Ten Days on the Mediterranean Coast

As the local dunked a fat fry into his pot of mussels and emulsified butter, he announced, “Tonight, we’re going to the Bulldog Pub.”
Our dinner table was made up of backpackers from Ireland, America and England, perhaps the three pub capitals of the world, so I couldn’t help but channel Jerry Seinfeld: REALLY? Our first night in Nice, spent at “the Bulldog Pub?”
The “local” — actually a Chicagoan who’d come to Nice six weeks ago and decided he was never going home — put down his fry to show he meant business.
“There’s live music, tons of international students, good beer. What more could you want?”
It’d been our be-all and end-all to get off the beaten path, to not look like tourists, to do what the French did. When our group formed at the hostel and entrusted the local with planning our first night in France, we’d expected to end up at one of “les caves,” Nice’s famous wine bars, where we’d sip reds in the same quiet underground spaces where Chagall and Picasso once traded barbs. Or maybe we’d drink whiskey at a jazz club where Mick and Keith had drawn inspiration during their notorious stay at Villa Nellcôte.
We might have romanticized Nice a bit.
As it turns out, the pub was everything we could have hoped for and more. It was dark and cheap, the floors were sticky and the walls were plastered in the Rolling Stones memorabilia we’d been craving. The French cover band sang a heavily accented version of “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” that left us positively tickled.
We’d each been spending our respective Euro-trips trying to blend in, to assimilate as best as we could. But the local had recognized that deep down, we were secretly yearning for a little piece of home.
As it neared the end of the night, “Closing Time,” a song I’d previously thought of as an exclusively American signifier, started to blare over the speakers. Everyone in the bar – French, American, Irish, Spanish – swayed together, thrusting their glasses into the air, singing in sync.
Our group drew together as if by magnetic force, intertwining arms as we put our whole hearts into the verse: “Time for you to go out to the places you will be from!” Those words had been pure nonsense until this very moment.
The lights eventually came up, and we could see that each of us was sweaty and disheveled, covered in the beer we’d dribbled down each other’s backs during our rowdy final number. But we were all smiles, and remaining arm-in-arm, we carried each other back to the hostel we shared.