Plenty of "leaving dinners" and "see you soons"

Preparations for our upcoming Asian adventure are proceeding rather well. As this will take us away from the Cote d'Azur for 4 months, we're rather busy saying our goodbyes to everybody (although, I suppose "see you soon"might be more appropriate).

Anyway, our good friends Milene and Kamel, who live in Paris, were down by the Cote d'Azur for their holidays, so we decided to meet up with them and their lovely kids for a picnic by the beach (picnic by the beach is a pretty cool way to meet up this time of the year, especially when kids are involved). We chose are favourite picnic beach in Antibes (located between the old town and the Cap d'Antibes). We spent a very nice evening indeed, chatting away and eating some rather tasty pizzas we got from a nice Italian restaurant by the beach). Great to catch up again!

On Friday, it was time to say bye to our Finnish friends. Great that both Mikko and Marianne as well as Aki and Henna could make it (and young Emil and Joel of course, as well). As it turned out, our good mate Naim was also in Nice for the weekend, so he was able to join too. We decided on a restaurant I've heard plenty of good things about called "le Bistrot de l'Ecole du Nice". An excellent choice, as it turned out. Great value for money for pretty fancy food. Highly recommended!

Some friends of Mathilde; Marie & Sebastien and their kids, where swinging by to visit us on their way back from Napes to far-away Mayenne, where they live. To help them a bit, we decided to put them up at my dad's flat in Antibes during their stay (a flat which we are in the process of selling, meaning it's a bit spartan so to speak) over the weekend. On Sunday, we took them on a bit of a tour of Antibes, which is one of the nicest towns on the Cote d'Azur (a bit overrun by tourists during the summer, which is to be expected, I suppose...). We lunched at the Safranier, a restaurant which is pretty much perfect in terms of location (located in a nice square in one of the prettiest parts of Antibes). The food was less impressive (or let's say, it wasn't particularly good value for money...). We finished out tour of Antibes by walking along the city walls...

The next week, yet more meals awaited. On Tuesday, we were invited over for dinner by Julie and Aurelien, with Charlotte and Julien also joining for the fun. The theme of the night was Corsica - Julie and Aurelien were just back from their holiday over there and were obviously inspired by their trip. The meal was, in a word, delicious.

Wednesday, it was time to head over to Vence, where we dined at Olivier's place, with Marie joining us as well. Time for some pizzas again, yoppii! Well, the main thing was, we had a great time  catching up.

And to finish off our social marathon, we had a great BBQ at Marianne and Mikko's place on Saturday night, and a rather improvised dinner at Marie's place on Sunday. It's a wonder we got any packing done for our trip at all! Anyway, we did get everything ready on time, and are now all set for our adventure!