Riviera tour with Jani

Jani is a good mate of mine from Finland; we’ve been through a lot together (Gymnasiet Grankulla Samskola, the Finnish military service and the enlightenment cruise – in that order of difficulty…). People can still vividly remember his last visit when he came to see me in England (I can’t remember a thing – except that there were a lot of beer cans left in the apartment when he left). So I was really looking forward to his visit ;-).

I picked him up at the airport Saturday morning, and chauffeured him back to our flat. After a welcome beer and lunch at our flat, we decided to quickly hit the road and head out on the tourist tour. We started off with the Most Beautiful Old town on the Riviera, Haut-de-Cagnes. I write that with a slightly ironic tone, but seriously speaking, it IS one of the prettiest old towns in the area. The lack of tourists hordes adds to its charm (in their place there are, however, the pensioner hordes). After a leisurely walk around the cobble-stoned streets (and a coffee downtown), we continued on to Nice, the next stop on our grand tour.

We started off with a walk around the old town, which took in all the famous sights including Cours Saleya, the famous Fenocchio gelateria and the Palais Lascaris (an old restaured fancy townhouse, which has the additional distinction of being free to visitors). We ended up at Place Garibaldi, where we decided to have an afternoon drink. Due to the slow service (we started to wonder whether the waiter was drunk or amnesiac, as he seemed to have some difficulty keeping track of our orders…) and the fact that we quite enjoyed our spot in the sun, our "quick drink" carried on for quite some time, until we suddenly realised it was time for dinner!

We ended up in a real Nice institution – Le Café de Turin. It’s one of the most reputable restaurants in Nice for seafood. Not the sort of grub we eat very often, but it made for a nice change. We had big plates of various sea crawlies, half of which I didn’t recognise the name of… All in all, a pretty nice meal, with good wine (Jani grumbled a bit about the slow service again – it’s true that a bit more patience is required in this part of the world than in Finland…). We finished the day with a couple of pints in that ole’ Irish-Nicoise institution known as Ma Nolan’s, where we met up with Ismael as well.

For the next day, the plan was to head to Italy to one of our favourite restaurants, il Giardino, where one is guaranteed to leave with a more than satiated appetite… We decided to take the scenic route there, which meant taking the Moyenne Corniche instead of the motorway. This rather amazing drive (especially in sunny weather, like we had on this particular day) takes in all the sights between Nice and Italy (Cap Ferrat, Monaco, Eze, Cap Martin etc.). A couple of photo-stops later, we arrived in Vallebuona, were a gargantuan lunch was waiting for us. What followed was three hours of unashamed gluttony (I loved every minute of it, needless to say). The culinary marathon consisted of I don’t know how many antipasti, three plates of pasta, three plates of meat, followed by just one desert (!). And plenty of wine to go with it, of course…

Our stomachs bloating, we squeezed into the car, and headed back towards France. Our next stop was Monaco (what else?). We ticked off all the classic sights, first checking in the Casino with the fancy cars. We then headed down to the port (the preparations for the F1 Grand Prix were well under way), where we stopped for a drink at Stars ‘n Bars (the place to be for motor sports fans in Monaco). From there we hiked up to the rocher (which I supposed got rid of a few calories we had acquired in Italy), where the old town and the royal palace is located. There’s not all that much to see or visit there, to be honest, apart from the Oceanographic museum (which is a lot more interesting than the royal palace), so after the obligatory photos of the port which the rocher overlooks, we headed back towards Monte-Carlo, where our car was parked. We did decide to have one last overpriced coffee at the Café de Paris next to the Casino, though, before hitting the road. (5 euros for a cappuccino…).

We were all a bit nackered by the time we got back home, and scrapped the plan to go and have a drink at “Le 7” (the only pub in Cagnes-sur-Mer, as far as I know, and I haven’t been there yet, can you believe it?). Me and Jani ended up watching “Ichi the killer”, by the rather unique (and some would maybe argue, deepy disturbed) director Takasi Miike. This particular film was unique/disturbing than even by Miike’s high standards…. The beer which was consumed considerably improved the viewing experience…

Monday, we got up bright ‘n early, for the last day of Jani’s visit. The plan was to drive down along the coast to St-Tropez. We managed to leave before 9 AM (pretty good going, I reckon), hitting the A8 motorway, getting off at Mandelieu and driving along the coastline at Massif d’Esterel. It really is a great drive, with the ochre-coloured massif silhouetted against the turquoise Mediterranean… We stopped for a scenic coffee break in one of the small towns, Agay (I think). From there we carried on to Port-Grimaud, a well-known little town I’ve wanted to visit for some time.

Port-Grimaud is what one could call a “small, modern-day Venice”. It’s the dream project of an architect called François Spoerry, built in 1964. It’s quite an interesting little place, and certainly one of the most successful “housing projects” from the 60’s. But whether it merits the hordes of tourists who apparently decend on this little port during the summer months, I’m less sure about… After a very nice lunch consisting of fish and white wine, we carried on towards St-Trop’…

Half an hour or so later, we arrived. Unfortunately, by now Jani’s stomach was getting rather upset (not sure whether it was the Italian meal or the beer from yesterday, or the fish...), so our visit ended up being quite short… We did have the time to have another ridiculously expensive cappuccino in the port, buy a couple of tartes tropeziennes for dinner, and have a quick walk around to take in the main sights (not that there’s much to see as such in St-Tropez, pretty though it is…).

That brought an end to Jani’s visit, which turned out to be as enjoyable as last time, and considerably more “civilised”… ;-).