Cycling up Mont Vinaigre

As you may have noticed, if you follow this blog, I've gone all crazy and started doing some sport. Amongst other things, mountain biking. This particular weekend, my colleagues Daniel, Gilbert and Philippe where kind enough to invite me along for their bike ride in the beautiful Massif d'Esterel.

So, I got up bright and early on this particular sunny Sunday (it was a bit tough going since the clocks were advanced by one hour just this day). Picking up my bike at work (which I'd left their, ambitiously planning to take it on regular rides into the nearby Valmasque part - futile optimism as they say - this was my second ride this year I believe...), I headed down the A8 to Les Adrets, where I had my rendez-vous with Philippe.

We headed off at Col du Testanier, located at an altitude of 311 meters. From there we pedalled down to the picteresque Lac d'Avellan. I barely had time to take in the pretty view (and take the mandatory photo), before it was time to pedal on for our final destination - Mont Vinaigre.

Mont Vinaigre is the highest peak in the Massif d'Esterel, rising up to a respectable altitude of 618 meters. The going was steady, starting on a dirt track, which transformed into a paved road after a while (which made it a bit easier). It was pretty hard going - a bit tougher than the relatively flat stings I've done so far in the Valmasque. But I'm happy to report I made it - well as far as you can on a bike anyway (the final ascent needs to be done on foot). My GPS reported an altitude of 540 meters.

After pausing for a while to take in the stunning panorama covering the ochre-coloured Massif d'Esterel as well as the coastline all the way from Saint-Tropez to Cannes (I'm sure Daniel is happy to see me put it down in writing for all to see ;-), we made our way back to the cars. Apparently we'd accumulated a total ascent of 454 meters in total - something I was rather proud of! Next time I suppose I'll have to do the same on foot, to make it all the way to the top!

Finnish birthday brunch in Nice

As an excuse to have a bit of a Finnish meetup in Nice, we decided to organize brunch in Nice to celebrate my and Henna's birthdays (our birthdays are within a few days, so...).

After some research on the internet (brunches are not something we generally do - in fact this was to be our first one in France!), we ended up finding what seemed like the perfect place, a little place called Killie's, not far away from Nice Etoile. Why perfect ? A franco-american, all you can eat brunch, what could possibly be better than that? ;-)

Aki, Henna and their two boys came along, as well as Mikko, Marianne and little Aleksi (actually he's not so little anymore, seems like he's grown by at least 10 or 20 centimeters - this either means he's a fast grower, or we don't meet up with Mikko and Marianne often enough! ;-). Probably he's a fast grower -judging by his more than healthy appetite ;-)

Gifts were exchanged, fun was had, and a lot of catching up was done. All in all then, great fun! We should do it more often ;). The food was what you'd expect form a place like this - quite honest and good quality for an all-you-can eat type of place!

A few days in Grenoble

Time for my yearly business trip to Grenoble! (there's been a trip per year during my career at STMicroelectronics so far - although there might more coming up this year, let's see...).

Me, and my two colleagues jumped into our rental car early Monday morning and sped down the motorway Northwards towards Grenoble, located about 5 hours drive from our office in Sophia-Antipolis. Rather than stopping for a quick lunch on the motorway, as we usually do, we decided to stop at Romans-sur-Isere for a proper lunch (as we were actually running a bit ahead of schedule). We struggled to find an open restaurant, but eventually found a nice little bistrot, nicely located by the Isere river, which flow
s through town.

What followed was a week of hard work! We had plenty to do, so the days were long at the office. But there was time for a bit of fun as well - especially as the 17th of March is, it may surprise you, not only Saint-Patrick's Day, but also my birthday. So this, naturally, called for a couple of pints of Guinness - and what better place in Grenoble to have a couple of pints of Guinness than O'Callaghan's? Well, turns out it was impossible to get in - due to the mad crowds celebrating Saint Paddy's in the pub, and even outside the pub in the square next to it. There were even some bagpipers livening things up (much to delight of our Scottish colleague, I suppose??). Anyway, it was all great fun - and if there's one thing I take away from Grenoble is that Saint Paddy's seems to be a lot more fun here than in Nice!

I did even manage to drag myself out of bed early one morning and do a bit of morning photography, even! Grenoble doesn't rank amongst the most beautiful cities in France, but it does have a nice enough historic centre, and is rather stunningly located on a flat plain, surrounded by very imposing mountains (this does lead to rather extreme heat and unpleasant air pollution at times). I decided to stroll along the Isere river, walking back through the town centre. Nice way to start the day!

Our workshop wrapped up Thursday lunch time. Before heading off, I decided on a bit of a detour. A good friend of ours, Christian, actually works in Grenoble. And it so happens that he's the vocalist of a local rock band, who were actually having their practice not far from our office. So we decided to gate-crash their practice! Good fun...

Before hitting the road back to Nice, we decided to make it up to Bastille also to check out the views over Grenoble and the surrounding mountains. There's actually a cable car that runs up there from the town centre, which is pretty cool, but we decided to drive up there. And the views from up there were certainly pretty amazing.

And that marked an end of our short but intensive stay - time to head back Southwards!

Skiing @ Isola 2000

We've been a bit lazy on the skiing front this year, missing out on a couple of occasions to enjoy the amazing skiing opportunities we're blessed with here (probably skiing isn't something most people associate with the Cote d'Azur - but yes, the nearest Alpine ski resorts are an easy day trip away from Nice).

This sunny Sunday, we finally decided to go for it. We decided go to Isola 2000, which really is THE place to go for skiing if you leave on the Cote d'Azur (OK, it's a little bit farther than Greolieres, but to be honest the extra 20 minutes or so it takes to drive to Isola are well worth it).

We arrived quite bright and early, and eagerly hit the slopes. We started off with some easy but very enjoyable blues on the Col de Lombardi side of the resort - just wonderful skiing, with the sun blazing in our faces. We then moved on to the other side of the resort and proceded to try out pretty much all of the runs, having a rather long session before having a late lunch. I even tried a near-suicidal black, much to my regret (my procedure for making it down the slope was more one of sliding on my a** than skiiing...).

For lunch, we tried the local version of Tartiflette (the name of which I can't recall just now - basically the same thing as a tartiflette except that they used a cheese other than reblochon, as far as I can tell) - just perfect after a long day of skiing.

We carried on skiing until closing time, very happy indeed with a day well spent on the slopes!

Mont Boron hike

Another sunny and beautiful day on the Cote d'Azur, just perfect for a hike. Actually we'd planned to go skiing today, but due to an uncertain weather forecast, we cancelled last minute. Since the weather turned out bright n' sunny in the end, we had no excuses not to head out for a hike.

We weren't feeling overly ambitious, though, so decided to content ourselves with a nice and easy coastal walk. We ended up choosing a hike up to Mont Boron (a walk we've already done a few years ago). We parked at the Cap Ferrat end of Villefrance-sur-Mer, from where we walked along the seaside into town (a lovely walk it was - the water looked positively inviting!). The hike then carried on through the pleasant old town, crossing Basse and Moyen Corniche, taking us up to the Col de Villefranche, a nice spot offering very nice views indeed over Nice in one direction, and towards Cap Ferrat the other way.

The walk then continued up to Mont Boron, rising up to 191 meters. The walk took us past the 16th century Fort de Mont Alban, overlooking both Nice and the baie de Villefranche, at the lofty height of 222 meters. No time to visit, but we stopped to enjoy the magnificent views for a while.

The walk down the hill was rather pleasant, taking us through a nice park. The walk then took us back by the seaside to Villefranche and our park.

So much better, a pleasant little hike like this, than a lazy day at home!