Music and dining at La Cannet

After a night out in Nice with a bunch of Finns, it was time for some French socializing tonight – as we’d been invited over for dinner at Aurelien and Julie’s place in La Cannet. Mathilde had prepared a nice Reblochon quiche (I had selected it from a list of pies Mathilde read out to me; anything with Reblochon in it is a pretty safe – if not light – bet).

We made our way down to Le Cannet after 7, being the first to arrive. Impressively, Aurelien and Julie live in a proper villa – albeit in one of the three apartments the villa houses. Still, pretty cool stuff – I suppose this was my first visit to a proper Cote d’Azur villa. After a while, we were joined by Gilles, Valerie and their kids, and later on by Antoine and his clan.

I was the designated driver for the night, unfortunately, but couldn’t resist the offer of trying out Aurelien’s nan’s home-made nut wine. It was predictably delicious – in fact so delicious that I had to try it a couple of times more. One piece of advice, if your French dinner host/hostess offers you the opportunity to try something distilled/made by a grandparent of theirs (all French grandparents seem to do this – so it’s quite likely to happen) – go for it – I can almost guarantee enjoyment (although the head might be a wee bit sore the next day…). As always in France, there was plenty of delicious food to eat about - this time the meal was buffet-style.

Otherwise, it was quite a typical French soiree – socializing, intellectual conversation (after all – 5 adults out of 6 tonight were French teachers) and a fair bit of music (Antoine and Aurelien really let loose on Aurelien's guitar). Just generally great fun, basically. I think the younger generation had a lot of fun as well, watching Barb-a-Papa and Shrek.

All in all then, a great night out – and strangely enough we weren’t even completely nackered as we hit the sack at around 3:30 in the morning. Maybe I’m not getting old after all ? :-)