A gastronomic lunch in Biot

Due to rather busy schedules, we haven’t had the opportunity to meet up with my parents since they returned to the Cote d’Azur. We figured a good way to celebrate their return could be a nice meal – surprise, surprise. We decided to go for something really special, since we’ve come to realize that a lot of the Michelin-starred restaurants actually have quite good-for-value lunch menus.

So after some research, we found a 1-Michelin starred restaurant located quite conveniently between Cagnes and Antibes – in Biot, called Les Terraillers. We also invited Tutta along, but unfortunately she couldn’t make it in the end.

The first impression of the place was certainly very positive. The place manages to be traditional, without overplaying it (sometimes these places overdo the décor a bit, covering the walls and ceiling with various flowers and “countryside utensils”), with very tasteful decoration and furniture. As one would expect, the service was pretty much spot on – very attentive without being overbearing. The lunch menu was a reasonable 39 Euros, or 55 Euros with drinks (a glass of champagne, and two glasses of wine).

We naturally went for the menus with drinks. I had quail eggs I a sort of soup for a starter, followed by some quail, with a caramel praline for desert. As one would expect in a restaurant of this caliber, we were treated to some small bites between the dishes as well. All in all, it was all pretty much spot on. What always impresses me with these restaurants is the fact that they manage to judge the quantities just perfectly – even thought the dishes often give an impression of being quite small, I never walk away hungry (and on the other hand, never stuffed either).

All in all, nearly a complete sans-faut, then. I reckon the value for money is pretty good as well – since it’s quite easy to pay say 30 Euros (or even more) in a pretty average restaurant on the Cote d’Azur. So the 39 Euros for the menu seemed very reasonable, considering the quality. The dinner menu, of course, is another matter entirely.

And nice, as always, to see my parents as well :-).

Mexican fiesta!

We had a double occasion to celebrate tonight. The more happy occasion was the birthday of Marie, and the sadder one was the fact that JayJay was going back to Mexico, after his 6 months spent on the Cote d’Azur.

To celebrate these two events, Marie and JayJay organized a Mexican soiree, starting with dinner at Poco Loco (yes, that would indeed be a Mexican restaurant), followed by some salsa action in Sansas. After a rainy afternoon spent in Nice (shopping, cinema), we made our way to the restaurant. The meal kicked off with some Mexican cocktails – Margarita for me (not a bad effort – but kinda small compared to what I had in San Diego old town last year), followed by a Poco Loco special. What followed was Mexican food, naturally (ceviche, followed by some fajitas – like last night). All in all, great people, good food, plenty of wine – no complaints then basically ;-)

The festivities then continued in Salsas – a bar I remember well from my early days in Nice, they used to sell the cheapest beer in Nice. The beer is still very affordable by Nice standards (3 Euros 90 cents!). We had a great, if emotional time. JayJay will certainly be missed… All the usual suspects stayed until the end (Gilles, Valerie, Claire, Antoine, us). A measure of what a festive mood I was in was the fact that I even dared show myself on the dance floor (no salsa though – the memories of the humiliations at salsa classes in Guildford are still too fresh in my mind)!

Unfortunately our original designated drivers had left hours ago by the time we were ready to go home. Thankfully Gilles was kind enough to drive us back to Cagnes. We eventually hit the sack about 3 in the morning – not often our nights out last that long these days…. ;-) All in all then, it was a great night out, quite worthy of such an important occasion.

So happy birthday to Marie and Bon Voyage to JayJay (and see you soon in Mexico)!

Sauna on the Cote d'Azur

It’s been a while since my last visit to a Finnish sauna – so it was about time to redo our Sauna evening with Mikko and Marianne (the last one was in October).

As usual, we were treated to some delicious food before the start of the “sweating session”. This time, Mikko and Marianne had prepared a properly spicy meal for us, with a Thai salad for starters (what, Mikko preparing a salad – what’s going on here??), followed by some fajitas. Good practice for our upcoming holiday in Mexico, I suppose… ;-).

After the meal, me and Mikko hit the sauna (the ladies were not, for some strange reason, attracted by the thought of “frying” in a room heated up to a temperature pf 100 degrees Celsius – how strange?). According to the thermometer the temperature was actually 105 degrees, now that’s what I call hot!

The swimming pool, on the other hand, was about 5 degrees Celsius. So a bit of a difference in temperature there! I did manage to swim a few swimming pool lengths, but I can’t say it was a very enjoyable experience… Normally, when jumping in a cold pool, you slowly warm up as you swim. Here, the effect was the opposite – you feel bloody cold as you jump in the pool, and bloody f***ing cold after having swam 20 meters. I was even colder than after my scuba dive in Cap Ferrat earlier this week ;-). Good thing there was a warm sauna to go to after the swim!

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend a Friday evening then – and great to catch up with Mikko and Marianne again!

Diving at Cap Ferrat

I was quite an enthusiastic diver in my youth (not sure whether I should use the past tense or not there…?), back when I lived in the UK. I accumulated 69 dives (yes, I checked my logbook…) over about 3 years, in more and less exotic locations such as Stony Cove, Chesil Beach, Porthkerris in Cornwall, Thailand, the Red Sea and Australia. But I gave it up nearly 10 years ago. I’ve had some half-baked plans to pick it up again for quite a while, but nothing has come out of it so far.

Until today! The plan is to do some diving on our upcoming holiday to Mexico, so I figured a bit of a practice dive or two is definitely called for. Since our good friend JayJay (who will be our guide in Mexico), is heading back to Mexico soon after his 6 month stay in Nice, it was pretty much now or never. The plan was to do an afternoon dive at Cap Ferrat, led by Merlin, who’s dived quite a lot in the area.

Unfortunately, Merlin’s daughter got sick the morning of the dive, so it was just me and JayJay, then. Armed with a map from Merlin, we set out for the dive (after picking up some dive gear in Nice). Unfortunately we struggled a bit to find the dive site, but did finally find a beach which sort of vaguely matched the location on Merlin’s map. The concrete platform Merlin had described was clearly there, as well as the staircase he had mentioned. So we decided to chance upon this spot, got changed, hid the car keys in the bushes, and off we went!

The dive went surprisingly smoothly, considering my break of nearly ten years from diving (I have to admit to a bit of nervousness before the dive). I managed to control my buoyancy, didn’t panic, and had a great time all in all. It’s true that the water was rather nippy at 12.8 degrees (according to JayJay’s dive computer), and my air consumption is still rather bad (although it doesn’t seem worse than it used to be – I managed 52 minutes bottom time, 22 meters maximum depth with a 15-liter tank – filled to 250 bars though). The dive wasn’t particularly scenic though – we didn’t see all that much. There was some nice sponge, some really big clams, some nice coral and some big schools of fish. But no sight of the octopuses and moray eels that apparently are to be found.

We got the explanation later – we never found the actual cave where the octopuses and the Moray eels live. Oh well, next time I suppose, maybe with Merlin… ;-). But all in all, I was very happy to have done the dive, in spite of my hands which were numb from the cold. I think JayJay suffered even more from the cold, though… ;-)

After a late Breton crepe lunch at Villefranche, we called it a day, freezing a bit but rather pleased with ourselves…

Circuit de Bon Voyage

We have not seen too much of the sun over the last few weeks. The weather has been uncharacteristically chilly and rainy on the Cote d’Azur. I’ve also been travelling to the cold, dark north a fair bit recently… So we were rather pleased to have the sun back this weekend.

It’s been a while since our last hike, so we figured there was no excuse not to do one this weekend. Since we were rather lazy getting up this beautiful Saturday morning (or more like noon, actually), we opted for a nice coastal walk called Circuit de Bon Voyage. The coastal walks are pretty good this time of the year, since it gets pretty chilly going inland, and the sun gets to work its magic…

The walk starts at the Roquebrune train station, and follows the coastline towards Monaco at a height of a couple of hundred meters, offering some great panoramas over the Bay of Roquebrune – and towards the picturesque village of Roquebrune as well (with its medieval castle plainly visible). After a while the trail crosses the railroad, and climbs up a bit, crossing the Moyenne Corniche, and snaking its way up towards the Grande Corniche, taking us past some rather pretty villas (all empty this time of the year, of course).

The trail then continues back towards our starting point, passing by the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Voyage – a chapel dedicated to travelers. More nice views to be had towards Roquebrune and the coastline from over there. A half an hour later or so we were back at the car.

All in all it was a pretty easy walk, but it did us both a lot of good to bask ourselves in the sunshine (even though it was a bit nippy out there). It’s on days like these that one really appreciates the Cote d’Azur, especially this time of the year. Even though the temperatures as such are not much higher here than say in the UK, the moment you are out in the sun there’s a world of difference…

First visit of the year to England

Barely had I got back from Germany, just a couple of days later it was time to hit the road again. This time destination: England.

Things started in a typical English fashion upon my arrival – the sky was decidedly grey, and the rain was drizzling down… Surprisingly though, my flight was 15 minutes early – that’s quite unusual for Heathrow. After a rather busy day at the office (lot of catching up to do, always…), I headed out for the first “social evening” of the week – Guildford. The usual crowd showed up at the Star (this wasn’t as straight forward as it may sound, since I had invited everybody to the Crown – thankfully there is no pub going by that name in Guildford!) – Simo (whose twin brother Sami gave us such a warm welcome in Ulm), Nick, Phil and Bruce. Great to catch up with everybody again – and this time there wasn’t even any pub quiz humiliation to spoil the mood ;-). Simo surprised/shocked us all by drinking coffee and coke... We finished the evening with a quick visit to the White house and a very healthy dinner at the Best Kebab House in Guildford (not sure there are more than one, actually?)

The next day, the social festivities were taking place in Fleet – this time it was time for a team dinner. I decided to stay at the Hotel Lismoyne this time – cheaper than the aviator (a real bargain at “only 100 pounds”). The hotel was a rather typical English hotel – with long, winding logics, illogical room numbering (why can’t the first digit of the room number indicate the floor, like in every other country in the world?), carpets everywhere, non-working Wi-Fi/internet etc. I don’t want to be entirely negative – the place does have a certain English charm with its fireplaces, period furniture and all that. The team festivities started with beers at the Oatsheef, and continued with curry at the Gulshan, and finished with some more drinks at Propaganda (which wasn’t quite as happening as usually, apparently). “Team festivities” has to be rather loosely here – the only participants were myself (who works in France), Perttu, Matti & Martti (who work in Finland), Allan & Alan (who do work in Southwood). But, nonetheless, a good time was had by everybody methinks.

Wednesday was London night (I shall concentrate on evening activities as I suppose they are marginally less boring than my daytime activities at the office). Things kicked off with a couple of beers with Ed near Waterloo station. No ride in his Maserati this time, since I was next heading off to Richmond for dinner with Adrian. We chose a rather nice Pizzeria right in the centre of Richmond called Rustica. Nice Italian food and good value for money (not always a combination you hear in London). All in all, a quite night out – definitely needed by yours truly…

Thursday was the big night out – in London again. It was a kind of pre-birthday party for Louise, whose big night was on Saturday. Thankfully Louise was organizing the night out – when I organize nights out in London it all tends to be very improvised and very last-minute. We had quite a good turn up of folks from various countries and walks of life. There was the usual work crowd (myself, Louise, Sinhung, French David), Nick and his sister (who lives in Bali, of all places!), our Finnish guest workers Matti and Martti as well as Martin, Franky and Ian from DeLoitte (a nice bunch I met at Aki’s wedding in Finland last autumn). We were supposed to meet up at Las Iguanas in South Bank, but Sinhung (of course) wasn’t happy with that so we walked around, trying to find another place. And naturally ended up in Las Iguanas anyway – but outside! (no seating inside). Well we were three Finns and one Malaysian (guess who suffered?).

We then headed over across the Thames to Embankment, where we popped into the Prince of Wales for another couple of pints – we were joined there by Louise and David. We then made our way across to the Mint Leaf, our restaurant of choice for the evening. We met up with the rest of the crowd and started with a couple of cocktails. This was followed by the tasty meal – a sharing menu, Indian style. And plenty of wine, no cheap table wine either I tell you. We had a brilliant time, but it wasn’t what I would call “affordable”. In spite of the numerous cocktails and bottles of wine we consumer, 90 pounds a head seemed a bit out of proportion, really… I suppose that’s London for you…

And that brought an end to my rather busy week in the South-East of England. Nice trip, great to catch up with everybody – the weather was even pretty nice. But I was quite happy to be back on the Cote d’Azur at the end of it…

A few days in Helsinki & Ulm

After a rather calm week on the Riviera, it was time to hit the road again for me… No fancy California business trip this time, instead it was good ol’ wintery Helsinki and Ulm this time.

Helsinki was unfortunately a more typical “winter in southern Finland” type experience this time, unlike Christmas (when I got to experience some real winter). What I mean by that is around 0 degrees temperatures, which means the ground is covered with slush (half-melted snow). And then there is of course the oppressive darkness, which reigns for most of the time (and what I am noticing now is that even the daytime hours feel more like dusk than day, when comparing to the Cote d’Azur for example). But anyway, I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture of my trip ;-). It’s always nice to visit Helsinki, and we had a nice company-sponsored meal in Mecca (a nice restaurant on Korkeavuorenkatu), followed by some more drinks at Teatteri (my old nostalgic self preferred the place as “Happy Days”, though…). I have to admit my head was rather sore the next day – good thing it was “just meetings” ;-). I also got the chance to have a quick lunch with Janne & Jani on Tuesday, before heading on to the airport…

So my trip then continued in Ulm, where I’d never actually been before. My flight took me into Stuttgart, where I met up with my colleagues Cliff and Sinhung. After eventually finding our rental car, we headed down to Ulm. We foolishly decided to trust Sinhung’s phone GPS to take us there (rather than rent a “proper GPS”), and finding the hotel turned out to be a bit more challenging that it perhaps should’ve been (considering it was located next to Ulm train station). But, anyway, thanks to some old-fashioned communication (ie. asking people for directions) we did eventually find the place. We did even have time to catch a couple of beers – starting at a rather traditional German beer drinking establishment (where I had some “original Swabian steak”) and then continuing at the hotel bar. The beer was predictably good, and rather good value for money compared to the Cote d’Azur. We seemed to be considered rather an exotic trio at the hotel bar, as well (a Finn, a Malaysian, and an Englishman – fair enough).

After a somewhat difficult day at the office, we continued our adventures in Ulm. The original plan was to meet up in town with Sami (half of the energetic Mikkola twins duo), but unfortunately he had managed to got himself a bit ill during his skiing trip to Ischgl (a bit of a tradition with the “extended Finnish expat community from the old UK days“ – a tradition I never participated in but heard quite a lot about!). So we decided to pop over for a short visit instead. Well, the visit turned out to be not so short in the end – there was a lot of catching up to do, since it’s been about 3 years since I last saw Sami. And catching up with Sami does tend to mean a fair bit of beer as well (after the first beer, Cliff was kind enough to accept the car keys!).

By the time we made it back to Ulm, it was a bit too late to execute our original “beer tour” as suggested by Sami. We even struggled to find an open restaurant – the only place that was still serving food was an Indian restaurant near the main square of Ulm (the curry was supposed to be next week – when I’m going to the UK!). We even decided to give the hotel bar a miss – we did after all want to make a civilized impression on our German colleagues at the office the next day.

The next morning, I actually had the crazy idea to do a bit of a walking tour of Ulm town centre. It is, after all, rather a historic town. The earliest mentions of Ulm date back to the 9th century AD, and it was a rather important city during the middle ages. The greatest testimony to that is the Ulm Minster, the cathedral of Ulm. It is, believe it or not, the tallest church in the world (check Wikipedia, if you don’t believe me ;-) ), and the tallest structure built before the 20th century. And impressive it is, with its dark, imposing Gothic architecture. It does very much dominate the pedestrian town centre of Ulm. The misty/rainy weather kind of added to its Gothic look. I also had a quick walk around the picturesque Fischerviertel – the fishermen’s district. All in all, Ulm seems like quite a cozy little town.

After one more day at the Ulm office, it was time to head back to Stuttgart and to France. Thankfully Sinhung’s GPS didn’t lead us astray this time, and we all managed to catch our flights back home…

New year in Paris!

My trip to Paris from Helsinki was naturally not “smooth flying”. This time I didn’t have to spend the night at an airport though – but a delay of three hours did mean I arrived rather late at our hotel, which was located at Porte d’Orleans, near Montparnasse. After my happy reunion with Mathilde, and a good night’s sleep, we started our exploration of Paris.

We started off by walking to the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. I have to say it was quite nice to see the sun again – it was nice to experience a few hours of real winter in Helsinki, but the problem this time of the year is that it’s sort of dark all the time (even day-time). The Cité is quite an interesting place – it’s a large collection of residences for students, with each house or collection of houses representing one country. The buildings are quite interesting, being in quite a variety of architectural styles. All in all, a very nice place to spend walking around on a sunny winter day.

From the Cité, we carried on to the nearby Parc de Montsouris. It’s a public park, styled upon public parks from London, apparently (it’s true that I probably prefer the parks in London to those in Paris). One of the famous chaps who lived around here was Coluche, a comedian.

Having checked out the parc we carried on to the Butte-Aux-Cailles (“Quail hill”), which is one of my favourite areas in Paris for eating out. It’s kind of like a small village in the middle of Paris, with lots of cozy little eateries, serving no-nonsense food for reasonable prices. And we were indeed here to eat – lunch with CoCo was the order of the day. The restaurant we kind of picked at random turned out to be a good choice – I had pig’s cheek followed by a café gourmand – yummie all the way. Good fun as always to catch up with CoCo as well.

After some post-lunch deliberation, we decided to head down to Bercy to check out an exposition the Cinemateque de Paris - “Brune et Blonde”. A very nice subject indeed – Blondes and Brunettes in cinema ;-). It was all pretty cool, with photos of pretty movie starts, movie clips and even a collection of short stories about women’s hair! Very French, I suppose, but I liked it a lot. I suppose another visit is called for to check out the permanent collection – I am after all a bit of a cinephile. But that’s for another time, we had other places to go to…

We headed down to Montparnasse, where we walked about for a bit, before heading back to the hotel. After a brief rest (it had, after all, been a rather busy day), we headed out to dinner. We had selected a real Paris institution for the occasion – Le Coupole. The place opened in 1927 and quickly became the preferred eatery and drinking hole for the Parisian Bohemians (Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Josephine Baker, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf among others). It’s actually a very large restaurant – one of the largest ones in Paris, able to seat about 500 people. So not your chic, cozy little eatery, but very much a slice of Paris, nonetheless. I, naturally, went for the local speciality – lamb curry (kind of surprising). All in all, it was a great experience, even if the food wasn’t haute cuisine or anything. And apparently it’s still very much the real thing – at least that’s what the old couple at the next table told us (they’ve been coming for 30 years and say the quality hasn’t deteriorated over the years).

After a good night’s sleep, we continued our exploration of Paris. We had the ambitious plan to check out an exhibition at the Louvre in the morning. After a quick look at the queues, snaking there way across the Louvre courtyard, we dismissed the idea. Instead, we decided to head down to the Champs Elysee – it was new year’s eve, after all. Nothing much happening yet, though. But walking around Paris is just great, pretty much no matter where you are. There’s definitely something special about the place…

After a quick coffee, it was time to head down to Chatelet for our next rendez-vous, lunch with Philippe and Aniko, as well as a friend of Aniko’s from Hungary. The place we had originally planned to go to was closed, unfortunately, but thankfully there are a lot of typical Parisian bistros around Les Halles/Chatelet. All in all, it's another great part of Paris to just stroll around, soak in the Parisian atmosphere, and pop into a brasserie for some good, unpretentious food. We picked one of them, and weren’t disappointed. Good to catch up with them too, unfortunately it was all too quick, as usual…

The next stop was in Montparnasse, where we were had a rendez-vous with Muriel and her band of youngsters. We were glad to discover that the young lads, Paul and Lucas, have lost none of their energy (in fact, I get the impression the development is rather in the opposite direction). Alix is growing up to be quite the young lady, and I finally got to meet the youngest member of the family, Syhem, as well. After a couple of very energy-filled, one could nearly say tiring, hours (the activities included magic exhibition, trying to keep Paul and Lucas from sitting on my head and even a bit of board game playing) we had to head off, to start our new year’s eve’s celebrations.

Raphaelle and OIivier had kindly invited them over to their place, which was conveniently located just down the road from our hotel (in Montrouge), for the occasion. Nathalie, Patrick and their tribe, as well as Isabelle were also present – so quite a good part of the old “French expat tribe from the UK” was present (pity Aniko and Philippe didn’t make it). A mate of Ollie’s, Damien, also joined up for the fun. What followed was a very jolly night indeed – I especially warmed to the part where we prepared and consumed cocktails. I did a lot of the preparation actually – that’s probably why the taste was occasionally a wee bit dodgy. (I even managed to mess up a Mojito – not very easy to fail with those…). But hey, the main thing is, everybody had fun, everybody got pissed to some degree, and everybody was standing by the time the New Year started! Thanks to Ollie and Rafa for a great party!

We were feeling rather unenergetic the next day – our last in Paris before heading back to Nice. We did manage to summon enough energy to check out of the hotel, take our luggage to Gare de Lyon, have lunch at a brasserie, and even make our way to Bagnolet for a quick visit at Milene and Kamel’s. Good to see them too, it’s been a while… (there’s not been any Perugia meetup for a while, unfortunately). That brought and end to a very nice weekend indeed in Paris!