A busy weekend on the Riviera

This looked to be quite a busy weekend, with various meetups organized before the upcomlng Christmas holidays. Things kicked off with Anne visiting us on Friday evening. Anne, an ex-colleague of Mathilde’s, recently moved to Lyon with her kids. Sandra also came along. What ensued was a nice aperitif, which turned into an improvised dinner (we ordered some pizzas…). Anyways, it was great to catch up with Anne, and good to see Sandra as well (due to a rather busy autumn, we haven’t been meeting up for coffee as much as before with Sandra and Stephane…)

For the Saturday, we were invited for some afternoon tea at Claire’s and Antoine’s over in Carros. Since the weather was rather excellent that day, we decided to go for a hike before that; though. After evaluating our options, we ended up going to Saint-Jeannet, a pretty little village located kind of half-way between Cagnes and Carros. We hiked up to the Baou de Saint-Jeannet, a rather dramatic scenic spot, well visible from the coast. It was pretty much perfect for our needs, sporty without taking too long or being too strenuous. The views from up there over the coastline, and the village, where pretty stunning. Nice views towards the snow-covered Parc Mercantour as well…

After this bit of hiking action (which we've been seeing too little of this autumn), we made our way to Antoine’s and Claire’s place, after the usual doubts and difficulties in finding their place. We spent a pleasant afternoon there, meeting up with the usual suspects, drinking tea and coffee, and munching down some rather tasty pastries… Yummie.

We had some vague plans to catch a movie in Nice, and decided to try to go and see the latest Woody Allen flick. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it, so decided to do a bit of Christmas shopping instead – good thing to since I was naturally leaving it to the last minute, as always… We finished off the evening with some Christmas drinks in a wine bar with Naim and Nathalie, and enjoying (and in my case, photographing, naturally!) the rather impressive Christmas decoration on Place Massena and elsewhere in Nice.

For the next days, we’d invited Mikko and Marianne for lunch – and they showed up bang on time (as always) with calm and happy young Alexi with them (seems like a pretty content little chap). We had prepared some lamb chops, followed by some delicious Tarte Tatin by Mathilde – yummie yummie (and some Colonel for Mikko). Great to catch up with them – we understandably see a bit less of them these days with the recent arrival of young Alexi.

After our pleasant lunch, wer headed off to Mouins-Sartoux for a bit of modern circus called Volchok. It was quite a curious mix of off-beat humour, acrobatics and old-fashioned circus. Great stuff – a great way to finish off a rather busy weekend….