Nice by night!

After a bit of a lazy day at home, we decided to get off our bums and do something. So cinema and dinner it was, then. We decided to go and see Birdman at our favourite VO cinema (VO as in Version Original - a place showing non-dubbed movies, a rarity in France, unfortunately) in Nice, the Rialto.

Great film, and nice to see Michael Keaton back making proper movies after quite a few very quiet years on that front. One of the best movies I've seen for ages.

We also checked out the fake Brighton pavilion like structure they've put up on the Coule Verte - looks nicer by night than by day!

For dinner, we decided to go for Bistrot Gourmand, a place that I believe got their first Michelin star 2 years ago, but seems to have lost it since. Which at least shows in the prices, in a positive way. Not many fine dining restaurants where you can have a gastronomic 3 coarse meal for 35 Euros for dinner, I don't think? (the lunch menu is even better value for money). It was all pretty excellent, although I think the place is maybe just missing that bit of extra effort (both as far as the food and the service is concerned) to justify a Michelin star (maybe all for the better since the lack of star can be seen in the bill, I reckon...).

Our appetites sated, we decided to enjoy the Nice Carnival by night a bit before heading back home on the velo bleu. A very nice night out in Nice, all in all, then!

Soirée Prof

School holidays are nice. It means Mathilde and her colleagues, not having to get up early and stand, organize evenings usually involving plenty of food and drink, which, as you might imagine, I also rather enjoy taking part in. (when the discussions get too school-related, I concentrate on the eating and drinkin).

This time around, we organized a night out (the original plan had been to go go the Ma Nolan's pub quiz in Cannes, but turned out that was on a Thursday) - Julie, Aurelien, Rodolph and Daniela turned up. So what followed was - as usually - plenty of eating, drinking and chatting away.

I took the opportunity to test an external flash my colleague had lent to me - rather nice end result on the pictures I would say. The evening dragged on for quite a bit so the next day was a bit difficult at work (thankfully I'm not a teacher who has to look sharp in front of his/her class - a computer geek like me can get away with a bit of a hangover!)

Carnival time!

The weather was supposed to be good in the mountains this Sunday, so we'd planned to go skiing with Ilario and Christina. Unfortunately the weather forecast went a bit bad last-minute, so we decided to cancel and have lunch in Nice instead. Since Ilario and Christina are planning to go to Japan soon, we decided Kamogawa - one of the most reputed Japanese restaurants in Nice, was a good restaurant to go for. Actually, we were a little bit disappointed with the place. It's proper Japanese food, for sure, but the service was not (indifferent is the best way to describe the service - not particularly Japanese). But anyways, we had a nice time promoting our favourite tourist attraction to Ilario & Christina ;-)

Nice Carnival is actually on at the moment. It's an old tradition in Nice (dating all the way back to the 13th century, at least), and is also the most popular one in France and possibly all of Euroie, with over 1 million visitors annually. Which is kind of the problem with Nice Carnival - it's over commercialized these days, all about the money so to speak.

Don't expect any Rio de Janeiro style madness either, or the veiled mystery of the Venice Carnival. No, this is all about family-friendly, sanitized fun. They even banned the anti-carnival (the non-commercial version of the carnival) a couple of years ago.

In spite of these slight misgivings, we decided to have a peek - after all, the weather was great and the "corso carnelavesque" is still good fun. Actually, much to our surprise, it was easier to access the corso this year - last year they made it quite difficult to enjoy the carnival with big fences blocking off almost all areas from access.

So it was pretty good fun in the end - this year around the theme was music (last year the theme was the football world cup).

A couple of surprising sites of interest in Frejus

Today, as the weather was kind of crap, we decided to go to Ikea. After all, it's been a while, and we were looking at buying a couple of things for the kitchen. So off we headed, for Toulon, where the closest Ikea is located (so far, there are plenty of rumours about one appearing shortly on the Cote d'Azur. No thanks - one visit every 3 years or so is more than enough for me!)

Our trip to Ikea turned out somewhat unfruitful. The drawers we bought were of the wrong size, and the dining table we bought was the wrong colour. Well, at least we had some "delicious" Ikea food! (Swedish meatballs, yoppii!)

On the way back to Cagnes, we decided to visit a couple of odd-ball attractions we'd read about in Frejus, which was on the way back home. The first one of these was the Pagoda of Frejus - which is part of a surprisingly large Vietnamese Buddhist temple complex. Kind of surprising to find the oldest pagoda in France (dating back to 1917) in a place called Frejus (a town not known for its open-minded spirit - their mayor is a member of the Front National). It was built by Vietnamese soldiers who fought for France in World War I. Anyway, a very surprising and interesting place to visit!

The second "odd-ball attraction" we wanted to visit was a mosque  - the Missiri Mosque. It's a rather curious attraction, located outside the town centre, and kind of hard to find... (one cannot wonder whether the local municipality, due to its political leaning, would rather people didn't find it!). It's a sort of miniature replica of the Great Mosque at Djenne, in Mali, almost more reminiscent of a military fort than a place of prayer. Unfortunately, it's inaccessible due to it being fenced in. But certainly an interesting and surprising roadside attraction!

And then back to Cagnes, for an evening of Ikea furniture assembly!

Moonlight walk at Greolieres

We have this crazy tradition at work, where we do a moonlight snow shoe walk. Two years ago, we did one at Audibergue, a small ski resort near Grasse. This year, we decided to tempt Cheiron, at Greolieres-les-Neiges, another ski resort, not too far from Sophia Antipolis.

So a brave group of us set off (me, Daniel, Lionel, Alain, Michel, and a couple of guys I didn't know), after stocking up on provisions on the way from work. Things didn't start very well for me, since I managed to break one of my ski sticks even before starting the trek. I'm pretty good at that sort of thing... And then, to make things worse, I had problems with my snow shoe bindings, and as a cherry on top of the cake, I got side tracked right at the start of the walk.

Thankfully, I was able to join the others, so off we went for the ascent. This time around, we had a cloudless sky, so we were treated to quite a spectacle, as the moonlight lit up the snow-covered landscapes in a rather atmospheric way... It was all pretty hard work, especially since I continued to make things difficult for myself by breaking my second walking stick! But in spite of these difficulties, I managed to join the others at the summit of the Cheiron, at the not-to-be-frowned-upon altitude of 1778 meters, where we enjoyed some extremely well-deserved drinks!

I was expecting the downhill hike back to our cars to be a breeze after the hassle I had on the way up. But alas, now it was time for my snow shoes to start acting up (looks like I hadn't tightened the bindings well enough after all). So my descent was rather undignified, more akin to sliding down than walking down. But, I certainly had a good time, which is what's most important, right !?

I'm looking forward to doing the same thing again next year!

Hike around Mont Gros

Today was one of those days that makes you realize what a wonderful place the Cote d'Azur is. Early February, a clear blue sky, the sun shining, tee shirt weather. Just the perfect day for a hike - something we really ought to be doing more often in this beautiful part of the world.

We opted for a walk near Menton this time, a hike up to Mont Gros, at a lofty altitude of 440 meters. Things didn't start well, as we headed off in the wrong direction - thankfully we realized we'd made a mistake after a rather steep ascent for half an hour or so. Well, no harm in a bit of extra exercise I suppose, and the views were just amazing (we got some nice views towards Saint-Agnes, one of the perched villages the Cote d'Azur is justly famous for.

After doubling back to our starting point, we picked up the right trail, and headed for Mont Gros, treated to yet more stunning landscapes - this time towards the coastline. Hard to choose which views are more stunning, the ones towards Menton, Cap Saint-Martin and Italy towards the East or towards Monaco and Cap Ferrat to the west.

After a short picnic lunch, we scaled up to Mont Gros, from where we enjoyed paragliders taking off from the top. Apparently Mont Gros is one of the top spots in Europe for paragliding - certainly not surprising given the amazing location! The walk then took around Mont Gros, back to the parking where our hike started.

Pretty much the perfect way to spend a winter Sunday, I would say!