Monaco Grand Prix

The other big event of the weekend (apart from the Cannes film festival) was of course the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix. Being a Finn, this was of course an experience I couldn't afford to miss.

We started on Saturday night by taking the train down to Monaco to meet up with Kartsa, who works as a mechanic for McLaren. We met him as well as Phil and Spencer (who also work for McLaren) at the racetrack, and had a few beers. Great atmosphere - quite different from the Monaco we're used to (which is very quiet indeed). Having missed the last train back, we took the night bus to Nice - needed to be on top form for the race :-) Although in the end I had a pretty short night because we had to wait for about an hour for the bus to arrive, during which we enjoyed Grand Prix-weekend priced coffees.

In spite of the nocturnal adventures, I did get up early on Sunday morning, and caught the 9:44 train from Nice Ville to Monaco with Jari and Kalle - my fellow Finnish F1 spectators. After enjoying the pre-race atmosphere for a bit, we made our way to our places - which for the "reasonable price" of 70 euros was a muddy slope under the rocher (where the royal palace is located). OK, so the views are OK. And there's even a screen, which shows you what's going on in the race. Anybody who's been to an F1 race know that after the 1st pit stops, following what's going on in the race without a screen is pretty much impossible (although it was too far away for at least me to see much at all). But I have to say the glamour the Monaco GP is famous for seemed a bit far away ;-) (my bum certainly didn't enjoy the experience).
But in spite of all the hassle (or maybe also because of it?), it was an experience! The noise those cars makes is quite something... OK so we had no idea about how the race went, but that's a minor detail right ;-)

We did figure out that McLaren got a double victory (nice one for Kartsa & co), with Alonso winning before Hamilton. The Finns did pretty badly, although Kimi made it to 8th place, which I suppose is an OK result considering his qualification was a bit of a disaster.

Maybe next year I will do what some people recommended - find a bar in Monaco and watch it there :-)

Parc Phoenix

We didn't exactly have an early start, after our escapades in Cannes last night (getting back at 3 o'clock in the morning means getting up late the next day at my age ;-). So we decided to visit Parc Phoenix, near the airport.

It's a kind of mixture of a botanical garden, zoo and playground for kids. And then there is this big conical green house where they've got a mini-jungle.

There was also a photographic exhibitions about the French Guayanan rain forest, which was pretty cool! A well-spent 2 euros each, I must say.

Cannes film festival

Me being something of a movie freak, it was kind of like a foregone conclusion that we would go to the Cannes film festival. Because of our most enjoyable trip to England we had to leave it a bit to the last minute, but as they say - better late than never.

So, I left home earlier than normally, got on the train to Cannes from work (the non-air-conditioned train journey wasn't one of the most enjoyable ones of my life - and as you can probably guess I wasn't exactly the only one on the train...) to meet Mathilde in town.



Once in Cannes we proceeded to the tourist office to get free tickets for an outdoors cinema screening. Unfortunately, this film festival is an exclusive one to say in the least - it's pretty much impossible to get tickets to any of the actual screenings unless you live in Cannes (which we don't) or know people in the biz (which we definitely don't!).


We did spend a bit of time trying to see somebody famous in front of the Palais de Festival (the closest we got was seeing Malcolm McDowell on a TV screen). I did spot one Indian lady whom everybody was taking pictures of - so I did as well. Probably a big Bollywood star or something (or more likely people just liked her dress ;-).




After a dinner in the old port, we went to see the film at the beach. Pretty cool, watching the movie in sun chairs on the beach as the sun was setting - the film was called Made in Jamaica - a laid back flick about Reggae. Unfortunately, we didn't understand half of what was said because the Jamaican accent is, er, interesting... So we ended up having a few drinks instead with Christian, Sami and Kalle from work.

Back in the UK

It's been a couple of months since my last visit to the UK - so it was about time. This time Mathilde came along as well.

I left sunny Nice on Monday morning, arriving at London Heathrow, welcomed by the rain - just to make me feel like home :-) After a day at the office, it was time to reacquaint myself with that famous British institution known as the public house. So off I went to meet up with Stephane, Maxim, Dan and Kartsa in the Guildford Tup for a few beers (in fact the merrymaking got so out of control that I kind of forgot to have dinner).

Tuesday continued in pretty much the same manner, starting with a couple of quick pints in the Heron on the Lake in Fleet with some colleagues, from where Pentti whisked me over to the Stoke in Guildford (he wanted to try the GPS on his new phone) - where I joined Stephane and Phil for the famous Stoke pub quiz. Which we amazingly enough won ! (although I have to say my contribution was quite limited...).




On Wednesday night I drove down to Gatwick with Kartsa to pick up Mathilde.


Thursday - being a public holiday in France (the 3rd one in May already :-), we spent in London. We decided to go to Vinopolis, which we had never visited. It's (as you probably guessed ;-) a museum dedicated to wine. Pretty interesting actually - and not just because of the wine tasting sessions. We wrapped up a very nice day with meeting Nick, Chie and Sinhung in one of our favourite haunts in London - De Hems (a Dutch pub in Chinatown - very much recommended!) followed up with a nice Thai meal near Trafalgar square.



Friday evening started with a meal with Lou and Peter in the Loch Fyne, a nice Scottish sea food restaurant in Guildford. After this, we had a few pints in the White House with the old gang (strengthened by Isabelle, who was visiting for the weekend), and stumbled back to Phil's place (after a quick pint in the Tup, which was surprisingly open after 1 o'clock - this being quite unusual in England...) who had foolishly volunteered to accommodate us.




We spent Saturday with Winston and Weng - who kindly enough came down to see us all the way from Coventry, as well as Bruce. After the Standard Tour of Guildford (which in all honesty has to be said doesn't take all that long), we ended up (surprise, surprise) in yet another pub (the Weyside this time) for a well-deserved (?) pint. After this we sped down to Phil's for a quick improvised dinner, after which we met the big gang at the Drummond (yes, it's another pub), which has benefited from a bit of a face lift. After a few pints there the decadence continued at Dan's place (where we all politely invited ourselves ;-) with wine and Mojitos.... We stumbled back to Phil's at dawn...



Our visit to the Misty Isle wrapped up nicely with that oh so British Sunday pastime - the pub lunch (which we enjoyed at the Seahorse in Shalford, just down the road from Guildford).

La Turbie and the Trophée d'Auguste

It's been quite a hectic weekend for us Finns. On Saturday we beat the Russians in the Ice Hockey World championship semi-finals after an overtime goal.

Then in the evening there were the Eurovision song contest finals in Helsinki - for the first time ever (and last, no doubt, as anybody who knows about Finland's history in the competition knows...) thanks to Lordi's shall we say somewhat surprising (but in my opinion, well-deserved ;-) victory last year. We didn't do quite as well this time around, Hanna finished 17th.




We did, though, managed to squeeze in a walk on Sunday, from Monaco to La Turbie. La Turbie is yet one more pretty village perched on a hilltop, overlooking the Riviera (namely, Monaco). It's also kind of famous for the Trophée d'Auguste, dedicated to (kind of obviously, really), the Roman emperor Augustus. It was built to honour his victory of the Gallic tribes, and is actually one of only two trophies preserved from Roman times. Now there's an obscure fact for the next pub quiz... The walk was nice, with great views over Monaco and the surrounding coastline.






In the evening we had a "kisastudio" (you'll have to look that up in a Finnish-English dictionary ;-) at Sami's place, to watch Finland's near-victory (yes, that would be a loss) against the Canadian B(*^**ds in the hockey finals. 'nough said... With Raikkonen also not finishing the F1 race in Barcelona it was a pretty bad day sports-wise...

Gorges du Verdon

I love May in France. 3 public holidays altogether - 3 potential long weekends :-) So today was one of them. We got up very early, and decided on an impulse to go to the Gorges du Verdon (for that sort of day trip you need to set off pretty early...).

The 1st stop was Castellane, at the eastern end of what some call "the Grand Canyon" of France. It's a pretty Provencal village, overlooked by Chapelle-Notre-Dame-du-Roc, dramatically situated on a cliff about 180 meters above the town. We, as many pilgrims do every year, walked up to the chapel, and were greeted by some pretty magnificent views over the town and the Gorges...



We then carried on into the canyon, along some winding roads, to the Point Sublime, from where we were greeted by some yet more magnificent views over the canyon. From there we walked to the Belvedere de Rancoumas. Pretty hard going actually, since we had to walk all the way down to the bottom of the canyon, cross it over the 17th century pont de Tusset, and then walk up to the other rim. And yes, once there, we were once more greeted by some amazing views.



After this rather sporty activity, we drove through the Gorges to Lac de Ste. Croix, a very nice lake at the western end of the canyon. A really stunning sight, as we drove down from the rim towards crystal-clear lake...



And that was it - time to head back to Nice. But we'll come back for sure - maybe next time we'll do the legendary Sentier Martel (14 kilometres of tunnels, water, staircases and great views, apparently...).

Aspremont and Mont Chauve

The weather was very nice this morning, so we decided to do another walk in the Nicois foothills. This time we chose to attack Mont Chauve ("bold mountain"), near Aspremont.



The walk was very nice indeed, with clear skies brilliant views over the Var valley, we could see all the way to the snow-covered (yes, it did snow up in the alps this week...) peaks of Park National de Mercantour. We also had some very nice views towards Nice and over the coast. We did encounter a few drops of rain at the top of Mont Chauve (at 853 meters), but nothing too bad...



Afterwards we had a walk around the village. It's a bit different from the other perched village, in that it is much less old (although still pretty) - although Aspremont is very old (dating back about 1000 years) it was destroyed in the 19th century and had to be rebuilt.

Massif d'Esterel & Frejus road trip

After a night out with the local Finns on Friday night, we decided to drive down to Frejus with Janne, Katja and my parents.


We managed a relatively early start (considering the well-known difficulties of my family in achieving early starts), headed towards the Massif d'Esterel (a large reddish rocky massif situated between Cannes and Frejus) along the Corniche d'Esterel - we were treated to some truly awesome views over the coast and the massif.



Having stopped a couple of times for some tourist photos, we arrived in Frejus. After a quick sandwich for lunch, we headed to explore the Roman ruins for which Frejus is famous. First we visited the arena - which is pretty well-preserved and quite large (although not as big as the more famous one in Arles, in Provence). After that we searched out, and eventually found (having half-accidentally seen most of Frejus in the process ;-) the Roman theatre. I must say it was a big of a disappointment. Basically they had covered the old Roman theatre with a modern metal structure which pretty much covered all the old parts. Can't really see the point, to be honest...





Having seen these ancient treasures we then started heading back towards Nice, stopping on the way at the Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Jerusalem. It's a very nice little chapel hidden in the middle of a park, designed in the 1950's by Jean Cocteau, as a kind of refuge for artists in the area. A truly sublime place...



In the evening we went for a meal to Mougins, a procenval village near Cannes. I love this place - it basically seems to be dedicated to food. Restaurant after restaurant... It's also a very pretty and tidy place, with a lot of artist's studios about (kind of reminds me in some ways of St. Paul, although thankfully it's a lot less touristy).

Day out in Antibes

Took Jocke to the airport, and the next stop on the agenda was Antibes, for a family gathering - since Janne and Katja were visiting.

After some swimming and relaxing at my parent's flat, we visited the town. Antibes is one of the oldest and most important towns in the region (it was founded by the Greeks during the 4th century BC - they named it Antipolis).



We started off by walking around the posh harbour (I really mean posh - apparently the most expensive yacht "parking places" costs something like 1 million euros/month - we're talking big boats here).

After that, we strolled down the old time - following in the footsteps of such famous painters as Picasso and Peynet (no, I don't know him either, but he must be an important chap since there is a museum dedicated to him in Antibes) who both lived here.



We finished off the day with a nice dinner at my parents place.