Surprise weekend in Porto Venere

We have a yearly tradition of organizing a surprise weekend for each other's birthdays. Mathilde's birthday was actually last weekend, but due to my unplanned trip to Finland, we had to postpone celebrations to this weekend.

This time around, I decided to take Mathlide to Italy (well, for these surprise weekends, Italy is actually almost more of a rule than exception...!), to Portovenere. Portovenere is one of those ridiculously picteresque villages that dot the Ligurian coast - located just after Cinque Terre.

We arrived at the hotel, located in the nearby hamlet of Le Grazie. The location of the hotel is pretty much perfect, located by the seaside, with a nice view over the bay. Unfortunately, we had no bayside view, though...We arrived pretty late at the hotel, so didn't have time to start exploring Porto Venere until next morning.

Getting into Porto Venere with a car is quite tricky, as it is, after all, just a small fishing village, not dimensioned to welcome the hordes of tourists that assail the place during the summer months. So we ended up parking quite a distance away from the village. But no complaints about that, the coastside walk into the village was pretty impressive (offering views over the Porto Venere peninsula and impressive Isola Palmaria just facing the village).

Porto Venere is, as mentioned, actually a pretty tiny place. Basically there is just one main street going through the village where the main commerces/services/restaurants and so forth are located. What's most impressive about Porto Venere is surely the site, the village is spectacularly built at the rocky tip of a peninsula. And, this being an Italian village, all the houses are beautifully pastel coloured as well, making it a very fotogenic place.

Anyway, we started our exploration of the place by walking up the slopes of the village up to the hilltop overlooking the village, which is where the Doria castle is located. There's also a pretty gothic church up there. But most importantly, the views from up there are just amazing... And to make things better, we were treated to a blue sky!

From there we made our way back down to the village, where we decided to visit Byron's Bay, a nice little secluded bay with a lovely little beach (although admittedly once swimming, the water didn't seem quite as chrystal clear as it did from the mainland). The place got its name from Lord Byron, the English poet who drew much inspiration from this beautiful place, apparently. (no wonder!)

We ended our visit of the village by checking out the beautiful Romanesque church of Saint-Lawrence, which is located at the very tip of the village. Not only is the church sublime, the views from there towards the village and Isola Palmaria are also stunning).

After a quick mobile lunch, we decided to jump on the shuttle boat over to Isola Palmaria, located just a couple of hundred meters from Porto Venere. It's a pretty interesting place to wonder around. Most of the island is undeveloped, so it's a great place for hiking - so we decided to do just that. We decided to go for what seemed like a pretty easy 1-2 hours hike (judging from the distance), but actually it turned out to be a bit tougher than that, as the hiking trail has some pretty steep slopes up and down.

A very nice way to spend a summer afternoon - thankfully it wasn't too hot! The island has been used for military purposes, there are still quite a few military installations there, some no longer in use.

Anyway, the plan was to actually have dinner at a place called the Locanda on the island. My surprise romantic dinner for Mathilde! Unfortunately, it all back-fired a bit... The Locanda may have been a pretty classy place in its heyday, but the glory days are unfortunately a thing of the past. The service was bad, the food unspectacular, and we didn't even have a great view. So, not the best possible way to end an otherwise fantastic day! Oh well, must do my research better next time...

Since we'd actually seen Porto Venere already on the Saturday, we decided not to head back there on Sunday (especially after our traumatic experience trying to park...). There is actually a Roman villa located in La Grazie, where our hotel was located, so we decided to try to locate and visit that. We were able to locate it, but it was closed, unfortunately. Instead of that, we were treated to a sea rescue dog exhibition in the port of La Grazie.

After that, we decided to head over to Lerici for lunch. Lerici is another beautiful Ligurian village, similar to the villages of Cinque Terre and Porto Venere. Parking turned out to be difficult again, we actually ended up parking illegally and walking down to the village. Lerici is indeed a very pretty place, even if the site is a bit less dramatic than Porto Venere's. We found a very nice little restaurant under some shady arcades in the historic part of the village, where we had an excellent lunch...

After a short walk in the port, where we checked out a second-hand book market, it was sadly time to make our way back to France. We did stop on the way home for a swim on the Italian Riviera.

So, another great weekend in Italy, then ;) !

Meeting the Vuolles again

Our dear friends the Vuolle family were still on the Cote d'Azur after my short trip to Finland. So since they were renting a flat in Cagnes-sur-Mer, we were quite happy to accept their invitation to come over for an apero, which transformed into an improvised dinner, as we decided to order a few pizzas to keep the hunger at bay.

Good to see the Vuolles again, hopefully they will be back next year!

Unexpected trip to Finland

I had to unexpectedly travel to Finland this weekend. The reason was not a positive one, as my dad had been taken into hospital about 10 days earlier. Thankfully, though, by the time I made it was time to travel, he was already well on the road to recovery (but still staying at the hospital).




Thankfully, dad was feeling well enough to join us for a bit of a celebration on Saturday, as it was actually the midsummer weekend (a rather big party in Finland!). So all in all, we spent a very pleasant Friday together, all of the family, at dad's flat on Fredrikinkatu - even if dad got a bit tired and had to leave in the middle of the festivities.

In the evening, we all went to over to Tomi's house in Espoo, where we spent some more quality family time - also meeting the younger generation (Nanna and her energetic twin boys, whose energy reserves seem to increase proportionally to their physical growth!).

I also had a pleasant walk around Tuomarila with Tomi and Janne, checking out the old 'hood ;-)

The next day, it was time for another celebrations - Katja is turning 40, so we celebrated her big day, again at my dad's flat at Fredrikinkatu (and he was again feeling energetic enough to join us as well, which is great). So cake, champagne, pressies, and just hanging out together again.

In the evening, I slept over at Janne's and Katja's place, which meant, of course, game night! This time we decided to have a go at Brass, a real board game classic. First time for me - a real classic indeed!  Brass is all about reliving the industrial revolution in Northern England.

Congratulations to Katja for soundly beating me and Janne!

On Sunday, it was time to fly back to France. But since my flight was in the afternoon, I decided to spend the morning walking all the way to Helsinki town centre. What better way to spend 3 hours on a Sunday morning, eh? I started off by checking out some fortifications dating back to World War I in Pajamäki (the fortifications here form part of a defensive framework the Russions built around Helsinki during World War I), just across the rail road from where Janne and Katja live. Quite interesting little place to visit, in the midst of nature.

From there, I carried on walking to the town centre, taking a route through Haaga, Keskuspuisto, by the Olympic Stadium, past the Winter gardens and to Töölönlahti. Quite amazing, that you can basically walk all the way to the town centre, just traversing parks and woodland, in the capital of a western European country. That's Finland for you!

I really love the walk around Töölönlahti, down to the railway station on the Kallio side. There are nice wooden mansions along the bayside (some of them housing rather cozy-looking cafes), and the views across the bay towards the Opera house, the Finlandia house are very nice as well.

My "mighy Helsinki odyssey walk" complete, I jumped on a tramway and headed off to see dad, before making my way to the airport for my flight. All in all, a very nice family kind of weekend - thankfully things turned out great for my dad in the end!

Lunch with the Vuolle family

Hannu was my trusy colleague (or site manager, as the saying went at the time) at our private little "Nokia Cote d'Azur site" we maintained for several years, until its sad demise during the "Elopclypse" that engulfed Nokia during 2012, which also led to me changing jobs.

So it was good to meet up with Hannu, Rita and their kids (now numbering 4, rather than 2 when they left - they sure have been busy!) - who were on the Cote d'Azur for vacations. Unfortunately due to our busy schedules we were only able to schedule in a lunch (well, I suppose that was kind of appropriate as we had a proud "business lunch tradition" to pay tribute to). The selected venue was Hotel Sophitel near my office. Always a good choice for families with kids - there are menus for children, a nice terrace and no need to reserve either.

Great to catch up with everybody again, and to meet the new family members!

Last Italian lesson of the year...

So, time to call an end to another year of Italian lessons. This year, like last year, I only took part in the conversation course, basically to maintain my (modest) level of Italian. What with us doing Japanese as well, doing italian "properly" at the same time would do my head in, I reckon.

Sad thing to call an end to the year, as always, but what's good about it is all  the food people bring on the last lesson. Strawberry cheesecake, Italian specialities, biscuits, plenty of munchies, yummie. I probably had more than my share, too...

So that's another excuse to continue with Italian next year, I suppose ;-)

L'Atelier du Port

Time for dining in the Port of Nice, it's been a while since the last time. The usual suspects showed up, that is, Julie, Aurelien and Sarah.

We decided to go to an old favorite of ours, L'Atelier du Port. Bistros are very much in fashion in France, and this placve is quite a good example of one. Menu written on a chalkbord, a short menu using seasonal ingredients, modern interior decoration (with messages written by dinner guests on the walls) and so forth.

As always, we had a good time. I was particularly lucky in that I got to finnish Mathilde's, Sarah's and Julie's plates! Thankfully we took the velo bleue back to Nice, got me to burn off some of those calories I'd stacked up on...

So, should you ever find yourself hungry in the Port of Nice, Atelier du Port is one of the better options ...

Snorkling @ Cap d'Antibes

A few pictures from my snorkling trip @ Cap d'Antibes after work with my colleagues Gilbert & Cedric. I shall let the pictures speak for themselves ;-)