Circuit de Magagnosc

It's been way too long since our last hike - so we decided to do one this sunny summer Saturday. We opted on a hike near Grasse - Circuit de Magagnosc. The walk started near a garden, with a scenic point offering quite nice views over Grasse (I limit myself to "quite nice" since the suburbs and surroundings of Grasse are not exactly easy on the eye...).

The walk headed up through a residential quarter up to a plateau, from where we had quite nice views over the surrounding countryside (less built up this side of the mountain, thankfully...). The hike continued along a dirt track following a sort of valley/canyon, with some continued nice views. The end of the hike was a bit challenging, since the footpath passed through some water-covered tunnels, and naturally there was no lighting (and we didn't think to bring torches either)... Well, thankfully we made it through without injury!

All in all, it was not one of the nicest walks we've done (in general, the walks around Grasse are not my favourite ones), but it was nice to get out and about in nature nonetheless!

Birthday lunch for Mathilde

I had planned a traditional birthday surprise for my darling Mathilde this weekend, but unfortunately a sad family emergency forced me to travel to Finland this weekend.

Since I was flying out Saturday, we decided to celebrate with some fine lunching, though. We were quite happy to get a table at a new restaurant called La Place de Mougins, opened by Denis Fetisson, a chef of some repute (he's worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants, including the legendary Moulin de Mougins, which unfortunately has lost its luster over the last few years). The place is, as the name suggests, rather perfectly located by the main square of the medieval village Mougins, famous for its fancy restaurants (expectations were high then, since the place was ranked nr. 1 on Tripadvisor for Mougins).

And we certainly weren't disappointed. Everything was pretty much spot on - from the attentive yet informal service (nice to see the chef having a regular check on things as well), tastefully decorated tables, surprising, tasty, well-presented cuisine and of course the perfect company. The restaurant is located next to the medieval parish church, and there was a wedding going on as extra entertainment for us. (apparently a rather common-place occurrence on Saturdays!). Clearly, the place is trying to get its Michelin star. Not sure the experience quite merits a Michelin star though - or were our expectations a bit too high after my recent birthday present from Mathilde ?

Don't get me wrong - I still most certainly recommend the place! Happy birthday darling :)

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétisson

Interview with Denis Fetisson

Denis Fétissonb

Last Italian lesson for this year

OK, so I wrote about our yearly Italian meal last week, in an almost emotional way... So here comes another emotional post, for the last Italian lesson of the year. Like I was saying in my last post, I really enjoyed our year together with Annamaria, and I really hope I can find away to continue studying the two languages I'm passionate about learning just now - Italian and Japanese. Let's see...

Anyway, the occasion was a bit special as well since Annamaria is getting married this summer, so we decided to make an extra effort with the gifts we got her. And she did seem to be genuinely taken with them.

So, hopefully I can reunite with my group next fall, then! Otherwise, arrivederci e Grazie per tutto Annamaria!

Football time!

As you may have noticed, the football world cup is on! Which is a good or a bad thing, depending on whom you ask ;-) Me, who normally don't watch football on telly (and am even less likely to actually play it for real!), strangely transform into a football fanatic for 4 weeks - stuck glued to the telly whenever a match is on.

France was playing Honduras this Sunday - so I decided to head down to my favourite drinking establishment to watch the game with Ilario, Vincent and a friend of his. 'twas all quite good fun - looks like the French national team is finally getting their act together with a quite convincing 3-0 win (even though it has to be say Honduras didn't exactly impress). Allez les bleus!

The Yearly Italian Meal

Every year, we traditionally do an Italian meal somewhere on the Cote with my Italian class. This year, I figured I'd had enough of grammar, so went for a conversation course rather than the normal Italian courses. Normally, we've gone to a restaurant in Cagnes-sur-Mer, but this time around the plan was to go to have what is apparently the best Neapolitan pizza in Nice (which of course makes it the best pizza in Nice!) - Les Amoureux. The recommendation comes from our lovely teacher Annamaria, who is, yes, from Naples.

Unfortunately Les Amoureux was closed for renovation works, so we ended up going to Villa d'Este instead. It's a pretty decent eatery, the best thing about the place being the size of the portions (generous, let's say - even if I'm sad to report that the "salad bowl of mousse au chocolat" which I had for desert has significantly reduced in size). We had a pretty good night out, eating well, and having a good time. The average age of our group was somewhat lower than during previous years, which certainly helped!

Hopefully, I can find a way to continue the conversation course next year!

Janne and Katja visiting

My dear brother Janne and his better half Katja were coming over for a couple of days. They had a rather ambitious project - to drive mum and dad's car from Antibes all the way across Europe to Finland. Happily, they decided to spend a couple of days with us here in Cagnes before heading off.

They arrived bright 'n early at Nice airport. Not to be deterred by a long flight and little sleep, they were happy to head off straight for some tourist action (well, we did have a chicken for lunch first!). After deliberating various options, we finally decided to head off to Cap Ferrat - the home of the rich and famous. That being the case, what better place to visit than Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild ? The villa was constructed between 1905 and 1912 by the ridiculously rich Béatrice de Rothschild (a member of the famous Rothschild banking family). It took a while, since she had the annoying habit of restarting construction from scratch when she decided the works in progress didn't please her.

The end result is a rather impressive pink villa overlooking Cap Ferrat and the Mediterranean - filled with antique furniture. Even if the interior is pretty interesting, the main reason to come here are the impressive gardens (the place is classed as a "Notable Garden of France" - whatever that means!). The gardens are very nice, it has to be said - showing various types of gardens, and littered with antique statues.

All that tourist action made us a bit hungry - so we decided to head off to Villefranche-sur-Mer for dinner. After strolling around the charming old town and taking in the nice views over the Bay of Villefranche, we ended up dining in a nice place called L'Aparte, cozily located in the Rue Obscure (a street of sorts built underneath the harbour houses - dating back all the way to the 13th century). They had pretty original stuff on the menu - I especially liked their desert - a Toblerone tiramisu (the thing was actually shaped like a Toblerone!). Excellent, creative cuisine, if a bit on the pricy side. Recommended!

The next day, we had the sad task of going through stuff at mum's and dad's place to see what to bring back to Finland. It very sad to imagine that mum, who's had a big hand in decorating the place, won't be coming back there...Life must go on, I suppose.

We ended a rather tiring day with a couple of games of Carcassone. Great fun actually, as a 4 player game. We've played it a lot just the two us, me and Mathilde, but it's certainly a lot more fun with more players.

Then it was time to say bye bye to Janne and Katja, as they started their long trip towards Finland...

Back in Edinbrurgh!

The name of the game was business againBack in Edinburgh again, almost exactly one year since my last visit. I was quite happy to visit my old student haunt again (although naturally I was very serious about the job assignment I was here to complete!).

Following some recommendations from Edinburgh colleagues, I decided to stay at the Parliament House, conveniently located just crawling distance from the pubs of Princes Street, at the foot of Carlton Hill. It's one of those historic British hotels full of character - which is mostly a positive, but not only, a positive thing. I certainly prefer a hotel like this to your average chain business hotel (like the Holiday Inn - or Horrible Inn as my colleagues refer to it as - just across the street form our office on Corstophine Road) - but there are some inconveniences (the fact that they converted the elevator to a phone booth is the most strikingly odd feature of the hotel - who needs a phone booth these days??).

After breakfast with Benoit, my colleague from Grenoble, we foolishly decided to try to take the bus to work - in theory an easy task - in practice it took as about an hour to get into the office. Still, we decided to take a bus back to the hotel after work - went better this time. My plan was to meet up with Athol & Colin at the Guildford Arms - unfortunately our poor planning was executed on Facebook, which I didn't have time to check before going to the pub. Naturally I didn't have their phone numbers either - so to cut a long story short, I spent about an hour in the pub alone, drinking beer, waiting in vain...

I eventually managed to figure out Athol wanted to postpone for Tuesday, and Colin wanted to meet later on - so I decided to trek up Carlton Hill for a bit of tourism instead. It's probably the best place in Edinburgh as far as panoramic views are concerned - there are great views towards both the old town, new town and Leith as well. Pretty cool place to take in the views - good thing I brought my camera!

Afterwards, I met up with Benoit for dinner (nice sea food in Thrift street), after which we joined Colin and a couple of mates of his in the Royal Mile in the Old Town at the World's End pub (which takes its name from the adjacent World's End Close, whimsically so named because this was in former times the last close in Edinburgh before entering the Canongate). After a pint there we headed back to the New Town (since I'd rather inconveniently left my camera at the restaurant), where we had a couple of pints more in a nice pub on Thrift Street. All in all, quite an excellent night out - good to see Colin again!

The next day, we decided to get all bold again, and decided to try out the newly completed Tramway for getting into work. Bad mistake again - we ended up taking a bus again, this time taking even longer to get into the office than the day before. The way back into town from the office wasn't easy either - the traffic jams were a real nightmare due to the One Direction gig at Murrayfield (it was quite fascinating observing the crowds querying for the concert - 99% of the audience must've been girls between the ages of 11-17, the rest being girls above 17 years old...  ).

So I ended up rather late for my rendez-vous with Athol, but didn't feel too bad about given that he'd stood me up the night before! Spent a couple of hours with him, first having a quick drink in a burger place, then having a walk around Princes Street (amazingly enough, enjoying a second sunny evening in a row - not a drop of rain yet!), and finally ending up in a pub. Then our ways parted, Athol had a hot date, and I was meeting up my colleagues Benoit and Sheena (here all the way from Noida in India) for dinner in a curry house on Shandwick Place, towards Haymarket. We had a pretty good meal - nice to try some hot curry, it's been a while since the last time! After the meal I had a nice walk back to the hotel, taking some "Edinburgh by night" shots... (especially the Old Town gets pretty atmospheric come night time).

All in all, a pretty good couple of days then, nice to check out some of the old student haunts. Edinburgh really is one of the coolest places in the UK, no make that all of Europe!