work started off a little rocky – many of the classes I was supposed be in during the first few weeks were away on internships. Generally I wasn’t told this ahead of time and once it was only five minutes before I was due to start that I received the text message – having already been refused entry by a nervous receptionist who did not recognise me and seemed unsure of my job, even though someone else had already signed into the book for the same role but in Spanish instead of English.
But I work at two different schools and my classes at the second school went off without hitch.

My new housemate was nice. As I write this, she has already moved out though. Her English was still better than my French which was unfortunate really, but I tried to use as much French with her as I could and was finally getting a bit braver when she told me she was moving out.

A mysterious new housemate is set to move, except that was meant to be yesterday and no one has appeared, so will have to see how that goes.

The rest is just ordinary living, but I do enjoy that part. There’s a lovely park by my house. I’ve slowly tried out different grocery stores and walking routes. Actually figuring out the bus routes – something I never bothered about last time, but essential now as my schools are thirty minutes apart and my flat a further ten minutes on from that. As we enter winter here, walking just won’t make sense. Though truly it has been far too hot for autumn.
I wander over the town in the heat, seeing where I could go and what I might want to do during my time here.

That was really all those first few weeks contained. It breaks down small but it felt big, and exhausting to live through. After those weeks, I spent two weeks hopping around Italy from hostel to hostel with no privacy and eating out all the time. But I would know it was coming and actively make the choice – not have it thrust upon me for no apparent reason.
It’s an interesting to observe yourself in this way, experiencing the same situation with and without choice. Sometimes I hate that I have to make all the choices – and yet I think autonomy is often wildly underrated. What a joy it is really, in the end, when I think beyond my own stresses to consider the alternatives, that I get to choose. What a joy it is to take control of my own life, and to challenge myself to do the hard things for an outcome I want. Choice completely changes the experience, and I mean we all knew that. But it never hurts to see it play out before you in your life, to remember something in a way that feels real and tangible.

Next post will be about my two weeks in Italy. In fact, I’ve already written it, but I am a bit dissatisfied in my writing lately and I can’t tell quite what’s wrong. Still, this blog is really just for my nearest and dearest, which makes you all pretty generous readers. So thank you to you all. ♡