The Red Moon

September 28th was quite a special day (or night, rather) for amateur astronomers, as a total lunar eclipse occurred. This basically means that the sun, earth and moon are all aligned (with the earth blocking the moon). The moon is still visible during a lunar eclipse (even if it's blocked by the earth), since the Earth's atmosphere refracts light to the moon's surface (the moon appears red since the atmosphere filters the low wavelength light, leaving only the high wavelength light, ie. red).

I'm not an amateur astronomer, but I fancy myself an amateur photographer, so I was keen to try to catch the event with my newly purchased Canon EOS70D. So yes, I got up in the middle of the night, and headed outdoors to try to catch the moon. Alas, it was not to be seen from our residence (hidden by the clouds, high-rise buildings?). I still decided to drive down the seaside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the moon. And, indeed, there it was, red in all its splendour! I was even able to get a couple of half-decent photos. Well, you be the judge...

Brunch in Nice

We don't see Naim very often these days, since he's moved back to England,  which is a pity. I very much enjoyed the business lunches and meetups he used to organize - seems that Naim knows pretty much everybody on the Cote d'Azur ;-). So we were happy to join him for brunch in Vieux Nice, to have a chance to catch up. Naturally, we cycled down to Nice, the perfect way to get from Cagnes to Nice, when the weather is good (which it usually is, it's the French Riviera, after all!).

The venue chosen was Le Coin Quotidien, located by Cours Saleya (a big square which hosts the famous Nice flower market). The brunch was quite average, with some rather confused waiters who got our orders mixed up, but it was great to catch up with Naim. Sarah was there as well, which was great!

I quite miss the cosmopolitan/international aspects our lives had when we used to live in the UK, so it's always great to meet up with Naim and his multi-national circle of friends!

Visit from England!

Nick is a very dear friend of ours, from our wild days in England, one we are happy to still meet up with regularly. So we were very happy to have him come over and visit us over the weekend (even if, in classical Nick-style, he informed us rather late of his plans, that is to say the day before he was planning to arrive!).

After picking up Nick at the airport and letting him settle in, we decided to head off pretty much straight away, to make the most of a beautiful, sunny Saturday. The plan was to head to Antibes by train, explore this beautiful town for a bit on foot, and then have dinner. And what a beautiful day it was to explore Antibes this particular day, the beautiful autumn sun, the blue sky and the blue Mediterranean all make it a rather stunning place...

We started off by checking out the newly redone area in front of the old city walls, they've created a nice, big, pedestrian space, with some nice modern works of Art to liven up the area. After the mandatory touristy shots, we headed up on the old city walls, checked out the gorgeous view, and then walked along the walls, enjoying on one side, the beautiful Mediterranean, and on the other side, the beautiful old town of Antibes. This yet once more confirms it for me - September/October is the best time to enjoy the French Riviera!

For dinner, we put our trust in Tripadvisor, and booked a place called Chez Lulu. And what an excellent choice it was! We just loved the place. The interior decoration is fabulous - very original, to say in the least. Loads of cool retro objects, a real LP player, and some rather amusing play on words, in French (didn't get them all!). The food is great, too, think grandmum's cooking with a modern twist.

Their concept is really cool, for starters, you get a collection of French starters of different kinds, and you just basically eat as much as you like (which for me, is a great deal ;-) ). There's just main one main course, in our case it was a succulent ossobucco. Again, eat as much as you like. For the deserts, the deal was pretty much thr same as for the starters - there is a nice selection, and you just eat as much as you like. And as the cherry on the cake, the service was just perfect - friendly and efficient!

The next day, we decided to enjoy the continuing fabulous weather by doing a hike. After some deliberation, we decided upon a hike near Menton, the Circuit de Bausson. It's one I believe we've tried already, but we had to abandon our attempt due to bad weather. The walk starts in the beautiful village of Gorbio, from where the footpath heads into the mountains, passing by the Chapel of Saint-Lazare (not particularly interesting).

Passing by some rather weird houses (one which is guarded by a stuffed orang-outang!) the footpath climbed up, alongside a ravine, until it flattened out, taking us through a pleasant wooded section. We eventually arrived at an old shepherd hamlet called Bausson (after which the walk is named), nowadays abandoned.

The hike was supposed to take us to another village, called Saint-Agnes, from where we were then supposed to double back towards Gorbio, but we actually decided to cut the walk a bit short, as the return footpath from Saint-Agnes was supposedly closed, and we wanted to have a swim before heading back to Cagnes, so we were a bit tight on time. So, we doubled back a bit before reaching Saint-Agnes, but not before enjoying a rather stunning view across the coastline, and Saint-Agnes.

We had a nice swim not far from where we had hiked, at Cap d'Ail. And then, it was time to head back to Cagnes, and reward ourselves with a tasty Free Range chicken for dinner - we surely deserved it after all that hiking & sweating!

All in all, a very nice weekend indeed, and great to see Nick again!

Dining in Nice

It's been a while since we've been to one of our favourite places in Nice, the port. It's a trendy place to be, with a pretty happening restaurant scene. Plenty of cool bistros pop up there (and of course the coolest (and only?) chain of Irish pubs on the Riviera, Ma Nolan's have a pub here!). Quite few tourists end up here, as well, which makes a nice change from the Old Town and Rue Massena.

So this Friday, we decided to meet up with the usual suspects for a night out (Julien, Aurelien and Vincent). We decided to meet up for dinner in Le Locale, a nice little Italian restaurant located just by the port. The food was great, even if the service was a bit slow. That didn't bother us though, as we were busy having a good time!

Visit from the West of France

Our good friend Nathalie was visiting Nice for work, so we decided to take the opportunity to join up with her in Nice for dinner. She's an old friend I met in England, who's since moved to her native Brittany (although actually, Suce-sur-Erdre is not quite Brittany, officially speaking, as it's located in the Loire-Atlantique department).

We met up in one of our favourite restaurants in Nice, Attimi. It's a great little Italian eatery offering excellent Italian specialities at quite affordable prices, made from quality ingredients. It's a kind of semi-fast food restaurant, so a great option for a quick meal.

Anyway, great food, and great to catch up with Nathalie again!

Party time at Saint-Andre de la Roche

We were very happy to accept Marianne's and Mikko's invitation for a dinner/BBQ at their lovely place in Saint-Andre De La Roche, at the outskirts of Nice. The occasion/excuse was to celebrate Mikko's birthday.

As usual, the food on offer was fantastic. The aperitif was something one would expect at a professionally organized cocktail party. And of course, the main course, BBQ a la Mikko - so predictably delicious. And some fantastic deserts (yes, that's in plural form) to finish it all off. I just loved those macarons! Needless to say, I had way too much to eat (and possible a bit too much to drink, too!).

Great to catch up with Mikko and Marianne, and Aki & Henna as well, who came along with their two sons. Joel, and Emil in particular, were definitely the stars of the evening. They seem infatigable! All in all, we had a great time, as we always do at Marianne and Mikko's parties...