A few days with Alix

It’s been a while now since we’ve seen Mathilde’s spirited niece, Alix. So we thought it’d be a good idea to take her down to the warm south for a few days, to give Muriel a bit of a break (I think she’s got enough to handle with the even more spirited twins Paul & Lucas).

We had all sorts of activities in mind for Alix; including visits to Marineland, the Monaco aquarium and the Cap Ferrat zoo. But turns out she was quite content to hang out at the residence swimming pool, and going to the beach. Which suited us just fine – a relaxing weekend was just what we needed… Well, perhaps relaxing is not exactly the right word; Alix does have rather a lot of energy as well (although I think her brothers have the upper hand in that department at the moment).

We started off things with a rather lazy Saturday of chilling out on the beach and swimming in the azur blue Mediterranean… It’s kind of funny, but we don’t actually go to the beach very often, even though we live just a 15-minute walk from it… So it was nice to spend "a proper beach day" there. For the evening, we’d been invited to another party organised by a colleague of Mathilde’s; Anne in Valbonne. On the way to the party, we briefly stopped by at the Parc Départemental de Vaugrenier in Villeneuve-Loubet, for some exhausting fun & games (not sure it was a good idea to work up a sweat just before going to the party...). I initially felt a bit lost at the party, amongst all those teachers (almost all of whom I’d never met), but I did find one fellow engineer to chat to. And of course there was food and drink; which is almost without exception enough to keep me happy ;-). In the end, I bravely threw myself into the conversation and found myself having a really good time.

On Sunday, Cagnes-sur-Mer was proud to welcome the Tour de France – probably THE biggest sport event in France. In fact, the show was passing by just about 100 meters from our flat (we could nearly watch the race from our window). We joined the rest of the crowd by the road, and waited, and waited… (Mathilde was smart enough to wait in the flat and check on the internet live coverage where the race was actually passing by, rather than stand and suffer in the smouldering heat, like me). About an hour before the racers, the sponsor vans passed by, chucking various more and (mostly) less useful articles at us punters (Alix proved very useful at this point, rushing back and forth up the street collecting sweets, caps, even washing powder...). The race itself was a bit of an anti-climax – the whole thing was over in about 15 seconds… If you ask me, it’s an even less spectator friendly event than the Monaco Grand Prix (although admittedly considerably cheaper to attend….). Apparently a Finnish guy called Veikkanen came 3rd that day (never even heard of the guy).

After the race, we headed down to the beach where we met up with Hannu and his family, who were back from their adventurous trip to Barcelona (Hannu had his wallet snatched there). Great day in the sun again, and good fun swimming amongst the big waves. Alix seemed to get along well with Hannu’s kids, especially with Sara. After some initial shyness, the two of them were playing with each others as if though they were the best of friends. Ah, how easy these things are when you’re a kid, eh…? A couple of collapsed sandcastles and a fair amount of swimming later, it was time for the tearful good-byes (me and Hannu could barely hold back our emotions).

Monday & Tuesday were beach days again – I escaped out of the office on both days at 4 o’clock to join Mathilde and Alix. It occurred to me that we are quite blessed living where we are, again. Being able to drive down from the office to the beach in 15 minutes is a luxury I hope I’ll never take for granted. Alix made a new friend – this time an inflatable dolphin called “Wave” (I think that’s what he was called, anyway – not quite sure about the spelling). We certainly had great fun with Wave – especially when the waves swept it all the way across the beach and I had to swim like a madman to catch up with poor wave (thankfully a helpful lady rescued him for us – we were very close to a disaster).

On Wednesday, it was time to say bye-bye. I drove the two lovely ladies down to Antibes, from where they took the night train to Nantes. The flat felt very empty and quiet after their departure…