KG and Coco B go to Europe: Part 1

On Monday morning, May 31, Corey and I left for our grand European adventure. We flew from MSP to ORD to JFK to MXP (Milan, IT), where we took a train to Cagnes sur Mer, a town on the Mediterranian just between Antibes and Nice. However, upon arriving at Malpensa International Airport, we waited for our luggage at the carrosel until we realized the inevitable: it was not coming. This wasn't too surprising, as we had had bad weather in Chicago causing us to barely make our flight to Milan. Nonetheless, we were assured in New York that our luggage would make it. But, as was now evident, it didn't. We went to the desk and gave the lady our information. She said she could send it to the airport in Nice the following day. Happy to be traveling light and with the promise of eventual luggage, we continued our trip.

After nearly 36 hours of travel, we were greeted at the Cagnes sur Mer train station by my "French father," Andre. (Andre and Danielle were my homestay parents when I went to France in high school.) We drove up the narrow street to their house in Haute de Cagnes, a 300-year old house just a hop, skip, and jump away from an old castle. Your average American car would never make it up there. I'd be hardpressed (note, the computer from which I´m typing this does not have a hyphen...) to fit the Prius through the roads, which, not to mention, are NOT oneway. The house and living quarters were nearly as narrow as the street. Corey and I stayed in the house Andre grew up in just across the way from where he and Danielle currently live.

Over the course of our three days with A&D, we ate many a delicious meal on their terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, browsed through the old market in Nice, meandered around Monte Carlo, set sail to the island where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned, gawked at ginormous yachts (including that of Microsoft's Steve Jobs), and took in the generous pace of life in Souther France. A&D's generous hospitality and fine cooking was greatly appreciated.

On Thursday, the day before our departure for Belgium, we were getting nervous about our luggage... No one had called us yet, and Andre spent an hour on the phone trying to track it down. On our way to the nice Nice airport, we received a call saying our luggage would be in later that day. We turned around and returned later in the day when they had told us, but no one in baggage services had any idea what we were talking about. Numerous phone calls and several minutes of heated banter, tout en francais, led to a man (we have no idea who he was or why he had our bags, as he wasn't even affiliated with the airlines) bringing us our bags on a trolly. We didn't even care because we finally had clean clothing and Andre had his ''Big Ass Red'' wine from my dad. Turns out our bags had traveled even further than us, flying from Milan to Paris before coming to Nice. Oy vey!

It was hard to leave the beautiful Cote d'Azur where ''the sun shines all year.'' Even A&D told us ''You don't want to go to the Netherlands. They don't have good food, they don't have good weather...'' But, we had a train to catch to Brussels where we would spend a couple days before our week on a farm in Holland.

Leave your comments. Love to hear from you! And check back tomorrow for stories from bustling Brussels...

Peace, love, and Mediterranean sunshine,
Kels and Corey