La Fondation Maeght & St-Paul

This has been a pretty crazy week on the Cote d’Azur. On most days it’s been raining cats and dogs, and on Monday we had even had sleet coming down – to the point were the ground was pretty much white (felt almost like being back in good ol’ Finland). A far cry from the first November I spent here 2 years ago, when I first arrived, when we pretty much had blue skies every day…

So we decided to celebrate the coming of the weekend with a nice meal in Nice on Friday evening, with Sami, Mikko and Marianne. We decided upon a simple restaurant in the old town called Demode (is it supposed to mean it’s really out of fashion, or what?) – and funnily enough it turns out it was ran by some friends of Marianne’s parents. The meal was good enough, the wine went down very well indeed, and many laughs were had. “Unfortunately” the meal carried on just long enough for us to miss the 10:44 train – which meant we had to find a cozy bar to kill the time before the next (and last) train, which was at 00:24.

Unfortunately the miserable weather continued on Saturday, so we decided it was a good day to visit a museum. We picked the Fondation Maeght – one of the more famous art galleries on the Cote d’Azur, located, quite appropriately, in one of the most picturesque (not to mention touristy) villages on the Riviera, St-Paul-de-Vence. Appropriate, I say, because St-Paul has always been very popular with artists. We had heard good things about the Fondation, especially from my parents, who were even registered members - so expectations were high.

And the foundation didn’t disappoint. The location is great, on a hilltop, with a nice view over over the nearby foothills (pity about the crappy weather…). The exhibition itself was interesting, featuring a lot of works by Miro (all of which seemed to be called either “women and a bird” or “persons”), as well as artists such as Giacometti, Leger and Chagall. I liked the outdoors labyrinth as well, also designed by Miro. So In spite of the 7 euros entrance charge (which felt quite a lot for a visit of less than 1 hour), it was well worth the trip.

After this dose of cuture, we walked down to St-Paul for a short stroll. It’s always a nice place to visit, with its narrow cobble-stoned streets and cozy houses – in short, St-Paul ticks all the boxes for those looking for the perfect Provencal village. One good thing about the poor weather – for once the place was nearly deserted (normally the place is over-run by tourists). We finished our visit with a nice cup of tea and some cake at a local tea shop.

La Napoule and San Peyre

We had a rather frenetic yet productive Saturday – I managed to finish all my Christmas present shopping in one day! To have done that in November is definitely a personal record (one that is very unlikely to ever be broken). There was a reason for this – my parents are heading back to Finland in a few days time so we wanted to ship our pressies with them. And since we were meeting them for dinner in Nice this evening, we decided to get the shopping out of the way. My parents had selected Trattoria Giuseppe for the dinner, in the old port of Nice, located at the former premises of Jouni (one of the gastronomic highlights of Nice – run by a Finn – he recently moved his restaurant to a swankier location). The quality of the cuisine is not quite up to its predecessor’s (but I enjoyed it anyway), but it has to be said that the price level is rather more reasonable as well (20 Euros instead of 100).

On Sunday, we had decided to continue from where we left off last weekend, and go for another walk. The weather was not quite as nice as it was last Sunday, but at least it didn’t rain... We picked another coastal walk, this one starting in La Napoule. The focal point of La Napoule is without doubt it’s castle, admirably located on the beach, overlooking the sea. It dates back to the 14th century, and is apparently (according, once more, to my Guide Vert) a mixture of several styles (Romanesque, Gothic and Oriental). Most appropriately, our walk started there, taking us along the beach past the imposing castle, towards the Massif d’Esterel. We carried on along the coast line until the small port of la Rague, from where we carried on inlands along the river, bearing the same name. We actually missed the footpath we were supposed to pick, and ended up walking along the river for rather a lot longer than we were supposed to. Oh well, it was a pleasant enough stroll, down a gorge, surrounded by the reddish Esterel rock structures.

We eventually realised our mistake, backtracked, and found the footpath. It took us up a rather steep hill, Mont Turney (well, actually , it’s only 87 meters high - we REALLY are out practice ;-) to a private castle, Chateau d’Agecroft (which has been converted to a kind of holiday centre for companies). From there we walked down towards La Napoule again, and up another hill – San Peyre (the culmination point of our “walk through the wild”). Another frisky hike took us up to the summit, at the lofty height of 131 meters. From there we were greeted by some very nice views all over the cote d’Azur – no wonder this hilltop was once one of Guy de Maupassant’s favourite haunts. He might be a bit disappointed about all the high-rise buildings, swimming pools and shopping malls that litter the coastline these days (the only nearby patch of green we could see was a gold course!).

Walk around Cap d'Antibes

We’ve been rather lazy lately when it comes to hiking – so we decided it was about time to get off our bums and get back into it. The fact that the weather was back to normal (blue skies, sunshine) helped ;-). We decided to start off with a nice and easy walk, just to get back into shape a bit – so we decided to do a walk around Cap d’Antibes.

Cap d’Antibes is, as pretty much all places stating with the word “Cap” on the Cote d’Azur are, a place where the rich and the famous live, and others visit. It’s a very pretty peninsula – with a coastal foot path following its rocky coastline.

Thankfully, French legislation says all the coastline is public space – so in theory nobody’s allowed to build on it. And that is, with some exceptions, the case. If it wasn't for the law, I think it’s safe to assume the coastline would be covered with villas (now they’re all about 10 meters from the coastline, behind very high fences)...

Anyway, the walk was a nice enough one, taking us from our parking spot by a beach all the way to the tip of the cape. Actually, we did most of the walk last year already, but weren’t able to go all the way since part of the foot path was closed at the time. Better luck this time. Our walk then took us back past a massive villa (called Chateaux this-or-the-other), though some rather posh residential areas back towards our starting point.

As the weather was very fine indeed, and we were really enjoying ourselves, we decided to make a detour, and walk up to the highest point of Cap d’Antibes, where there’s a nice little (although rather unremarkable) chapel as well as a light house (which is, according to my trusty Michelin guide, one of the most powerful ones on the Mediterranean, with a visibility range of 52 kilometers for sea vessels in clear weather - now that's a useless bit of information for a pub quiz...). We did have very nice views from there back over the Cape and also towards the mainland. A quick decent brought us back to our starting point.

Another wet week in England

Well it’s been a while since my last work/pub trip to good old England, so it was about time... Which meant an inhumanely early Monday warning wakeup call, quick breakfast and off to the airport! 4 hours later, ahead of schedule (miracles still exist, obviously), I found myself in the country of warm beer and cold food (as somebody French once so eloquently put it) once more. A taxi drive through the English rain (doh, just as the weather on the Riviera was getting warm & sunny again after an uncharacteristically windy and rainy week).

After a typical day at the office, I headed back to Guildford, where I was staying as usual. This time I decided to go for style and went for the Manderley hotel instead of the normal Guildford hotel (which is well-located within stumbling distance of most pubs, has decent-ish rooms, and is reasonably priced for the UK anyway). To be quite honest, even though the place is a tad nicer than the Guildford hotel, I expected a bit more for £130 – oh well.... Anyway, the necessary practicalities out of the way, I headed down the high street for my first rendez-vous of the evening – dinner with Manue in La Scala. It was a nice enough Italian place, and the food was pretty good. Maxime decided to join us – much to our amazement wearing a suit (yes, there was an explanation thankfully – he’d just had an interview). My appetite sated, I headed down to the King’s head for a couple of beers. The usual gang was there – Phil, Stephane, Steve and Kartsa. Stephane dropped a bit of a bombshell on us – apparently he has decided to leave his cozy if apparently somewhat underpaid job at the University and move to San Diego to work for Qualcomp! Shocking news – one of my most reliable drinking buddies gone! To mark this sad event we headed off to Farenheit, as always, and spent all our spare change playing the quiz machine. How sad...

Tuesday night the plan was to head off to London. Participation was a bit sparse, as only Nick, Chie and Stephane showed up (even Sinhung disappointed – something about being too old for 2 nights out in a row...!). We met up in the Arch one bar just next doors to Waterloo, for a couple of pre-dinner drinks and catching up. We then had to catch a taxi to make our dinner reservation, at a very nice Japanese restaurant overlooking the Thames – nice idea, Chie. Our taste buds were truly in for a treat – the food was very nice indeed, and something I’d never tried before (a bit like Japanese tapas or something – a collection of nibbles and small dishes).

All washed down with some proper Japanese beer. And the dinner didn’t even set us back more than about 20 pounds, not bad considering the location and variety of dishes we tried. Then it was time to head back to Guildford – sadly enough Stephane convinced me to have a quick night cap at Fahrenheit’s – again.


Wednesday – fortunately (for my wallet and liver) my last evening in the UK this time around – was team building day (along with some colleagues of ours from Tampere). We started in the afternoon with some go-carting in Camberley – great fun. After a few practice laps, we split up into teams of three and race on! I ended up with 2 other Finns as team mates, and figured we’d do pretty will (what with Finnish racing genes ‘n all) – but alas our performance left much to be desired. I blame it on the weight, on the basis that me and Juha are “made of sturdy stuff” whereas Timo, the skinny lad, clocked consistently better times than us (unfortunately Timo’s blistering speed meant we couldn’t blame the car...). Anyway, to cut a long story short, we ended up 2nd last, but had great fun (that’s the main point, right?). After the racing we headed down to Fleet for some beers and of course a curry! As there were no handy train connection to Guildford, Mohammed was kind enough to drive me all the way to Guildford! Actually, I was back early enough to go for a quick one in – yes you guessed it, Fahrenheit (this time with Stephane and his mate from Paris, Nicholas). Somehow an appropriate end for the trip though?

Nice-Cannes marathon

Should you be a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed that I’ve mentioned the Nice-Cannes marathon a few times over the past few months. As a result of the completed Nice half-marathon back in May, me and Sami foolishly decided to embark on the grand-daddy of running competitions – the full marathon. Over time, we even managed to recruit Pete and Hannu, two other Finns, to join us.

So, after months of practice, the big day was finally upon us. Except – not for me :-( As a result of trying to show off for Mathilde’s dad a few weeks ago during a practice session, I did my knee in rather badly. I did manage to get back into practicing form after a couple of week’s worth of rest, but alas, in the end the knee gave in again. So no marathon for me, at least this time around :-(

But of course we were still there, in front of the Hippodrome in Cagnes-sur-Mer, to cheer my fellow Finns on. So who was to win of the dynamic trio? Sami has the advantage of having completed a marathon the year before (in Stockholm), but his practice sessions have mostly involved swinging a golf club. Hannu was keeping a low profile (only wanting to finish the race), but had managed to do the most practicing. On the other hand his last-minute preparation had been hampered by a sore back. Pete had not kept a low profile (that just wouldn’t be in his nature ;-) and had impressed during the pre-race practice. So perhaps Pete was the slight favourite of the evenly matched lot.

We were there well in time to cheer the lads on. The first to arrive were Sami and Pete, running by the sea with a look of cool confidence and fierce determination on their faces. So no problems there, they all looked in good shape – although we noted that they would have to increase the pace a bit if they wanted to reach a time of 4:00-4:30 (which had been mentioned in the pre-race speculations). Hannu followed just a couple of minutes later – his face calm and composed as always. We were later informed that all three made it to goal, with commendable times of 04:55:37 for Pete, 05:02:19 for Sami and 05:10:16 for Hannu respectively. They all did better than me, anyway ;-).

We still had other duties for the Sunday – as today was Father’s day in Finland. Mum and dad kindly invited us for dinner at their flat in Antibes – and we gladly accepted. So we spent a very pleasant afternoon there, starting with aperitifs on their balcony (basking in the southern sun – which was back after way too many days of rain) and continuing with a very tasty meal, finishing off with a very tasty Tiramisu alla Turtiainen.