Marianne's Big Day

Today was Marianne's big day - she was turning 40. To hounour the great occasion, her closest friends and family had decided to organize a surprise party. Me and Mathilde were quite honoured to be invited to this great occasion. We arrived at Marianne's parents super house well in time (they live conveniently just next-doors to Marianne and Mikko), and got into the mood by eating the delicious aperitif (one thing is for sure - when you are invited to Mikko's and Marianne's or her parents place, you will eat very well) and drinking champagne.

The ruse to lull Marianne into ignorance was that she was shopping in Cannes with her good friend Nathalie. Apparently Nathalie had some difficulties extracting Marianne from her shopping (that was quite OK, we were having a good time, chatting away with people and enjoying that gorgeous aperitif), but she managed in the end, and the hero of the day finally arrived! She was properly surprised (there was some worry that her little son Alexi had inadvertently alerted her about the party).

The party carried on much along the same tracks after Marianne's arrival - great food, great drink, great company! It was all great fun - we had a super time as we always do with these people! And I'll tell you what, there was no need to prepare dinner in the evening - that "aperitif" I've mentioned just a couple of times was rather filling!

Dinner with mum and dad

My parents were back on the Cote d'Azur, happy to be back in the warm Souther weather, no doubt. And happy to find their flat still in habitable condition, even after our rather merry new year's party ;-)

We were happy to accept their invitation for dinner, and spent a rather nice evening with them, catching up on the latest and listening to their plans for the coming months. Quite a few visitors planning to come over again, unsurprisingly, and a trip planned to the Canary Islands to escape the "Northern Cold" (hang on, I thought that's why the came down here to Antibes...?). Sounds pretty good - a rather busy couple of pensioners, my parents!

Pub quiz humiliation

I'm quite happy we revived our pub quiz tradition here in France last year, when we went and got ourselves slightly humiliated at the weekly Ma Nolan's pub quiz just a few weeks ago. We regularly attended pub quizes at our local pub when we lived in the UK. So, to cut a long story short (too late?), we decided to head back to Ma Nolan's today, for another humiliation.

We attended with pretty much the same team as last time: myself, Mathilde, Aurelien, Julie, Sarah and Vincent. One should imagine, with a team like this (4 highly cultivated French teacher, a History/Geography teacher, and a Software Engineer to answer the odd cinema/tech related question). Alas, 'tis not the case. It was an absolute disaster - we finished second last out of 26 teams... I do have a quite strong suspicion about the other teams cheating, though.... I mean we weren't THAT lousy (apart from the music round, maybe).

But hey, the most important thing is, we had fun. And I at least enjoyed plenty of fine Guinness, and had my first Fish and Chips in France. Not too bad an effort, all in all. And as for the quiz, of well, we shall do better next time!

Rocher des Monges hike

It's been a while - too long - since our last hike on the Cote d'Azur. So, since the weather was pretty much perfect for hiking this weekend, there really was no excuse not to hit the hiking trails. After some deliberation, and having checked the weather forecast, we decided upon the Rocher des Monges hike, near Theoule-sur-Mer in the Massif d'Esterel. The Massif is a great place to hike this time of the year, with the ochre-coloured cliffs looking rather splendid when the sun is nice! From February onwards, the blooming mimosas also add a touch of yellow to the landscapes.

After parking near the port of Theoule, we started our hike up towards the Rocher. The views along the way were rather stunning - with the wooded Esterel ahead of us, and the blue Mediterranean behind us, with rather stunning views towards Mandelieu-La Napoule. After perhaps an hour or so of brisk hiking, we finally arrived at the top, from where we enjoyed the stunning views and the winter sun, while eating our picnic lunch. At times like this (remember, this is the first weekend in January!), it's hard to imagine a nicer place to live ...

Our appetites sated, we hiked back down towards Theoule-sur-Mer, once more taking in the stunning views along the Cote d'Azur. With weather like this, it's pretty much the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon! We really should do this more often...

Skiing and dinner in Nice

Sami, our good friend from Karunki (lately residing in Holland, though) was staying in France until Friday. Since I knew Sami like skiing and, well, Holland isn't exactly famous for ski resorts, I figured today would be a good time to open the skiing season. A positive side-effect of the unusually high amount of rain we had on the Cote d'Azur in December is that there's plenty of snow at the local ski resorts, including our local favourite, Greolieres-les-Neiges.

I hit the road early in the morning, and headed down to Nice, where Sami was staying at Mikko's place. After a quick coffee, we hit the road, and headed for Greolieres. After negotiating some surprising traffic, we arrived around 11 o'clock. Half an hour later, we were ready to hit the ski slopes. The conditions were pretty much perfect - the rain we'd had the day before had obviously translated into snow up here in the mountains, and today, we were blessed with plenty of sunshine an blue skies. So all in all, we had a great ski session. We headed back to Cagnes at around 4, very content with the day's skiing.

For the evening, the plan was to meet up in Nice for dinner. In addition to Mikko, my friend and ex-colleague (he became an ex-colleague just two days before, since I officially left Nokia on the 31st of December) Jean-Luc and his family joined us (they had rented an apartment in Nice for a week, to escape that dark Finnish winter...). We selected an Italian place I've heard plenty of good things about, La Ville de Sienne, for the occasion. A good choice, it turns out - they have rather excellent food (the pasta dishes that are their speciality didn't disappoint). Great to catch up with Jean-Luc and his family as well.

Time to say good bye to Sami as well, who was flying back to Holland - from where he is heading to Brittany in the West of France apparently!?

Post-new year party at Maite's

Just barely recovered from our new year's eve party, and having sent off Winston and Philippe, it was time for the next party. Our dear friends Valerie and Gilles were visiting all the way from San Francisco, California, which naturally called for a reunion. Maite was kind enough to organise a little party for the occasions. I gladly volunteered to be designated driver as we headed for Maite's house at Plascassier - my body was still sort of in recovery mode from the last party...

As always at Maite's, we had great fun. Most of the usual suspects from CIV (Mathilde's school, were Gilles and Valerie also used to work) were present, including Aurelien and Julie, who had welcomed the new year together with us. Great to see Marie as well, who was back from her travels in Thailand - sounds like she had quite a trip! Really good to see Gilles and Valerie, as well as Celian and Hector, of course. Looks like their lives in California are as eventful as ever, for better and worse!

All in all, a great night then. Thanks to Maite for organising it all!

Farewell to 2012, welcome 2013!

Barely had we gotten back from our Christmas break in the West of France, before it was time to attack the next project - the New Year's party we were organising at my parent's place in Antibes. With 14 adults and a few children participating, there was a fair bit of work to do. Thankfully, we got most of the preparations out of the way before our first guests, the honoured Sirs Winston and Philippe, arrived.

We'd prepared a proper Nice dinner for their arrival in the evening (they were in dire need of nourishment, after their 10-hour drive up from Paris), with some nice home-made (not by us!) raviolis and pasta sauce waiting for them. Great fun meeting up with them as always, especially Winston, whom we see regretfully rarely...

The next day, we had a bit of time before heading over to my parents' place in Antibes, so we decided to explore Cagnes for a bit on bike. With the beautiful weather we were having, it was an easy choice... After checking out the seaside, we ended up having a surprisingly good lunch at one of the rather touristy restaurants in Saint-Laurent-du-Var (I say surprisingly, since the place did look like a bit of a tourist trap). After lunch, and a bit of last-minute shopping, it was time to head over to Antibes.

We had quite a few guests from various places attending our little party. There was of course the dynamic duo; Winston and Philippe, as well as Flore, Christian, Nathalie and Patrick (with children, including my dear godson Florian), representing our old friends from England. The locals were represented by Mathilde's colleagues Aurelien and Julie, as well as Mikko, Marianne and Nathalie. And then there was the special Finnish guest star from Holland: Sami (who used to live here in Nice). A pretty good team to welcome 2013, I would say!

And we had a lot of fun, that's for sure. Things kicked off and stayed relatively civilized, until around the time somebody had the idea of having a round of '44 (a very tasty but rather strong concoction containing, amongst other things: home-distilled Calvados, an orange, sugar coffee beans and cloves). Cocktails was the theme of the night, and we did have quite a few... Not enough, in the sense that there was plenty of booze left the next morning. Some of us probably had a few too many (including the writer of this blog post)... Anyway, all in all, I think everybody had a good time, nobody got injured, and there was no substantial damage (in fact, the only material damage was a wine glass) to my parents flat. So I think it would be fair to call the event a success!

The first day of 2013 was spent in recovery mode, as you can probably imagine, mostly watching DVD's...