Birthday drinks at Cannes

So, seemingly all the pub crawling last weekend was enough - time to hit the pubs again! But of course I at least had a brilliant excuse, as the occasion was to celebrate my birthday. Not that I need yearly reminders of the fact that I'm no longer young - but at least it's an excuse to go and have a drink!

As my birthday happily coincides with that of Saint Patrick's, and also due to the fact that I'm quite partial to Irish pubs in general, we decided to go to Ma Nolan's - possibly the best Irish pub in Cannes. We were joined by our dear friend Julie and Aurelien, and had a predictably great time downing a couple of pints and enjoying a tasty pub meal.

Slainte!

Reunion weekend in Guildford

As I suppose you are aware, dear reader, if you're one of the few frequent visitors of this blog (and/or if you happen to know me personally!), you are most likely aware of the fact that me and Mathilde used to live in England before moving to the Sunny South of France. To be more precise, we used to live in the pleasant town of Guildford, located in the prosperous county Surrey.

For this weekend, our dear friend Isabelle (who also used to live in said town, and thanks to whom I met many of my friends in the UK!) had decided to organize a reunion weekend in said town. An event I've been looking forward to for some time! Preparations for the trip didn't start well, as I'd booked an extra day of parking at Nice airport, and a hotel 4 km outside the town centre by accident (not a handy distance to stumble on the way back from the pub!).

Anyway, we stayed the first night at our good friend Phil's place, as planned, once we'd negotiated the usual hassle getting from Gatwick to Guildford (our flight was delayed, as usual...). No time for a quick drink in the pub, even!

Next day, we started off by wandering over to our hotel (I made a new last-minute booking for a hotel in town centre - the Manderlay). We'd been able to get a room for a relatively reasonable price - which was a surprise given typical hotel prices in this part of the world (and the fact that the booking was made, let's say, last minute). The plan was to meet up at the pub at 1 o'clock, which gave us a bit of time to explore Guildford - happily enough we ran into Isabelle who was also staying at the same hotel. That meant shopping - yoppii!

Anyway, time goes quickly when you're having fun, so we rather quickly had to make our way over to the Weyside, where we were meeting up. Weyside is one of our favourite pubs in Guildford, idyllically located on the river Wey (as the name suggests). A bit too much of a gastro-pub for my liking, but the beer is still good, and so was the fish & chips I had for lunch!

 
What was most important was catching up with everybody, of course. Thankfully, a really good bunch of people managed to make it, including fellow Finns (Katja and Kari, Kartsa and Reija, and Jaro whom I've not seen for ages), French folks (Flore, Christian, Emmanuelle, Isabelle and of course my darling Mathilde), Czech (Martina), Belgian (Nelle), Japanese (Chie), Malaysian (Sinhung), and OK a few Brits too (Phil, Nick, Geoff, Ben, Spencer). I'm sure I forgot a bunch of people, but anyway, you get the idea - the more the merrier!

After the Weyside, we strolled along the river (enjoying some gorgeous sunshine - which was a nice surprise as the weather forecast hadn't been that promising) over to the next seaside pub on the pub crawl itinerary - The White House. The same old routine (by which I mainly mean beer drinking) continued there, and then in the Star (this one is a bit more of your typical scruffy local English pub, compared to the modern revamped affairs a lot of pubs are sadly turning into).

Things progressively got blurrier as the beer flowed, but if memory serves me correctly, we had dinner at Giraffe (one of those chain restaurants that sadly flourish in the UK), what I do know for sure is that the evening ended in Rogues (where else - that's where a lot of nights out ended when we used to live in Guildford !?). Kartsa, our local host, had booked a private room for the occasion. Our madman  friend had the brilliant idea to order a round of 20 gin and tonics (twice!) to ensure everybody was in a good condition to stumble home afterwards. So, a night to remember,  then (as far as I can remember?) !

The next day, I got up, surprised about the fact that I didn't even have much of a headache. After a nice English breakfast (the perfect antidote against a hangover if there ever was one?) in a cozy little cafe, we spent the sunny morning having a nice walk around town, wandering over to check out the Guildford Castle, with the beautiful gardens being well-kept as ever. We popped over to say hi to Isabelle, Bav and Dave who were brunching just next to the castle, after which it was time to make our way over to the Drummond, where we were meeting up with Nick for lunch.

And then, sadly, it was time to head over to the train stations to catch our train to Gatwick. The stroll along the Wey river, past Dapdune Warf, was very nice indeed. We felt rather nostalgic about leaving - this wonderful weekend brought back so many nice memories about those great years we spent in England! It felt almost sad to head back to France....

Boyz Night out

As Mathilde was away this week, it seemed natural to suggest another Boyz Night out to Aki and Mikko. Thankfully, they both accepted.

Things kicked off, as usual, with burgers n' beer. We decided to go to Woody's Diner at Nice, a place we already sampled earlier this year. It's a pretty good attempt at an American style diner (the French aren't necessarily very good at imitating things American, as a general rule). And what's most important, the burgers were good - and so was the beer (as you can see, we went for the "giraffe" option).

The food bit out of the way, we decided to finish off the night out the same way as last time, a bit of pool in a bar just off Rue Massena. It was good fun, as last time. Me and Mikko had to grudgingly admit to Aki's superiority, again. What's more important, again: the beer was good.

This time, we didn't finish off the night playing loud musical instruments at Aki's place (possibly since Henna and the their two sons were sound asleep this time around? ;-). I again cycled back home on the Velo Bleu. Looking forward to the next edition of Boyz Night out ;-)

Quick stopover at Guildford

Time to head for Finland for a bit of Santa Claus and proper winter then (yes, it had actually snowed in Finland, which is a nice change after a rather dreary snow-less Christmas last year). Getting a flight to Finland turned out to be rather tricky this time around, all the flight options leaving on the 23rd were ridiculously expensive. Except one - a BA deal which meant an overnight stay at Heathrow.

Instead of slumming it at Heathrow, I decided to take up Nick on his offer and crash at his place in Guildford, my dear old hometown from my years in Old Blighty. And well, since I didn't arrive too late, we to meet up with Phil for a couple of pints before hitting bed.

We started off with what used to be one of my local pubs, the Drummond on Woodbridge Road. Pretty much unchanged from the last time I'd been there, the beer was still good. From there we carried on to the town centre, hopeful for an open place. Alas, 'twas not to be, even the usually reliable Fahrenhait 55 didn't want to let us in (too busy, apparently). The next challenge - where to get some food !? Mission impossible - we couldn't even get a kebab.

Thankfully, my second local pub, the Stoke, which we passed on the way back to Nick's place, was still open. So time for one last pint there then, as well as a  nutritious peanuts & crisps "dinner"...  (obviously they had stopped serving food).

Ah, it was a short but such sweet visit to my old home town - seems to still be pretty much as I remember it, at least by night ;-)

Pub quiz time

Time to take part in that age-old British tradition known as the pub quiz again. So off we went to the port of Nice, to our favourite beer drinking establishment, Ma Nolan's, to be humiliatingly defeated, as always.

Actually, we did better than usual - perhaps since the staff was pretty strict about people not using their smart phones to check answers. We, naturally, would never even consider cheating ;-) Not that we won or anything, but at least we were placed in the upper half of the ranking (only just, though...)

Oh, and as you can see from the picture here, Aurelien doesn't like Salmiakki ;-)

Pub quiz humiliation

I'm quite happy we revived our pub quiz tradition here in France last year, when we went and got ourselves slightly humiliated at the weekly Ma Nolan's pub quiz just a few weeks ago. We regularly attended pub quizes at our local pub when we lived in the UK. So, to cut a long story short (too late?), we decided to head back to Ma Nolan's today, for another humiliation.

We attended with pretty much the same team as last time: myself, Mathilde, Aurelien, Julie, Sarah and Vincent. One should imagine, with a team like this (4 highly cultivated French teacher, a History/Geography teacher, and a Software Engineer to answer the odd cinema/tech related question). Alas, 'tis not the case. It was an absolute disaster - we finished second last out of 26 teams... I do have a quite strong suspicion about the other teams cheating, though.... I mean we weren't THAT lousy (apart from the music round, maybe).

But hey, the most important thing is, we had fun. And I at least enjoyed plenty of fine Guinness, and had my first Fish and Chips in France. Not too bad an effort, all in all. And as for the quiz, of well, we shall do better next time!

Pub quiz time!

One of our favourite activities back in England used to be the weekly pub quizes. Not only is it a great excuse to go to the pub (as if an excuse was needed?), but it was also just one of those English things to do. We never won, and usually did very poorly unless we had a Briton with us (those music questions especially are real killers...)

So, anyways, when Aurelien suggested we join up with them at the pub quiz at the Ma Nolan's in the port of Nice, we jumped at the opportunity. Especially when Aurelien offered to drive ;) We were also joined by Vincent, and another colleague of Mathilde's. We did rather averagely on the quiz – as usually, the music questions got us. Much to my disappointment, I was rather poor with the movie questions as well, which ought to be my strong side. But hey, honestly, who can remember a crappy film like 8mm ?

But, most importantly, we had great fun! So I reckon we will be back for another quiz in the not too distant future. After all, it's a great excuse for going to the pub, right ;)