Relativity

I need to stop watching weather reports. After the météo predicted four days of rain in the south of France, I find myself already enjoying the third day of sun. Ok, so yesterday and today weren't quite the bright sun/blue sky days that Friday was, but the occassional breaks in the clouds have been enough to make eating on a terrace by the Mediterranean enjoyable, and really, what more could you ask for?

This weekend's good fortune aside, it's been a rough start to the season for those in the south who rely on tourism to earn a living. Today's newspaper ran a story entitled "Sale temps pour la plage," (Bad Beach Weather) in which tourism industry workers in Nice and Cannes decried the lower than average temperatures, higher than average cloud cover and nearly daily rainshowers that have caused many would-be vacationers to cancel their plans. Considering the nearly empty beaches I've been seeing here in Six-Fours-les-Plages, this phenomenon is touching everyone along the Côte d'Azur.

Clearly, France's tourist-starved coastal towns aren't getting any help from erroneous weather predictions. After seeing numerous pessimistic reports, we almost joined the masses by cancelling our own plans for a weekend getaway. Luckily, we decided against it. The weather reports for our area on numerous websites were so off the mark that at times they were calling for rain while, if they had taken the time to simply look out the window, they would have noticed that it was not, in fact, raining. That's the thing about the south of France: where weather is concerned, you can never lose hope. Even the "bad" days down here are better than some of the "good" ones elsewhere.