Family time

After a few days of peace and quiet, busy days were upon us, as Mathilde’s niece and nephews came over to visit… Muriel had spent a few weeks touring France with her children, and they were finishing their trip by paying us a visit. At the same time, Joel and Francoise were coming for a visit before walking (!) back to Angers (well, maybe not all the way…).

Things kicked off Wednesday evening. We had actually been invited to an apero at Sandra's and Stephane's (collegues of Mathilde) place, so we popped over there for a couple of drinks and some munchies (Stephane was even kind enough to bring us the leftovers afterwards), after which we headed back home to meet everybody. It was great to see Alix (who’s growing up fast, without loosing one bit of her seemingly endless energy…) and Paul & Lucas, the twins (who now seem to have even more energy than Alix – something that I would’ve thought impossible!). We enjoyed a tasty barbeque, washed down with some delicious Corsican wine & beer (courtesy of Muriel – Corsica having been the preceding leg of their tour). After that, it was time to distribute the souvenirs from our Mongolian holiday (the mini-yurt went down very well) and entertaining the kids (very energy-consuming…).

It felt almost like a relief to be able to go to work on Thursday to rest for a bit… In the evening we headed up to Haut-de-Cagnes (where I parked in the most high-tech car park ever – I could write a whole blog entry about this contraption, where the cars are basically delivered to a “storage area” by a kind of conveyor belt), for dinner at the main square at the swanky-named “Le Jimmy’s”. It’s certainly not the kind of place where you would go for a romantic dinner or a gourmet meal, but it’s a great place for kids. They have children’s menus, and also the big square and its petanque grounds is great for when the kids get bored (and less great for the grown-ups who have to chase after them and try to keep them under control). But anyway, we all had a good time, and I suppose I provided some entertainment for the other guests, being assaulted by the twins on the petanque field.

Friday – weekend – yihaa! Friday was “a quiet night in” (I put that in quotation marks since that probably doesn’t exist with 3 children aged 4-7 years around). But unsurprisingly, we all had a great time again!

Saturday morning – time for what I had been waiting for since the last time I met Joel & Francoise – the jogging round with Joel. I have to say, he’s in most impressive condition for a guy pushing 60 – and he’s pushed me pretty hard (= outrun me ;-) on some of the runs we’ve done. I figured the southern heat combined with my weeks of practicing for the marathon would dip the odds in my favour (why am I talking about this as if though it was some kind of a competition?). Anyway, things looked good – we did a brisk run to Villeneuve-Loubet Marina and back – until I decided to do a sprint towards the end. Big mistake – my knee gave in and that was my run done for. Oh well…

After the morning’s strenuous exercise – we headed out for our “pretty provencal villages” tour. Our first stop was the small and cosy Courmes, where I and Mathilde came for some hiking a few months a go. Having run around and terrorised the village for a while, we had a very nice picnic at a field next to the village. After the leisurely lunch, we spent a while pitching our as of now unused ultra-compact tent – the one we had purchased for our holiday in Mongolia and never ended up using. Joel and Francoise wanted to borrow it for their walk back towards Angers – and figured it’d be a good idea to pitch it at least once before heading off (especially since we read the text "easy to assemble with practice" when we bought it at Decathlon). Well, to cut a long story short, we managed in the end…

After a stop by the picturesque Saut-du-Loup waterfalls, we made an ice cream stop at Tourrettes-sur-Loup, one of the more picturesque villages on the Riviera. The reason we decided to stop here (apart from showing the pretty cobble-stone streets and nice views over the nearby hills, of course) is because they sell some of the best home-made ice cream in the area here – the local speciality being Violet-flavoured ice cream (sounds bizarre, ice cream made of flowers, but it’s actually delicious). As a "digestif" we ran around the streets with the 3 junior members of the party (I think they definitely ran around all of Tourrettes – not sure how much of it they actually saw). As far as digestifs go, I think I might prefer the type you drink... After all this action, we young adults thought we deserved a bit of a rest – and figured that a meal in Nice would do the trick. So Muriel kindly drove us downtown, where we had a nice dinner on Cours Saleya. Afterwards we met Youcef in Ma Nolans for a couple of drinks (I ended up taking the last train home while the girls drove back).

On Sunday, Joel & Francoise decided to take the Train des Merveilles (like we did last weekend), while this was also the last day for Muriel and the 3 young ones. After lunch at our place, we headed down for some last-minute beach time. Me and Alix entertained everybody with a bit of roller-blading, after which we had a last tasty ice-cream at Le Neptune. And then it was time to say good bye to our guests. Our flat felt awfully quiet once they had gone – although I have to admit we appreciated a bit of peace and quiet ;-).

After a quiet Monday, Joel and Francoise headed off on Tuesday for their pedestrian odyssey across the southern Alps – best of luck to them ;-).