Èze

The day before was Nice: palm trees, the long curve of the beach, the Mediterranean doing its impossible blue. The next day I went up.

Èze hangs on a rock high above the sea — a medieval village with the ruins of a castle at its top, now a garden of cacti and succulents. Below it runs a steep path that carries Nietzsche’s name. He spent his winters on this coast in the 1880s and wrote that part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra came to him while climbing it. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” he said. I’d like that on my hiking boots.

At the top: Cap Ferrat floating in the bay, a French flag snapping over terracotta roofs, the yellow bell tower of the church below. I sat on the old wall for a long time and, for once, didn’t think about anything at all.