Reunion in the South of France!

We miss our dear friends from the UK a lot, and decided to try to organize a bit of a reunion weekend in the South of France. We ended up with a quite respectable turn-up, with Flore, Christian, Philippe, Aniko and Nick turning up.

Most of our guests turned up by Friday afternoon, whereas Nick’s trip here was, not to our great surprise, was quite an adventure. First, his flight on Thursday had been cancelled due to the strikes in France. Not to be deterred, Nick managed to get some train tickets for Friday instead (London-Paris-Marseille-Nice – quite a train marathon!). Naturally, this being Nick, he missed his train connection in Paris (he was just too fascinated by something in the Louvre and forgot about his train – Mona Lisa’s smile?). Which meant he arrived 11 o’clock instead of 9. Which annoyed me slightly, since it meant I (the designated driver) had to stay sober for two hours longer than planned ;-).


We had a very enjoyable Friday evening indeed, munching down a quickly improvised dinner, drinking entirely reasonable quantities of alcohol (especially me), catching up on the latest adventures of Philippe (which for once didn’t involve being chatted up by homosexuals), Flore and Christian (which mostly circled around the harsh realities of parenthood) and playing Playstation 2 (I managed to avoid the ultimate humiliation of playing Buzz’s Pop quiz, and only entered the fray when changed to Buzz’s movie quiz, which is definitely more my territory…). After a night of brilliant fun, and a few shots of Mathilde’s grannie’s lethal Calva, we collapsed in bed…

The next day, we had the ambitious plan to do a bit of hiking (Christian’s idea, not mine!). We figured the Cap d’Antibes would be an appropriate little hike for the occasion, especially since the sun was out and the sky was blue. After briskly crossing the old town of Antibes, and enjoying the nice views from the old city walls, we carried on towards Cap d’Antibes. It was pretty much the perfect day for this nice hike, with the bright autumn sun lighting up the turquoise-coloured, crystal-clear Mediterranean. Nick, always the smooth charmer, tried to chat up a lady who was fishing by the tip of the Cap (unfortunately, she was married).

Instead of the normal circular walk, we opted to walk all the way to Juan-les-Pins, and take the train back to Cagnes from there. Our timing was pretty good, since the sky was getting a bit cloudy just as we arrived in Juan-les-Pins. The plan was to stop for a drink there before catching our train, but decided not to in the end, after seeing the rather steep prices on the menus, and the snail-like service…

We really struggled to find a place for dinner, as pretty much all the restaurants in Haut-de-Cagnes were full. In the end, we got a table at Les Baux, a small place just opposite to the castle, where we’d not actually been before. It was a pretty decent little place actually, with good service and some pretty original dishes. This time, we were too nackered after dinner to do much back home, I guess we’re starting to get pretty old…

On Sunday, it was time to say our goodbyes (except to Nick, who was staying a couple of days longer). After dropping off Flore and Christian at the airport, I joined the rest of the gang in Nice, from where Philippe and Aniko were taking their train. Since we had a bit of time before they had to catch their train, we decided to have a nice walk around old Nice. For lunch, we headed for one of the “Nice institutions” near Place Garibaldi for some authentic Nice specialities (like Pissalaier, socca, tart aux blettes, that sort of thing). After some coffee and cake at the sinful Hagendass café in Rue Massena, it was time to say our goodbyes to Philippe and Aniko.

It was still quite early, so we decided to stop by at the Musee des Arts Asiatiques near the airport on the way back. It’s a actually a really cool little museum, one of the nicest one we’ve been to in the region. The building is quite remarkable, designed by the famous Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (most famous for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum). It just radiates harmony and bliss, located as it is by the big pond at Parc Phoenix. The museum itself houses quite a small collection of art from various parts of Asia (it’s devided into sections for India, Japan, China and South-East Asia). But I think it manages to give quite a good, if superficial, overview of Asian art. There was also a very nice photography exhibition downstairs. We really should participate at one of the tea ceremonies they organize there, one day, as well.

That brought an end to a rather tiring, but brilliant, weekend!