A week with Alix

Barely had we said goodbye to Joel and Francoise, before we already had our next visitor arriving – this time our guest was Mathilde’s lovely niece, Alix.

We naturally started with the usual activities, meaning swimming pool, beach, ice cream. I may no longer be a spring chicken (as they say), but funnily enough, all those activities appeal to me, so no complaints from me at least ;-). This particular Saturday was also a local Cagnes-sur-Mer festivity, called “Fete de Saint-Pierre”. Saint-Pierre is the protective saint of sailors, and there is a tradition in Cagnes-sur-Mer to light a ship on fire during the fete, in front of the church at Cros-de-Cagnes. So we decided to check it out. After having a look at the festivities and processions around the church, the ship-burning ceremony finally started.

Actually, a friend of ours, Youcef (whose recently emigrated to Paris), was also visiting Nice, and was organizing a night out in Nice this same Saturday. So, unfortunately, I had to head off before they actually burnt the ship, pedaling down the seaside on the Velo Bleu. Great to catch up with Youcef, now happily married and enjoying (not very much?) his new job in Paris. Met a few other familiar faces from TI as well.

On Sunday, we more or less continued as we had started on Saturday, ie. swimming pool, relaxation, the beach and ice cream. We did decide to cycle to Nice, though (and rewarded ourselves with one of those divine Amorino ice creams on Rue Massena). In the evening, we checked out the outdoors cinema in nearby Villeneuve-Loubet, and watched Madagascar 3. I must admit, I quite enjoyed it, in spite of it being dubbed into French (I particularly liked the car chase through Monaco!).

For Monday, it was safari time, sort of. There is a natural reserve near Greolieres, not far from where we live, called Domaine du Haut Torenc. It’s a 700 hectare reserve, dedicated to preserving European flora and fauna. There are bisons, “prehistoric horses”, deer, and even the odd lynx might cross the reserve from time to time. They also organize guided “safaris”, which we took part in. It was a really great experience – we observed a bison herd for a while and then had a look at those famous prehistoric horses (Przewalski's horses). This species of wild horse diverged from the current domestic horse some 160,000 years ago, and only about 1500 of them remain today. Fascinating stuff.

After our safari visit, we had a picnic lunch by a nearby lake, after which we headed back homewards. We stopped off near Greolieres to have a swim at the Loup River – very refreshing indeed, must do that again sometime!

On Tuesday, we decided to head to Italy, a first for Alix. We started off by visiting the Balzi Rossi, just on the Italian side of the border, after Menton. These caves, located in some dolomite cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean are famous since they were inhabited during the Palaeolithic Era, and since. It’s an interesting enough place to visit, although our Italian friends could perhaps consider translating more of the legends and texts in the museums to other languages than Italian…

We then made our way to the old town of Bordighera, where we walked around. It’s a typically picturesque Italian old town, with narrow cobble-stone streets winding up and down, nice stone houses, pretty churches and so forth. The plan was to have lunch there – unfortunately most places were closed, though. We did end up finding a decent eatery where we sated our hunger with some pizza and pasta.

The next stop on our little road-trip was San Remo, where we walked around for some more, until we reached our objective – Grom. Grom is a chain of gelaterias serving rather delicious, naturally flavored ice cream at very reasonable prices. I seriously recommend it to anybody reading this heading to Italy. After a quick swim in the med at the “public beach” of San Remo (the annoying thing in Italy is that almost all the beaches in Italy are private, meaning you have to pay, the public bit we stayed on in San Remo wasn’t really a beach – more like some rocks…), it was time to head back towards France.

We stopped at Antoine and Claire’s place for apero and dinner. We had a fantastic time as usual, with the usual gang (Aurelien, Julie and also our Californian émigrés Gilles, Valerie, Celian and Hector) being present. Alix seemed to get along fine with the other young folks as well, after some initial shyness.

The next day, we made our way out to the Var department. Gilles’ mum has a lovely villa out in the wild Varois countryside, near Mons, where we were invited to spend a rather relaxing day. The surrounding scenery really is amazing, and the calm makes quite a change from the hustle and bustle of the Cote d’Azur. Most of the usual suspects were there (including Marie and also Guillaume), but also a few new faces I’d never seen. It was all great fun – a lot of eating, drinking, socializing, and enjoying the swimming pool. And the kids had a great time playing hide and seek – more places to hide out here in the sticks compared to the crowded Riviera… ;-) Great day out – big thanks to Gilles and Valerie, should you read this!

That brought an end to Alix’ rather intensive visit. I hope (and think) she had as much fun as we did! ;-)