Japanese dinner @ Saison

As you may have noticed whilst reading this blog, me and Mathilde are rather keen on Japan at the moment. So this weekend, we managed to convince our dear friends Julie and Aurelien to try out a rather well-rated Japanese restaurant in Nice called Saison.

Saison serves up delicious fusion food, preparing Japanese dishes using Mediterranean ingredients. A rather well-working concept, we found. The place is certainly not one of the cheaper places to eat in Nice, but compared to our rather expensive Japanese meal in Paris a couple of weeks ago, Saison's prices are rather reasonable. And the quality of the food is just excellent. So, should you be based on the Cote d'Azur, dear reader, don't hesitate to give this place a go some time!

Great to catch up with Julie and Aurelien as well, it's been a while since last time we met up.

Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms...

Picking mushrooms is one of those family outings no Finnish child can escape (or at least couldn't back when I was a child aaaages ago). Perhaps I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have back in those days, so I decided it was time to give it another go, as the hiking club at work organized a mushroom picking outing, with a mushroom expert joining us 'n all!

We were blessed with a suitably sunny day for the activity, and jumped in our car with Ilario, and headed down towards Greolieres, where the plan was to go mushroom hunting. And there were plenty of mushrooms to be picked, that's for sure! Not really knowing which ones were edible, poisonous and so forth, we pretty much picked all the mushrooms in sight to start with. Only to be told by our expert that most of them were either poisonous or just not very tasty... (turned out that the guy doesn't actually like eating mushrooms though, just studying them!).

But no matter, we had a rather spending time walking around, enjoying the sunshine, and in the end, we ended up with a fair few edible mushrooms as well. And at the end of it all, we enjoyed a nice little picnic lunch (with some of my colleagues bringing wine, and haribos-flavoured eau de vie, if you can imagine it!). We were also treated to a nice and pedagogic mushroom identification session as well. All the names sounded a bit too latiny to me, so I'm afraid the lesson was a bit lost on me!

All in all though, a great way to spend a Sunny autumn day! And we had a nice little mushroom omelet the next day, and didn't even get sick ;-) (unlike a couple of colleagues!)

Long weekend in Paris

There are a couple of long weekends in France come November, and we decided to take advantage of the first of them (All Saint's day) to visit Paris. It's been a while, after all, and visiting Paris is always good fun!

After a rather dull Easyjet flight (in spite of a flight attendant trying to be funny - there seem to be statistically rather many of those on Easyjet flights for some reason?), and a ride on the airport bus, I arrived at our hotel, located near Place de l'Italie, where I was happy to be reunited with Mathilde (who had spent a few days in Angers before making her way to Paris on the TGV).

On Friday, we had a rather cultural day planned out. We started off with a visit at the  Musée Jacquemart-André, located just off Boulevard Haussman. It used to be a rather impressive town house, which is used as a museum these days. We were there to check out the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition that was on - the theme more particularly was to celebrate female beauty. We rather enjoyed the exhibition (especially Mathilde, who's quite keen on the Pre-Raphaelites).

Our original plan was to walk around Paris, but alas, we had to change plans due to the abysmal weather (we're just not used to rain anymore, I suppose...), so we did a bit of shopping instead. Since the weather didn't show any signs of improvements, we decided for an extended dose of culture, and made our way to Trocadero, to La Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine, where there was an art deco exhibition on. The exhibition wasn't all that interesting, but the museum itself is brilliant! It gives a kind of overview of architecture throughout France, both from a geographical and historical perspective. They've moved/replicated big pieces of church facades etc. to demonstrate various styles and methods. We spent quite a few hours there, until the place closed, actually. Highly recommended! And what's best, there's a superb view towards the Eiffel tower from the museum (we got the "by-night" variant).

After all that culture, it was time for some food finally. Our obsession with Japan continued, we'd booked a well-rated Japanese restaurant called Kiyomizu. And the place certainly deserves its reputation - as far as the food is concerned, one might as well be in Japan (which isn't always the case with Japanese restaurants abroad - it's quite hard to meet the high standards Japanese folks put on their food!). We did find the place quite pricy though - one can certainly find the same quality food for much cheaper in Japan (we were amazed at how good value for money restaurants were in Japan on our trip this Easter). But hey, this is Paris, and Japanese food is "in". And the main thing is, we had a great meal!

The next day, our wishes were fulfilled, and the weather got better. So we decided to walk around Paris - the best way to really appreciate this wonderful city. Our walk took us from our hotel, in the 13th Arrondisment, all the way to Odeon, where we had a rendez-vous with Sarah, a colleague of Mathilde's who is from Paris. We had a quick coffee with her at a real typical Parisian brasserie (although the waiters were almost polite, which is rather atypical for a Parisian brasserie). 

We then headed off to meet up with Myriam (an-ex colleague of Mathilde's, also a Parisian!). After walking around for a bit, we ended up having lunch in a nice little restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Great catching up with her! We spent the next of the afternoon doing a bit more shopping and just taking in that great Parisian atmosphere. We even made our way to Montmarte, hiking up to the hilltop. We were rather put off by the hordes of tourists though, and didn't stay for too long... Amelie was a great movie, but I am sure Montmarte was a nicer place to visit before the movie came out... ;-)

Our original plan had been to stay at Philippe and Aniko's place in Chaville, but due to a last-minute emergency situation, we had to change our plans, and so we headed off to stay at Sarah and Bruno's place near Vincennes instead. Which turned out quite well, since it gave us the opportunity to catch up with them as well! As usual, Sarah had cooked a great dinner for us - fish this time. Yummie! Nice to see young Ulysse growing up too!

The next day, the plan was to cross Paris to Chaville, and catch up with Philippe and Aniko (and meet their little girl, of course!). We did have a bit of time on our hands before heading Westward, so we decided to visit Vincennes castle, which is one of the most famous castles in France. There was a classic car gathering taking place by the castle for added entertainment. After checking out classic cars for a bit, we headed off to check out that famous Chateau. It's a pretty cool castle to visit - it's more of a "medieval war castle" rather than a "fancy reneissance show-off castle", which is what I prefer ;-). From its humble origins as a hunting lodge, it became a royal residence, until it was replaced by the somewhat more glamorous Versailles.

The touristy bit done, we said our farewells to Sarah, Bruno and Ulysse, and jumped on the west-bound RER towards Chaville. After a changeover to a commuter train, we eventually arrived at our destination. Turns out Philippe, Aniko and young Elize are temporarily staying at Philippe's parents place, due to some delays in their new lodgings getting ready. At any rate, it was great to catch up with them, even if it was only for a quick coffee. 

And then it was time to head for the airport, unfortunately. What can I say ? Paris is a great city - there's so much to see and do. Looking forward to our next visit!