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!