We’ve been talking about having a lunch in Italy with our friends Stephane and Sandra for quite some time now (since we all love Italian cuisine, and Italy only being about 1 hour’s drive away, after all). So today we decided to finally go for it. Before heading off towards the land of pasta and pizza, however, I headed down to seaside to watch the Nice-Cannes marathon pass by. Two of my fellow Finns, Pete and Hannu, participated – and needed some cheering on obviously (unfortunately, I missed Hannu). Both of them made it to the goal, and did very well, if you ask me (making it to the goal is already “doing well” if you ask me…).
Sandra picked us up around 11AM in her Golf. After picking up Stephane and little Clelia, we hit the A8 towards Italy. Everything went smoothly, until we heard an ominous “clonk” sound. It signalled the fact that the driver side window fell down (apparently it was the third time it happen on their Golf)! After some deliberation we decided to carry on until our destination (Vallebona) driver-window-less. Half an hour or so later, we arrived, refreshed ;-).
Sandra & Steph had booked a nice restaurant called il Giardino for the occasion. I like the concept of the restaurant a lot – it’s sort of like an “eat-and-drink-as-much-as-you-can” buffet, but with waitresses bringing you the food (a bit more classy than a self-service buffet). And boy, did we eat… Things kicked off with eight antipasti (if memory serves me...). For primi piatti (starters) we were treated to three plates of pasta (gnocchi, followed by some ravioli and finally some pasta with pesto) - an absolute delight. And the secondi piatti were nothing to complain about either –four plates of meat with French fries. And all this food we washed down with a couple of bottles of local red wine (nothing fancy, but more than good enough for an unsophisticated northerner such as me…). The desert was perhaps less impressive than the preceding delicacies we’d had (still, I wasn’t complaining about the three pieces of cake on my plate), but to be honest there wasn’t much space in our stomachs left by the time the desert arrived… (still, I made an effort!). The meal finished off with some proper Italian coffee and a limoncello. This, if I may say so, is my kind of Sunday lunch :-) (and pretty good value for money at 30 euros each, too…).
Having stuffed ourselves to the brim, we decided to lighten our conscience a bit by taking a walk around the village. It was a pretty enough village, typical for this part of Italy. A bit less touristy perhaps than some of the other places around here, like Dolceacqua. The walk certainly did us some good, especially since there were plenty of steep streets to mount and descend :-)
The return journey turned out to be a bit of an adventure, as well. We hastily improvised a temporary cardboard replacement (acquired from the restaurant) for the disabled front window, which didn’t do wonders for the driver’s visibility to the left. So the drive back to the motorway was quite an exercise in teamwork (with me and Sandra trying to tell Stephane about what was happening on the left side of the car). Things went so well we thought we deserved a coffee in Ventimiglia for our efforts.
On the motorway, things got even more exciting, since our improvised cardboard window kept wanting to come off. But thanks to steady driving from Stephane, with heroic support from Sandra in the backseat to keep our improvised window in place (and just one stop at a service station to make “readjustments”), we eventually made it safe and sound back to Cagnes-sur-Mer…
So it had been quite an adventurous Sunday lunch, then ;-). And just to emphasize the amount of food we actually had – I didn’t have anything for dinner. Those of you who know me, realise THAT does not happen very often… (in fact, I wonder if I’ve ever missed dinner by design before?)
Sandra picked us up around 11AM in her Golf. After picking up Stephane and little Clelia, we hit the A8 towards Italy. Everything went smoothly, until we heard an ominous “clonk” sound. It signalled the fact that the driver side window fell down (apparently it was the third time it happen on their Golf)! After some deliberation we decided to carry on until our destination (Vallebona) driver-window-less. Half an hour or so later, we arrived, refreshed ;-). 
Sandra & Steph had booked a nice restaurant called il Giardino for the occasion. I like the concept of the restaurant a lot – it’s sort of like an “eat-and-drink-as-much-as-you-can” buffet, but with waitresses bringing you the food (a bit more classy than a self-service buffet). And boy, did we eat… Things kicked off with eight antipasti (if memory serves me...). For primi piatti (starters) we were treated to three plates of pasta (gnocchi, followed by some ravioli and finally some pasta with pesto) - an absolute delight. And the secondi piatti were nothing to complain about either –four plates of meat with French fries. And all this food we washed down with a couple of bottles of local red wine (nothing fancy, but more than good enough for an unsophisticated northerner such as me…). The desert was perhaps less impressive than the preceding delicacies we’d had (still, I wasn’t complaining about the three pieces of cake on my plate), but to be honest there wasn’t much space in our stomachs left by the time the desert arrived… (still, I made an effort!). The meal finished off with some proper Italian coffee and a limoncello. This, if I may say so, is my kind of Sunday lunch :-) (and pretty good value for money at 30 euros each, too…).Having stuffed ourselves to the brim, we decided to lighten our conscience a bit by taking a walk around the village. It was a pretty enough village, typical for this part of Italy. A bit less touristy perhaps than some of the other places around here, like Dolceacqua. The walk certainly did us some good, especially since there were plenty of steep streets to mount and descend :-)
The return journey turned out to be a bit of an adventure, as well. We hastily improvised a temporary cardboard replacement (acquired from the restaurant) for the disabled front window, which didn’t do wonders for the driver’s visibility to the left. So the drive back to the motorway was quite an exercise in teamwork (with me and Sandra trying to tell Stephane about what was happening on the left side of the car). Things went so well we thought we deserved a coffee in Ventimiglia for our efforts. On the motorway, things got even more exciting, since our improvised cardboard window kept wanting to come off. But thanks to steady driving from Stephane, with heroic support from Sandra in the backseat to keep our improvised window in place (and just one stop at a service station to make “readjustments”), we eventually made it safe and sound back to Cagnes-sur-Mer…
So it had been quite an adventurous Sunday lunch, then ;-). And just to emphasize the amount of food we actually had – I didn’t have anything for dinner. Those of you who know me, realise THAT does not happen very often… (in fact, I wonder if I’ve ever missed dinner by design before?)
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