Before we could have lunch at the nice-looking Chinese restaurant we attempted to go to last night, we had to break for coffee first because it was not serving until noon.  No matter, because what was France if not constant breaks for coffee?  We found the nearby Factory Café that was situated in an open corridor between two side streets.  The welcoming breezes of the wind tunnel could make the experience last forever except the fact that Nez couldn’t help but down her entire cappuccino in the amount of time Riot took two sips from his small espresso.  Oh well, time for lunch.

Sitting outside under a wide awning on a quiet alley off La Croisette, we ate delicious non-fast food Chinese and stared at the occasional passing toy trains carrying tourists (Le Petit Train de Cannes or Le Train du Cinéma) who looked like captives by choice, on the so-called “film tour.”  We were certain that more than a few would have traded places with us.  Over lunch at Le Jardin du Bambou, we pampered our tummies and pondered how the French came about counting starting with their thumbs while we started with our index fingers.  So, while a French person made a backward “L” with his thumb and index finger to denote two (if using his right hand), an American flashed a peace sign.  Nez observed rightly that the French way would make signaling four, extending every finger except the pinkie, very difficult.  Riot, who could signal four “in French” with his left but not right hand, further thought it was potentially confusing for Americans to start counting with the index finger and then reverting back to the thumb to make five.

Moving onto a less esoteric topic, we expressed our hopes that Riot’s sister and her family would join us for our wedding in France next year.  We recognized that it would be a large, although not insurmountable, financial undertaking.  Yet, it would mean so much to both of us, and perhaps more importantly, it would expose Riot's nephews to a world beyond the American suburbia from whose dull, inertial pulls we so, SO, wish they would escape in due course without too much lasting damage.  

Nez recited a list of parents of her students who took their children to various parts of the world each year, to visit family, rediscover ancestral homeland, or simply to play tourist.  Recognizing that her school district was more solidly middle class than others, Riot pointed out the sharp contrast in how different cultures perceived the act of traveling.  He remembered from his youth discussions around the dinner table about how “crazy,” or more charitably, “frivolous,” “Americans” were in taking a vacation every year when they could hardly afford it.  By which it was meant that they were taking trips while they were still renting and not owning their own house, or if they did own a house, then not saving up for an even bigger one.  

In his family, in the early years when they did not have today’s means, a vacation meant driving the family car to Orange County to stay with his maternal grandparents and going to Disneyland with food stuffed in their jackets, or making a day trip to Lake Tahoe to “ski” — essentially, sliding down a random hill by the side of the road on makeshift sleds of a piece of cardboard or plastic bags — and lunching on whatever his mom had packed.  To state the obvious, that these very simple experiences shaped the person that he became and that he would not trade them for their more upscale or conventional alternatives, would be beside the point.  Rather, the point was that one could not deny the intangible benefits to personal growth and progress that came with the act of traveling beyond one's own comfort zone and one's known world.

We would also love to see our nephews and nieces, and the entire impressionable next generation, escape the rat race of our unfortunate consumer society.  Sometimes a surprisingly good meal, in agreeable weather with a great companion, could make everything appear so clearly.  Maybe all we were saying, really, was that if one must have a Ferrari then by all means take the extra effort to push it to the limits on the German autobahn and not just rounding the corner of the cul-de-sac of one's gated community.

And with that, we said goodbye to Cannes.  To the superficiality of its skin-deep glamour, like a kid working all year to save money for a limousine for the prom.  To the more than skin-deep ferocity of its midday sun and temperate climate.  To the sprawling sandy beaches, public and private, and the freedom expressed by the topless bathers in all shapes and sizes.  To the cool, breezy evening walks along the seaside boulevard with real people:  families, lovers, friends, and tourists whose eagerness for a snapshot to show the folks back home often ran deeper than their pockets.  To the convenient springboard to visit nearby towns and pebbly stretches of ocean.  And also, to its ability to foster all sorts of conversation, from what might even be characterized as “interesting” to arguments about what to eat or when to call it a day sunbathing.  Thanks for inspiring us to communicate, to learn to communicate (sometimes in utter silence) in your midst, Cannes.  That, perhaps, was the real sun cure.