Roller Blading, Sunburn and the French Pharmacist

Friday May 6th

Well today began as a very relaxing day, but ended with Katie covered in wet towels back in the hotel room.  I swear that girl gets sunburn if she just looks at the sun.  In fact, she does sneeze every time she looks at the sun, but that’s another story.  Yes, she is an odd child.  You would think that we’d learn to put sunscreen all over her, and you would think she would stop fighting me on it tooth and nail every time I suggest sunscreen, but that’s not the case and now she has the logical consequences.

We arrived in Nice yesterday around 5:30, checked into our hotel, the Hotel Splendid (it is nice, but Splendid may be going a bit far…), and walked down to the beach.  I was really surprised to find out that the beach here is nothing but rocks, no sand at all.  I was actually really disappointed as my dream of lying on the sand and resting while Katie built sand castles and played in the water quickly evaporated. You could easily turn an ankle here walking on the beach!  The rocks range from about the size of a quarter to larger than my fist. It’s really quite odd.  We walked for a while of the rocks, watching our step very carefully and then got some dinner at a pizzeria. 

We are very close to Italy here and there are a lot of Italian restaurants.  The dinner was good and it was highly amusing to watch this crazy loud American family try to order their dinner and speak in some kind of weird broken English to the waiter thinking he would understand that better, and then complain about how everything is different here.  I had only spoken French to the waiter and I guess he did not associate me as an American because as he stopped at our table for a minute he complained about how that table was acting like babies.  Katie says that my French is really improving and the waiters are not immediately switching to English anymore when they hear me talk. I have had a number of people try to guess my nationality and not one has guessed American. Canadian is the most common guess although I have also had British and German.  I guess that’s good if I need to be inconspicuous.

Today we slept late and then went to the beach.  It wasn’t particularly warm so we didn’t worry too much about sunscreen, only putting it on our faces.  Well, our faces didn’t burn!  The beach has “public” regions and “rental” regions.  It’s like the haves and have nots. In the publis region people just spread a towel on top the rocks and lie down.  In the rental region, there are chaise lounges with thick mattresses and umbrellas and waiters who can bring you food and drinks. We opted for the rental section and settled in on our nice chaise lounges.  It was nice enough on the think mattresses that we didn’t move for about 4 hours.  It appears that Katie didn’t move at all since one side of her is bright red and the other is a pale ghostly white.

After lying on the beach, we took a walk and collected beach glass and pretty pebbles.  We have a collection of jars of sand from beaches we’ve been to around the world. Since there was no sand here, collected the pebbles and lots of gorgeous beach glass and filled our jar.  It’s actually very pretty. Katie found a rock with a fossil of a snail in it, and I found beach glass in green, white, yellow and blue. We had a lot of fun despite the lack of sand.

It was clear b this time that Katie was turning red. So we went back to the hotel to cover up.  It didn’t hurt at this point, so we just put on Capris instead of shorts and now added on sunscreen and went out to the boardwalk.  The boardwalk is actually a VERY wide sidewalk, maybe 12 feet wide, that runs along the beach for four miles. It is called boulevard de Anglais.  I think it was built using money donated by a british gentlemen who didn’t want the ladies to have to walk on the beach.  We wandered up the Boulevard to the older section of Nice where we rented rollerblades.

It was Katie’s first time on rollerblades and I haven’t roller bladed since before she was born, although Paul and I rollerbladed a lot when we lived in Minneapolis, the birthplace of Roller blades.  We ice skate a lot though so I had high hopes.  Then man gave us the roller blades, took our shoes and we were off.  I was surprised, no waiver to sign, no offer of safety gear, in face he didn’t even take our names or hold an ID!  But off we were.  The shop was across a four-lane road form the boardwalk so first we had to cross the street. We waited for the light to turn green, shoved off and Katie promptly fell down in the road. I grabbed her arm to help her up, wavered unsteadily and basically pulled her across the road. Luckily I didn’t fall as the light turned and the cars behind us sped off. It was an inauspicious start.

However, we kept with it and soon had the hang of it. I’m not saying we were particularly graceful, but at least there were no more falls, we kept our speed under control and didn’t hit any pedestrians, which is saying a lot, as busy as the boardwalk was.  I was able to do well enough to skate and take some photos of Katie roller blading along the French Riveria.

In my opinion, roller blading is harder than ice skating as the skates are harder to get moving, and once moving, harder to stop.  Plus they are less responsive and have a larger turning radius. Not to mention there aren’t any hills on an ice rink and those roller blades pick up speed fast on hills!  But we actually had a really great time, and kept at it back and forth for just over an hour.  At this point Katie was getting worn out and was starting to complain that her leg hurt from sunburn.

 

We still walked around a bit more, walking up castle hill to get a good panoramic view of the beach, but now Kate was in some pain. We walked back down, found a pharmacy and talked to the pharmacist to find some sunburn cream.  After establishing that the pharmacist could speak English since I didn’t trust my French here, I explained that we were looking for sunburn cream for Katie. “Yes, I would think so,” replied the pharmacist, looking Katie up and down. She seemed quite judgmental and her French accented English made her sound very snooty.  “She is very red. Did you not have protection?” she asked, now looking me up and down. “Yes, but only on her face,” I replied, “and her face isn’t red.”  This was of little importance to the pharmacist who was switching out the small tube of burn cream she had originally selected for an enormous tube. “You will have to apply this many, many times a day,” she explained carefully to me, “She is very burnt. And she will have to keep covered tomorrow. Is she hot?”  “No,” replied Katie. “Well, yes, her arms are hot,” I corrected, touching Katie’s arm. “Not her skin,” said the exasperated pharmacist, “her head. Is she hot in the head? A fever?”  “No…” I replied.” She just has sunburn.”  “Well she might get a fever, so watch her very carefully!” admonished the pharmacist as she wrapped up the huge tube of sunburn ointment. As we walked out of the pharmacy I could feel her judgment burning the back of my head. 

We decided at this point to call it a day, head back to the hotel, apply the ointment crème and hope for the best.  Since Katie burns at the drop of a hat and usually recovers quickly I am not really worried. However, I do have her wrapped in wet towels to ease the heat of the burn and she is in good spirits.  Tomorrow is another day. One in which we will use sunscreen.