Cagnes by night

I've been attending a rather interesting photography course, given by a colleague, over the last few weeks. He specializes in night photography (and fireworks), so I decided to take out my Canon this Sunday evening and go and take a few pics of our home town, Cagnes-sur-Mer, by night. A selection below...

 

Skiing at Auron

One of the things that's best about living on the French Riviera is, to me, the proximity to the Alps. Just an hour and a bit by car, and one is surrounded by the beautiful Alpine scenery of the Parc National de Mercantour. This natural park also houses the best ski resorts in this part of France, namely Auron and Isola 2000.

We usually go skiing at Greolieres, since as our dear friend Ollie would say (who, as you may have guessed, hails from there), it's the most beautiful village in France. The other reason (obviously a very marginal one compared to the first reason), is that Greolieres is the closest ski resort to where we live.

Anyway, enough digressions - the point is that this Saturday, we made an exception, and decided to go skiing in Auron, thanks to a suggestion from my colleague Ilario, who was going skiing with his friend Christina. And it turned out to be a rather excellent choice. The skiing conditions were just perfect - good snow, excellent weather, not a cloud in sight. And it's true to say that the skiing is better at Auron than at Greolieres (sorry Ollie - but on the other hand, Greolieres IS a prettier village!).

So as you may have guessed, we spent a fantastic day of skiing, interrupted only by a rather pleasant lunch (I had some deer stew). Pretty much a perfect way to spend a wintery Saturday then! And even the traffic jams were bearable!

More Japanese cuisine

The weather was rather dreadful this weekend (what on earth is happening to the Cote d'Azur weather ? Whenever things seem to get back to their sunny normal, the rain comes back with a vengeance...). So a perfect opportunity to spend a cultivated evening in Nice, with some quality cinema at Rialto, followed by a Japanese meal.

We saw Ida, a Polish film about a nun who finds out a thing about too about her past before she takes her wows (like the fact that she's a Jew!). A very well made film, I have to say, but perhaps not quite as good as some of the reviews I've read would have one expect... Still, well worth seeing.

For our Japanese meal (yes, our obsession shows no signs of wearing off), we decided upon a very well-rated place called MaYucca, conveniently located near the cinema. MaYucca isn't (and isn't trying to be) a Japanese restaurant in the purest sense - their inventive cuisine is mainly Japanese, but with gallic touches. Everything we had was delicious, from the typical Japanese starters, the delicious main course (I had my first tartar steak!), and perhaps best of all, the beautifully presented and equally tasty deserts.

Highly recommended! ((it's what I say about every Japanese restaurant I visit, though...?)

Pub quiz time

Time to take part in that age-old British tradition known as the pub quiz again. So off we went to the port of Nice, to our favourite beer drinking establishment, Ma Nolan's, to be humiliatingly defeated, as always.

Actually, we did better than usual - perhaps since the staff was pretty strict about people not using their smart phones to check answers. We, naturally, would never even consider cheating ;-) Not that we won or anything, but at least we were placed in the upper half of the ranking (only just, though...)

Oh, and as you can see from the picture here, Aurelien doesn't like Salmiakki ;-)

Weekend with CoCo!

CoCo, a good friend of ours who currently lives in Paris, has been promising to visit us for as long as we've been living here on the Cote d'Azur. So we were rather amazed, and happy, when she finally announced she had booked her train ticket to Nice.

We started off our rather intensive weekend with a short visit to Nice. I joined the ladies in the old town for an aperitif at the Bar de Degustation near the Palais de Justice, after which we headed for dinner to Le Comptoir du Marche, one of the better and less touristy eateries in Vieux Nice. As during our previous visit, the Comptoir didn't disappoint...

The next day, we decided to get up bright and early and hit the ski slopes! The weather forecast wasn't that promising, with the weather getting worse towards noon, hence we really wanted to be on the slopes as early as possible. Bearing that in mind, we chose Greolieres, the nearest ski station to where we live. We managed to hit the slopes at about 9:30, which is pretty good. Unfortunately, as expected, the conditions weren't the best, but we did enjoy a couple of hours of nice skiing with good visibility, before it started snowing... So we decided to call it a day as far as the skiing was concerned, and warmed ourselves up with some vin chaud (most of mine ended up on my ski outfit, unfortunately...).

After a nice lunch down at Greolieres village, we headed continued our Cote d'Azur tour with a walk around Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which is of course one of the prettiest villages in the region. Thanks to the crappy weather, there were remarkably few tourists (always look on the bright side of life, right?). Well, I'm exaggerating a big, perhaps, the weather wasn't THAT bad...

Before heading off for dinner, we headed back to our flat and played a bit of Hollywood quiz on our  Playstation 2 - CoCo is quite a film buff... For dinner, we chose our favourite local Japanese restaurant, Yoko. The food and service was excellent, as it always is. I like the place better after each visit! (although it's true we're starting to know the menu quite well...). After a couple of games, we were ready for bed (I can feel that 40'th birthday approaching, just can't seem to keep going the way I used to, eh...? ;-) )

Coco is quite a big fan of Italy as well, so for the last day, we decided to cross the border and head into Liguria. Since the weather was pretty poor again (what's going on with the Cote d'Azur!?), we decided to go to our favourite Italian restaurant, Il Giardino, in Vallebona. Before lunch, we decided to get the mandatory touristy stuff out of the way, and had a walk around Bordighera old town, a typically picturesque little Italian village...

'nuff about that, time to have some lunch. Il Giardino is the type of restaurant that seems almost tailor-made for somebody like that. They have a fixed-price menu for 35 Euros that includes unlimited wine, 9 antipasti, 3 plates of pasta, 3 meat main courses and desert. And coffee and grappa to finish off the meal, of course. And it's all delicious as well! Think grandma's cooking. What else is there to say ? Excellent food, friendly service, the best of company - a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon, if you ask me!

And then it was time to take Coco back to the train station, so she could head back to Paris. We hope she'll be back soon - hopefully the weather will be better next time!