Aude and Magaye visiting!

Aude and Magaye, good friends of ours from Nantes, have been meaning to come and visit us for quite some time. Finally, this weekend, we were very happy to have them over! As they arrived on the afternoon Easyjet flight Friday afternoon. I decided to join them in Nice directly after finishing off at the office. After a bit of shopping, having a quick look at the museum of modern art, some strolling around the old town, ‘twas time for a spot of dinner…

After trying, unsuccessfully, a couple of options, we ended up in Le Fran-Calin, a touristy-seeming place in Old Nice serving up typical Provencal fare. Well, it was a rather touristy place, but the food was good, and good value for money as well, so we were rather happy with our choice in the end. Having filled our stomachs, we decided to have a quick drink before making our way back to Cagnes. We ended up in Les Distelleries Ideales, a nice little bar in Old Nice, with a pretty catchy brewery-inspired interior, and a good beer selection. A nice way to end a busy evening in Nice!

The next day, our options for sight-seeing were somewhat limited due to some uncharacteristically bad weather. So, we decided a bit of culture was called for. After considering various options, we ended up in the Musee de Fernand Leger, in nearby Biot. Fernand Leger started his career started off by working mostly with cubist art, and then evolved his style to a more figurative, populist one (yeah, that’s right, I looked that up on the internet). Apparently he’s considered by some as the fore-runner to pop art. Anyway, the museum was pretty cool actually, I liked a lot of his paintings (which is not always the case with modern art…). I do find the museum a bit small for what they are charging (something like 9 Euros for a visit lasting less than 1 hour).

The next stop was the other “major tourist attraction” Biot has to offer – the glass-blowing factory. Glass blowing is a tradition that goes way back in Biot, and is still going strong – although I reckon most people purchasing glass-ware in Biot are tourists rather than locals… The verrerie is quite a nice place to visit, though, the workshop is open to visits, and it’s actually quite fascinating, watching the masters at work. There are also a couple of interesting glassware galleries to check out, and the gift-shop, naturally ;)

After a quick walk around Biot (it’s one of my favorite villages on the Cote d’Azur, not least because it has some excellent restaurants!), we made our way to Antibes, where we were  supposed to pick up my brother Janne and Katja, and then head for dinner. Unfortunately my brother had some stomach trouble, so we ended up just having an apero at my parents’ place instead, before heading into Antibes for dinner.

After checking out the various restaurant options on the internet, we had selected a place called “Le Taille de Gueppe” for dinner. Taille de Gueppe means “wasp waist”, and the restaurant apparently specializes in food that has flowers in it, so I was a bit nervous, actually… Thankfully, my worries were unfounded; the place is a real gem. The interior is very cozy indeed, the cuisine is inventive (it does contain flowers, but thankfully also meat!) and actually pretty good value for money. We will be back, I strongly suspect!

After a quick drink at the Colonial pub, we made our way back to Cagnes to recuperate for the next day (after a bit of Buzz musical & cinema quiz action on the PS 2).

For the next day, we had a kind of agreement that if the weather was bad, we would go for a long lunch to my favourite Italian restaurant; il Giardino, at Vallebona, and if the weather was good, we would cycle along the seaside in Cagnes. Me and Magaye, at least, were desperately praying for bad weather ;)

Not sure whether the weather was strictly speaking bad in the end, but we ended up going to Vallebona, anyways ;) Il Giardino was, as always, a sublime culinary treat. Italian food at its very best: simple, copious, and tasty, just like at your grandmother’s. We had no problems eating our way through the 9 antipastis, 4 plates of pasta, and 3 mains. Yummie, what else can I say ?

Lunch at Il Giardino takes a good three ours out of your day, and leaves you with little energy to do other things. But we did manage to spare the energy to walk around the charming village of Vallebona, check out the seaside of Bordighera and even walk around in Monaco for a bit on our way back to Cagnes.

That brought an end to a very nice weekend with our dear friends. We hope they won’t wait as long until their next visit as they did for this one! ;)