Weekend in Piedmont

My parents took us on a surprise trip to Piedmont (just bordering France, a bit north of the Italian Riviera), to celebrate my birthday.



We set off by driving through the Valley of Roya (a river) up to Cuneo. A very nice drive, I might say, with plenty of dramatic scenery and pretty villages. Our first stop was Cuneo, a nice and prosperous-looking town near the French border. It's famous for its enormous town square - Piazza Galimberti, where there is a weekly market (which wasn't on when we were there).

We had lunch in Cuneo - once we found a restaurant (strangely enough it wasn't easy).




From here we headed to the Langhe hills area, which is famous for its wine production. We stayed in a very nice hotel (which was actually operated by a fellow Finn - which as all other Finnish establishments in this blog hereby gets free advertising ;-): http://www.villacarita.it/) just outside La Morra (yes, a pretty little village sitting on a hilltop). A very nice place I must say!

We spent some time visiting the village as well. Nice as the village was, we relatively quickly ended up tasting the local wines in one of the local establishments.....






The next day, we headed off towards Alba, braving the horrid rain, sleet and winds (at its worst the temperature was actually below 0 - at the same time in Finland it was +10 degrees! That doesn't happen very often I would guess!). Alba was a very nice old town, sittings snugly in the centre of the wine producing region.

From here on we carried on to Asti - famous for the Asti Spumante sparkling wine. The town itself was pretty nice but yet somehow disappointing - the relentless rain and cold of course didn't help.



From here we carried on to Cherasco, which was actually really nice. If it wasn't for the cars the place could've been from another century. And the place wasn't even very touristy (again, the rain & cold might have had something to do with it...).

St. Patrick's Day, birthday and perched villages...

Today was not only St. Patrick's day, but also my birthday... We started off the day by a short drive near Nice, to visit two famous nearby perched villages, Peille and Peillon.






Peillon, which means "little Peille" in Provencal, is I would say the prettier of the two. Actually, maybe if I were to rank pretty villages on the Riviera this would probably come out on top. It's very pretty, very dramatically located on a cliff, and it's surprisingly untouristy (we couldn't even find a restaurant in the village itself)! Especially considering it's only a few kilometres from Nice. A very pleasant surprise.



Peille was very similar, but bigger and more lively. And whilst Peille is pretty, I would have to say it is less so than Peillon. Peille has an interesting history which dates back to the 12th century. It was a pretty powerful town in it's time, and it was actually the Lascaris family who resided Peille that sold the rock on which Monaco was built to the founders of the city, the Grimaldis (bet they're pissed off about that now ;-).

In the evening we had a small "birthday reception" in Ma Nolan's and obviously also dedicated a few pints of Guinness to the patron saint of the Irish...

Liguria Road Trip

We decided to drive down the coast into Liguria, on the Italian side. Bit of a road trip.



Our first stop was San Remo, which as you will most likely know (I, of course, didn't) is famous for it's music festival. It also has a Casino, and cheap coffee (we paid 90 cents here compared to over 3 euros the day before on the French side).

From here, we carried on to Imperia, which is the 4th biggest city on the Italian Riviera. It has a charming old town sitting on a hill (Porto Maurizio), and seemed less touristy than San Remo.





From here we drove swiftly on to Cerva, a lovely little seaside town perched on its hill (as they often are, on both sides of the border of the Riviera, it seems). Very nice indeed, the old town, with a nice church right at the top of the town. And it didn't seem all that touristy compared to some of the other "lovely villages" on the Riviera.

From here we drove back towards France, stopping in Bussana Vecchia. A very interesting town, basically it was devastated by an earthquake at the end of the 19th century (according to our guide book there was only one survivor, who ended up inventing the ice cream cone?? Information that is contradicted by some investigation on the web later on - but it's a good story eh?). So anyway, since then it has been taken over by some artists and kind of restored. It's a pretty cool place, kind of like a semi-inhabited ghost town. And the drive there was, er, interesting (put it like this, in a sense the place is protected from mass-tourism because there would be no way to get a bus up there!).

Massif d'Esterel

The weather turned really great on the Riviera again, and we had a car at our disposal. So we decided to drive down to Massif d'Esterel and do a bit of walking.

Massif d'Esterel is situated between Cannes and Frejus - it's basically a large, hilly area with plenty of canyons. It's not actually all that high (goes up to a bit more than 600 meters), but it actually looks pretty mountainous. And you get brilliant views over the Riviera. Very nice colours as well - with the blue sea, the green trees, and the reddish colours of the Massif.



Our walk took us via les Grosses Grues (the big cranes - as in the birds), at 441 meters, via les Petits Grues (yep, you guessed it - the little cranes) and finally to Col Notre-Dame.

After this rather strenuous but very rewarding walk we stopped for a cappuccino and ice-cream at Theoule-sur-Mer, a nice seaside town.

Skiing and partying in the Alps

Flore and Christian were kind enough to invite us and some other friends for a weekend of skiing to Megeve. So without hesitation we booked an Easyjet flight to Geneva, and off we went.
As often, our voyage was an eventful one, with a 2-hour delay. After this we spent about 2 hours in Geneva in the rain, trying to meet up (and failing) Matsuoka, who had been sightseeing (= been in the pub) in Geneva all day. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Flore and Christian ended up picking us from Geneva and driving us to Megeve, because there were no more buses...

The next couple of days were rainy and misty, so none save Christian (brave fool) went skiing. But we compensated for this lack of sports activity by eating some of the diet food of Savoy (I'm being ironic here), and of course enjoying vast quantities of the local wines as well! Well we had to, since it was Lilian's birthday!




On Sunday we actually did go skiing (Nick was especially motivated, wearing a crash helmet 'n all) - it was a perfect day for it, with a clear blue sky. Well, most of us did, anyway ;-)









And last but certainly not least, below, the birthday hero, "1-year old, no longer bald, still can't walk but he surely can talk" :-)

Aniko and Philippe visiting

We had the pleasure of having the entertaining company of Philippe and Aniko this weekend.

Aniko was the first one to arrive, on the night train from Strasbourg, on Friday morning. Philippe was supposed to arrive at about 4 o'clock by car from Toulouse. So although we did suspect he's estimation might be a bit too optimistic, we decided to not do anything overly ambitious that day, so as to be back in time for his arrival. For this reason we decided to visit Menton, which is only 30 minutes by train from Nice (of course, as we might've guessed, Philippe didn't arrive until after 10
o'clock in the end ;-).




Menton was quite lively for a change (I mean this quite literally because Menton must have one of the biggest populations of pensioners in France) because of the "Fete des Citrons", yep, you've got it, the lemon festival. Basically they've built these big statues and buildings out of lemons & oranges. Of course we refused to pay the outrageous entry fee of 8 euros! But I still managed so sneak a picture of the Lemon Buddha.

We were supposed to cook "Moules et Frites" that night but sort of got the cooking instructions slightly wrong (or maybe it's because they were Irish mussels, and upset about their rugby defeat by France a few days before), and to cut a long story short the moules ended up in the rubbish and we ended up in a restaurant.



On Saturday, we decided to take Philippe's car down the Valle du Loup, to Greolieres. On the way there we stopped by St. Paul de Vence, which is (this won't surprise you if you actually read my blog ;-) a very nice perched old village in a very nice location. This one is nice enough to also attract massive crowds of tourists - considering how many there were at this time of the year - I dread to imagine what it must be like in the summer.
But in all honesty it's a very pretty village.
After this we carried on, and did a bit of walking as well, finishing with a well-deserved, if light, picnic lunch. Then after the lunch, me and Philippe conquered the nearby imposing summit.



Having filled our stomachs and had our daily dose of exercise, we carried on along the winding mountain roads towards Greolieres. Greolieres is another nice mountain village, which has the particularly endearing characteristic of being the place where our friend Olivier Durand grew up. I must say that having seen the place (all peaceful and quiet), I'm surprised Ollie turned out the way he did ;-) And below, the house where he grew up!


Not wanting to risk these scenic yet treacherous roads in the dark, we decided it was time to head back towards Nice. Fortunately, we did have time to stop at yet another pretty perched village in a stunning mountain setting, this time in Gourdon. I suppose you could say that in terms of prettiness, it would be placed somewhere between St. Paul and Greolieres, and also in terms of number of tourists. The views from the village were amazing, it has to be said. As you can see from the photo below, it was also very windy and cold.



We had big plans to go out and paint the town red (I think that's how the expression goes?) in the evening, but were pretty nackered after our escapades, so had a quiet meal at the house, and after having a quick look at the Nice Carneval procession, we went to watch the France-Wales rugby game in a typical Irish pub (by this I don't mean a "typical pub in Ireland", rather, I mean a "typical Irish pub abroad"). Well, main thing is, the Guinness tasted good :-)
The French beat Wales 32-21 after a convincing performance.


On Sunday we jumped on the commuter train and went to Monaco. Monaco was clean and busy as ever. We were rather efficient - we managed to see the changing of the guards at the palace (a somewhat less impressive affair than the Buckingham Palace equivalent, I must say), the cathedral, Monte-Carlo and the Casino, as well as the Japanese garden, all in a couple of hours. We were kind of on a tight schedule since Philippe was a bit eager not to leave too late (perhaps the memory of his 12 hour drive on Friday was still fresh in his mind).

Finns in Nice!

My 3 lovely nieces had come to visit the Riviera together with my parents. After a rather busy week for them (during which they had time to visit at least Cannes, Antibes, Nice and Grasse I think) and us as well we finally got the opportunity to have a nice dinner with them in the old town of Nice, after a quick apero at our flat.