Julia and Sofia visiting

This weekend, we had visitors from Finland. My nieces Julia and Sofia were paying us a visit. They were staying at my parents’ place, but we promised to take the around the Cote on Saturday, when my parents were playing Petanque (taking part of the Nordic Petanque championships on the Cote d’Azur, no less!).

Since my parents will no doubt take the girls around all the normal touristy haunts of the Cote d’Azur, we figured we’d give the girls a taste of “the real France”, by introducing them to Cagnes-sur-Mer. Since Julia is training to become a chef, we decided on a programme quite suitable for everybody: I’d take the girls to the local farmers’ market, let them choose the ingredients (pay for them, of course!), and let them prepare a lunch for us. What’s more French than that, eh? I think the girls appreciated the visit to the farmers’ market, actually (I took them to my Italian buddy I buy vedge from, to my favourite butcher, and so forth).

Julia, with the assistance of Sofia, and occasional guidance from myself and Mathilde, prepared quite a dish for us. Pesto (home-made, naturally), organic chicken, asparagus and fresh pasta. While the chicken was roasting in the over, we decided to take advantage of the still rather gorgeous weather (a bit like the Finnish summer at its best, only warmer!), and go for a swim in the pool. It took some convincing to get Sofia into the pool (Julia had an excuse, as she didn’t have a swimming costume), but she eventually made it. This certainly worked up an appetite in me - and the meal the girls had prepared for us certainly hit the spot. After lunch, the girls absolutely wanted to see Cagnes old town (which slightly surprised me, actually, I thought old towns were for old geezers like me?) – so off we went to check out the cobble-stoned streets of Haut-de-Cagnes. A fitting finale for a very pleasant day spent with my nieces, indeed.

In the evening, we were meeting up with Youcef and Ismael for dinner in Nice. The occasion was sad, as Ismael is packing his bags and moving to Dublin, to join his darling Sarah. The initial plan was to have some Japanese, but the place we wanted to go to was full, unfortunately. So we ended up having Indian food instead, in Nooris. I have to say I’ve never been that impressed with Indian food in France, and Nooris wasn’t really an exception, unfortunately. It wasn’t bad, but I think there are plenty of places with better food and better value for money in Nice. But anyway, the main point was to catch up with Ismael one more time before his departure (well, we actually ended up scheduling a lunch for next week…).

The next day, we were meeting up with the Turtiainen clan again. We’d booked a table at a real Nice institution, Chez Simon. It’s a very nice place, serving excellent food, located in the foothills above Nice. They also have some Petanque fields located by the restaurants, where you can have a go, whilst waiting for the food. After finishing the rather delicious meal, we did indeed decide to have a go. It was me and dad against mummy and Julia (Sofia didn't seem too keen on the game and gave up after a couple of boules). I was quite confident in the Petanque skills of my dad, but turns out mum was the start of the event. The ladies won, OK, no need to talk more about it!

That brought an end to a rather pleasant weekend. I have to say that when the weather is like this in October, the Cote d’Azur is pretty much the best place in Europe to be. The temperature is very pleasant, one can still swim in the sea, and the days are still long… C’est la belle vie, ça!