My Life in France

On April Fool’s Day 1998, I left on my first big solo international trip. After college graduation, I worked for a year to save money to travel to Europe. By day, I worked as a receptionist in the newly opened Austin office of the German design firm Frog Design. By night, I was in rehearsals for upcoming performances with a local dance company. I saved up enough money for a plane ticket, a euro rail pass, and two months of traveling. I had a friend living in London and a few phone numbers of other people in Europe. I was a professional modern dancer and dreamed of finding a dance company in Europe to work with and move there full time.

Everyone thought I was nuts-- heading to Europe by myself with no real plan. A young woman travelling alone with only a backpack. This was the late 90’s, so there were no cell phones, and you had to track down an internet café to check your email. During my trip, I resorted to phone cards and calling home on Sundays from the closest pay phone.

Aforementioned backpack and I during my trip .

I lived for a month in London in a flat in Chiswick with a fascinating group of 20-somethings. My friend Laura was originally from Texas but married a Brit and was working on her music career. There was a Finnish model, some cool chick from South Africa, and a guy from Vienna working in the new and burgeoning creative tech industry. They tried to convince me to stay and live there permanently. Tempting as it was, I knew I needed to leave for the next part of my adventure. 

I spent the next 6 weeks traveling with my Eurorail pass and connecting with some amazing people: My good friend Orion and his girlfriend Karlyn, who was from Indonesia and living in Amsterdam; and the grandparents of a friend who lived in the Dutch countryside town of Groningen. Grandpa ran the local art museum and Grandma was a painter with an amazing home studio looking out at the garden. I wanted them to adopt me as their granddaughter.

Pictured left: My dear friends in Groningen.

My buddy Ivan was doing war relief in Bosnia and Croatia and needed a break from his stressful job. He asked me to pick a place where he could relax, and I found Positano in the Lonely Planet guidebook-- a then sleepy and stunning town where even the cats were happy.

The whole time, I was trying to figure out where I might want to live and decided to backtrack from Italy and revisit London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Nice as my potential new home. I started with Nice.

One of the phone numbers I had was for a young composer named Luc in Nice. He had gone to graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts with a friend and artistic collaborator of mine in Austin. I attempted to reach him on my first trip to Nice, but he was traveling and I missed him. I returned to Hôtel Belle Meunière, the backpacker’s hotel where weeks before I had gotten stuck due to French train strikes. There, I reconnected with Marie Pierre, the owner’s daughter who ran the place, and Rob, a young college student from Nova Scotia who was starting a year’s study abroad. 

“I found Positano in the Lonely Planet guidebook-- a then sleepy and stunning town where even the cats were happy.”

Pictured left: Positano by me.

Things came together magically for me to stay in Nice. Rob offered me the blow-up mattress at his apartment. I was finally able to connect with Luc and he introduced me to Bruno, the artistic director of a modern dance company in Cannes. I was invited to take classes with the company and was later asked to join the company for their upcoming summer shows. Finally, it had happened– I had a job in France doing what I loved most! I got into a routine. Each morning, I went to the café and ordered an espresso and a croissant and hopped the local train from Nice to Cannes. We danced all day and enjoyed the very-French 2-hour lunch break at the beach in Cannes. The French I studied in school began to spill from my mouth freely, inching towards fluency every day. At first, I was so timid about speaking the language-- the French are total snobs when it comes to their language. In fact, it took almost a week for the dance company to realize that I spoke French. But during my months there, I became more comfortable, and eventually I was dreaming in French! My accent was not good enough to be mistaken for French, but good enough to be taken for Italian. On the weekends, the local farmers set up their market mere blocks from my apartment. I bought fresh eggs, vegetables, bread, and cheese and used my and Rob’s tiny little stove to cook.

The European countryside by me.

All the women in France, especially in the Cote D’Azur are beautiful— no matter the age. As I studied them, I realized that it had little to do with their clothes, hair, or outer appearance. It was their confidence and the way they held themselves. Even 80-year-old women walked the streets with grace-- heads held high with the knowledge that they were gorgeous. I had little money for shopping, but I started to gain the confidence of a French woman. My gait, my attitude, and even my appearance began to change.

During breaks in our dance schedule, I was able to explore the city of Nice and other towns along the coast. Some weekends, I took the train to Paris or explored Provence. 

So many artist’s flocked to the South of France over the years and there are many museums to reflect it. Among the most famous were Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall.  The Matisse Museum in Nice is one of my favorite museums. It’s located in a 16th Century Villa in the Cimiez Gardens where Matisse often frequented. The museum houses much of Matisse’s personal collection of artwork and objects which were brought over from his studio in Nice.  It is intimate and contains his furniture and artist’s tools. Being amongst his belongings and tools, I felt Matisse's spirit, picturing him sitting at his easel with his paints.

Pictured right: Musée Matisse, Nice.

While in France, I was on the search for the perfect Crème Brûlée.  Crème Brûlée has always been one of my favorite desserts- cracking through the burnt top to the creamy center is an unbeatable combination!  Although on a limited budget, I tried it in each of the restaurants I ate and was certain I would find it in Paris- to no avail. They were all good, but not perfect. Upon disclosing my goal to my friend Luc, he informed me that he knew the place. It was the café at the Modern and Contemporary Art Museum (MAMAC) . I was wary, but we hopped on his motorcycle and visited the museum. After several hours of strolling through the galleries and the rooftop views of the city, we stopped at the café and ordered the Crème Brûlée. They brought out a tray with 3 small ramekins, each one containing a different flavor: regular, vanilla, and lavender. As I cracked through the perfectly burnt top and tried each one-- I knew I had found it! The lavender was my favorite. I have since gone back, and the café no longer serves Crème Brûlée.

The French LOVE to strike and I came up against this several times during my stay. On my first weekend visiting Paris, the ONE thing I knew I wanted to do was visit the Louvre. I was staying in a hostel in the 10th arrondissement, and it was a trek to the city center. I arrived at the Louvre only to find that the guards were on strike, and the museum was closed for the weekend. I left defeated and hungry and walked along a street on the side of the museum. I was craving crepes, one of my favorite French dishes, but I was living on the equivalent of $20 a day and that was not in the budget. As I strolled the eerily empty street (you rarely walk the streets alone in Paris) I saw something slowly fall from the sky. A piece of paper fluttered down and landed at my feet. To my joy, I saw that it was a 50-franc bill (about $10). The EU was rolling out the new euro later this year, so I was able to use some of the last local currency in each of the countries I visited. The 50-franc bill was my favorite – it had an image of Le Petit Prince, one of my favorite French stories. It was just enough money for lunch, and I went to the nearest creperie and fueled up for the rest of the day.

Paris was one of the cities of my childhood dreams. It’s a beautiful city and one of the best places in the world to sit in a café and people watch. I immersed myself in the art of the city, visiting the Pompidou and finally getting to the Louvre during a later visit. Across the street from the Musée Picasso, I stumbled on an amazing old building that housed artist’s studios where I wandered from studio to studio, chatting with the young artists. 

“The 50-franc bill was my favorite– it had an image of Le Petit Prince, one of my favorite French stories.”

Pictured right: Le petit prince billet de 50 francs

In 2014, one of my favorite art spaces opened in Paris. The Frank Gehry designed Louis Vuitton Foundation is in the 16th arrondissement. It's a bit of a trek, but worth visiting for its contemporary art collection, the amazing views of Paris from the multi-level decks, and the adjacent Jardin d'Acclimatation (entry is included in the LVF ticket price.) Insider Tip: Set aside most of the day to visit the museum and the gardens. It’s pretty far to walk from the city center, but you can purchase a ticket that includes a 1 euro shuttle that goes round-trip from the museum to the Arc de Triomphe.

On my last visit to Paris in 2023, I visited a friend staying at the Bristol Hotel. He invited me to see his “cozy” room, which of course ended up being the Lumiere Suite, so regal and big he had not even used one of the bathrooms. Later, we had a drink at the bar where we hoped for a Timothée Chalamet sighting. He was there with Hugh Grant (who my friend had seen at the bar the night before) on the press tour for the upcoming premiere of the new Willy Wonka film.

The Suite Lumière at Le Bristol Paris.

Back in 1998, the World Cup was taking place in France. I was not a soccer fan at the time and initially wanted to avoid the crowds. But I ended up living in France the entire summer of the Coup de Monde. I did not see a match, but it was exciting being in the country. The day of the final match, I was on a train coming back from a weekend in Paris. On the train, we were listening to the match on several boom boxes-- yes-- this was the 1990’s. At the exact moment that we exited the train station; France won the match and louds yells of joy erupted. Immediately, everyone took to the streets to celebrate. What was usually a 20-minute walk from the train station turned into 2 hours of revelry. 

My friend Ludo was a DJ in Nice and invited us to a rave. Rob was excited as he was 19, from a small town in Nova Scotia, and had never been to a rave. I had experienced the rave scene in San Francisco and had more of a sense of what to expect. What I had not experienced, was the “secret rave.” Ludo disclosed no details and, on the night, we set off in his car with a mixture of wonder and trepidation. We drove for a while in the dark, and he pulled over at what seemed to be a random location on the side of the road. He got out of the car and picked up a rock. underneath, was the secret location. The French are crazy drivers in general and we drove through a forest with no road at what seemed like top speed. At each passing moment, I felt less and less sure about what we were doing. Ludo’s girlfriend mutters under her breath “stupide, stupide, stupide.” After a while, we came upon a clearing and there it was! Hundreds of people on an outdoor dance floor in the mountains of Provence, the DJs, the spinning lights-- the “secret rave.”

My time in Nice culminated with my final dance performance, a site-specific piece set in the gardens of the Villa Rotschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This Villa happens to be of the many incredible locations of one of my favorite movies-- Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was filmed here. Although the town of the film, Beaumont-sur-Mer, was made up, it was filmed in several quintessential French riviera locations.

Pictured left: Me getting ready for a performance with the French dance company.

Attendees of the performance would stroll through the beautiful gardens, and stumble upon dancers tucked away in different areas of the garden. My post was on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. During the performance, the sun set and a shooting star blazed across the sky. I knew at that moment that this was an incredible lifelong memory. 

The gardens at Villa Rotschild by me.