Cime de Baudon

Since the weather was pretty much perfect today, we (or more like I, perhaps...) decided it was a perfect day for a hike. We picked a hike near Peille this time, that goes up the Cime de Baudon, at a rather respectable altitude of 1264 meters (not bad, considering it's only about 20 kilometres from the sea.

Before embarking on the hike, we decided to have lunch in the village. Peille is one of our favourite villages on the Cote d'Azur. Perched on its hilltop, it sits on a superb site, with nice views on surrounding peaks and the valley beneath. The village itself is a prototype of what Provencal villages should be like, with narrow cobble-stone streets going up and down, charming stone houses, cool little courtyards sheltered from the sun. And perhaps best of all, very few tourists, surprising considering the proximity to Nice and the coastline (the advantage of living in a region where almost much each town/village has an old town worthy of being a tourist attraction). We lunched in a charming little restaurant, on one of those sheltered little courtyards.

We then set out on the hike, which took us along the valley on a footpath, with nice views back to wards the village. Towards the end, things got a bit sporty and steep, some scrambling was even required from time to time. We even got off the footpath a couple of time (well, there wasn't much of a footpath to speak about, actually... As an added bonus, we came across a herd of sheep at one point, seemingly untended. Time to take out the camera...

After a bit more sweat, blood 'n tears, we reached the summit. We were, unsurprisingly, greeted with some pretty stunning views back towards the sea, but also towards the Mercantour national park (where, thanks to a rather funny year weather-wise, the snow was still well present on the higher peaks - rather unusual for this time of the year). That brought an end to a sweaty, but rewarding afternoon hike! The hike back to the village was pretty easy going...

Glitz 'n glamour in Cannes

It's that time of the year again, as the weather indicates. Yes, it's Cannes film festival time (the weather is always crappy during the Cannes film festival for some odd reason). Due to our busy schedule, we didn't get our Quinzaine des Realisateurs tickets out in advance, but we did decide to make it out to Cannes on this relatively sunny Saturday.

After wandering around the Croisette, overrun as always by wannabe stars and people eager to catch a glimpse of a celebrity, we made our way over to Palais Stefani, to queue up for the screening. Having had some bad experiences on previous years, we started queueing real early, over an hour in advance. And thankfully, we did get in. The screening in question was a little oddball of a movie called "Les garcons et Guillaume, a table", a kind of autobiographical coming of age story by a French comedian called Guillaume Galliene. It puts a wicked twist on the "coming out genre movie", in that this time the guy coming out of the closet turns out to be straight. Absolutely hilarious!

We then headed out back on the Croisette, heading towards the Palais des Festivales. And who did we bump into, if not the famous (or infamous?) Bogdanoff twins (we ran into one of them at exactly the same spot a couple of years back!). These identical twins are a real show-case against plastic surgery (just look at the paparazzi picture I managed to snap), and also a good example of the kind of C-class celebrities the film festival attracts. But hey, at least I managed to snap my first proper paparazzi shots ;-).

After some more crowd-spotting, we headed down to Ma Nolan's where we joined Aurelien (and a huge crowd of football fans watching the Champions League Final between Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Munich) for a couple of pints. And then it was time to speed down to the train station to catch the last train back home!

With the Old Gang in London

It's been a very long time indeed since our last visit to the UK... So we figured the perfect way to spend our last long weekend in May would be a visit to London, a place we very much miss.

After our cheap and cheerful Easyjet flight, we jumped on the ridiculously over-priced Gatwick Express (a return ticket to London cost us nearly as much as our flight!) to Victoria Station. A short tube ride later, we arrived at Waterloo, where our hotel was located. We went for value for money rather than quality in selecting the Waterloo Travel Lodge as accommodation. Not saying that's a bad choice - but the value for money was quite visible here in many ways (no wardrobe in the room, a rather pathetic piece of soap for washing up, no luggage room, and so forth).

Normally we're not particularly picky when it comes to accommodation - but when you pay over 100 pounds per night, you expect a bit more than this. Well, it is London, on the other hand. Anyways, enough moaning - we put this slight disappointment behind and headed out to explore town. We had a pretty nice time enjoying Southbank and Waterloo by night, and ended the night with a nice meal at Wagamama's (although it has to be said that it compares rather poorly to the food we had in Japan...)

After a good nights sleep and a proper English breakfast (oh, how I miss those fry-ups...), we headed out to explore London, unfortunately under a bit of a cloudy sky. Mathilde headed off for a bit of shopping, whilst I headed out towards the city to find the elusive Temple Church. This venerable building (dating back to the 12th century, it's one of the oldest buildings standing in London) used to be the English headquarters of the Knights of the Templar - it's a place I've wanted to visit for ages.

It's rather well hidden away in the middle Temple courts (some court buildings) - very well indeed, I really struggled to gain entrance (eventually I found a guarded side alley where the guard grudgingly let me pass). I did find it eventually, only to find it was shut... Anyway, the whole mystery-shrouded exercise was kind of good fun, and the City is a pretty nice place to walk around anyways...

By then it was time to head back to Waterloo where we were meeting up with the old gang. Sinhung, Flore (who also travelled from France) and Adrian all made it (Phil and Nick joined us later). We started the day with a Dim Sum in Chinatown - one of those London things to do that we really miss. After that we spent some time walking around Covent Garden and West End - straight down memory lane as well...

The touristy stuff out of the way, it was time to get down to business - time to start the pub crawl. We got through a rather respectable number of drinking establishments (most of us are, after all, reaching a respectable age) - six in total. We started off in De Heims (another old classic - a Dutch pub in Chinatown), followed by the Clarence and the Old Shades in Westminster (I especially liked the second one, with its opulent interior). We then carried on, crossing Trafalgar square to cross off The Ship & Shovell as well as the Sherlock Holmes off the list (I liked both places - especially Sherlock Holmes, an old favourite with its Sherlock Holmes memorabilia room!). We finished off the night with a proper curry at the Delhi Brasserie - as we have done so many nights before in London. Ah, what a day, eh ?

What to do in England on a Sunday ? A Sunday pub lunch, of course! And what better place to do that than in the town where we used to live, Guildford, out amongst the gentle hills of Surrey. Especially since we were blessed with some unexpected sunlight. So after checking out a very interesting Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, we jumped on the train to Guildford. Pretty much the same group joined up, with Adrian and Nick being replaced by Celine, Sinhung's mysterious lady friend whom we finally got to meet "officially" ;-). We picked the Red Lion in Shamley Green for the occasion - pretty much the perfect choice. Pretty much the perfect English country pub, with a good selection of ales, decent food, nice garden, idyllically located next to the village green (where they were, naturally, playing cricket). Ah, these blissful moments almost make me consider moving back to England ;-) (until those thoughts are blown away by a rain cloud or something).

Our stomachs full, we made our way back to Guildford, where we spent a couple of very pleasant hours walking around town, coming to the realization that nothing much has changed since we left in 2006. We popped into the Guildford Tup for a pint, and also paid Nick a visit (these days a rather smartly dressed menswear sales manager). We then headed caught the train back to London, happy with another very pleasant day... We finished off the day with a tasty burger near Waterloo...

Monday was sadly our last day in London, and we had a pretty busy agenda. We split up again, Mathilde checking out the Tate Britain, and me heading out to check out another tourist attraction I've wanted to see for a long time - the Cabinet War Rooms. This underground complex, located near Whitehall, was from where Mr. Churchill directed the British War Effort during World War II, including during those tough days known as the Battle of Britain. In spite of rather steep entry fee of nearly 20 pounds, I can warmly recommend this site for those having the slightest interest in history or Mr. Churchill. The place does a pretty good place of showing what life must've been during those tough years, and the exhibition about Churchill is very interesting as well.

I then sped across to Old Street, where I rejoined with Mathilde and Ed for a rather nice lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant. Our stomachs filled, we spent the last couple of hours of our trip kind of randomly walking around the East End of London. It's a pretty cool, kind of grungy place to walk around, with a very different feel to the fancy West End. We tried to visit the Geffrye Museum, but it was unfortunately closed.

That brought an end to a fantastic Long weekend. No getting around it, I definitely miss old Blighty...

Back home via Tallinn and Stockholm

Time to head to Tallinn, then, one of the favourite travel destinations of my dear countrymen. There are plenty of reasons to visit Tallinn - one could imagine the main one being the fact that it's a very nice city with a superbly well-preserved medieval old town, reasonable prices, friendly people and an interesting history. But alas, the reason most (or at least many) of my fellow Finns go is cheap booze. Not that I want to patronize anybody - I have been on a couple of those booze cruises as well in my "wild youth"...

Anyway, for us this trip was a bit of a family reunion - happily my parents and both of my brothers (with better halves) could all make it. The ship left Helsinki harbour in the evening, and arrived the next morning (well, actually, it arrived in the night, but the disembarkation took place in the morning). We spent our time on the boat more or less like everybody else - had a big buffet meal (an absolute must), shopping, and naturally beer and karaoke in the bar (well, we decided to just observe the karaoke...).

We arrived bright and early in the morning then, and headed off to explore Tallinn. Well, actually, we started off with a buffer breakfast at a hotel in the port of Tallinn. Our stomachs filled, we started our exploration of Tallinn with the KGB museum at Hotel Viru. Hotel Viru was constructed (by Finns, actually) during the communist years - it was the only place foreigners were allowed to stay. Naturally, all the rooms were bugged - the surveillance took place on the "secret 23rd floor", where the KGB museum is rather appropriately located. There isn't much to the museum actually, but it's definitely a quirky sight not to be missed. We had a very entertaining guide who really brought the past alive, so to speak with her lively anecdotes from the "good old days". There were also some stunning sights over old Tallinn from the hotel rooftop.

The rest of my family seemed more keen on shopping than sightseeing, so we decided to go our separate ways and meet up for lunch in the old town later on, so off I went on my own to explore old Tallinn. And what a fascinating place it is - it's an even prettier place than I can remember. Tallinn is certainly a place with a rich history - there are traces of inhabitants dating back 5000 years. What remains today dates back to the 13th century, when Tallinn was part of the Hanseatic league. The old town is remarkably well preserved and very spread out. It has become pretty touristy since I came here last time, no doubt thanks to Easyjet and RyanAir, but it's still a very charming place to walk around.

After taking in the cobble-stoned streets around the town hall square, I made my way up to Toompea Hill. Toompea Hill is, as the name suggests, a hill overlooking the old town. It's where the castle of Tallinn is located, it is also where the seat of the Estonian government can be found. It's a pretty nice area to walk around as well, with a couple of interesting churches to visit. The most impressive one was the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, similar to the Uspenski cathedral in Helsinki. These days it's the main church of the Estonian orthodox church. The views up from Toompea over the old town are another good reason to hike up to the hill.

I continued my tour by heading back to the old town, and eventually found myself at St Olaf's Church, with its imposing spire (believe it or not, it was apparently the highest building in the world between 1549 and 1625!). I had my lunch rendez-vous coming up, but couldn't resist the temptation of climbing up to the top along the narrow, creaking staircase... Naturally, the views from the rather cramped rooftop were rather stunning...

For lunch, we relied on some quick research on Tripadvisor, and ended up in Rataskaevu16, a charming little place tucked a way a bit outside the most touristy bits of the old town. What a gem this place was. Smiling, genuinely friendly (or at least so it seemed to us ;-) service, very decent prices, a modern and tasteful interior decoration (including some archeological diggings underneath the floor of the toilet!) and most importantly, some excellent food. We spent a very relaxing couple of hours here enjoying good food, and chatting away...

Due to our rather long lunch, we didn't have much more time left in Tallinn, before catching our boat. We did have time to briefly explore Rothermanni Kvartal near the port area - a rather tastefully redeveloped warehouse district with some pretty interesting architecture. After a bit of last-minute shopping, it was time to board the boat and head back to Helsinki...

The next day, it was time to head back to France. But actually, I had quite a long stopover in Stockholm (7 hours!), so I decided to make the best of it and head into Stockholm and pay a visit to our dear friends Robert and Doan (Robert used to study with me back in Edinburgh a bunch of year ago, and thankfully we've kept in touch since...). We enjoyed a rather nice BBQ in the garden of their most impressive villa, located in a very nice, leafy suburb of Stockholm. Nice to see their little girls growing up as well! A very nice and relaxing way to end a rather hectic few days around the Baltic Sea!

Springtime in Helsinki

Since I've recently changed jobs, I've had fewer excuses for going to my dear homeland, Finland. May being the blessed month of public holidays in France (no less than four to take), I decided to take the opportunity to head back to Helsinki for a few days. Not bad timing either, as the weather was surprisingly good for this time of the year.

I arrived Tuesday night, quite happy to have my parents pick me up at the airport. I started off Wednesday by meeting up with Jose and Ulla. Jose was part of my "Virtual team" in Ulm in my previous job, and we had quite a few beers together over the months we worked together (and more than a few last time we met, when we went to Octoberfest!). Great to see him and Ulla again (over a beer naturally!), as well as the new family member, Matilda.

I then headed out to explore Helsinki - quite lovely this time of the year. At Kiasma (the museum of modern art), I was treated to a rather odd spectacle - a horde of rather drunken football fans from the Åland Islands visiting the capital, no doubt to play against the local team, HJK. After some joyful singing, they marched on towards the football stadium. Quite an entertaining and unexpected sight, I must say!

I followed the crazy football fans for a bit, since my plan was to walk around Töölö Bay. It's a very nice walk, taking in some of the most famous works of modern architecture (the Finlandia House, the Opera, Kiasma) as well as some nice traditional wooden mansions. I popped into the winter garden as well. The way back to my parents flat took in some other classic Helsinki sights as well, such as the Senate square. All in all, pretty much the perfect way to spend a sunny spring afternoon in Helsinki!

In the evening, I met up with Jocke for a few beers, and some ice hockey! The world championships were actually taking place in Finland (OK, and Sweden, also...) this year. After a good first period, we lost against USA unfortunately...

The next day, the plan was to meet up with a bunch of friends and relatives at Mei Lin, a Chinese restaurant. An odd choice, one might think - my brother chose the place based on a recommendation from Yang, my cousin Rasse's wife, who also came along. And what an excellent choice it was - I have to admit I was extremely surprised to find such authentic Chinese food in Finland! (well, I've never been to China, but I have been to a fair few bad Chinese restaurants...). A side effect of this was that the food was extremely hot (as in containing loads of chilly). Anyhow, I very much enjoyed my meal (I shared a hot pot with Janne and Katja).

Great to catch up with everybody as well - I was sharing a table with Janne, Katja as well as Jani, who came along with his new partner, Sari (and announced the happy news - he will be a dad!). And last but not least, Riku and Tarita as with their young daughter. And at the other table, mum and dad, Rasse and Yang, and my cousin Maikki, Jarkko and their children. All in all, a very nice meal. Afterwards, some of us headed out to town for more catching up over a few beers. 

On Friday, my plan was to meet up with my good friend Aki for lunch in Hakaniemen Tori (since he unfortunately couldn't make it to the meal the day before). Being in a sporty mood, I decided to walk all the way there, and snap a few shots of Katajanokka, Kruunuhaka and Kallio while I was at it. Pretty nice parts of Helsinki for an aspiring photographer like me (I especially like the urban grit of Kallio). We had a nice lunch at Aki's lunch cafeteria, great to catch up with him as well.

After a walk back to my parents flat, it was time to pack my back as we had a boat to Tallinn to catch! 

Circuit de la Forna

1st of May is quite a special holiday in Finland - it's an excuse for everybody to dress up in funny ways and get totally hammered during 2 days... Alas, France being a civilized country, we decided to get up to some more healthy stuff and go hiking. After all, the weather was simply brilliant today (a nice change after a decidedly un-Cote d'Azurish winter and spring...), and we've been a bit lazy on the hiking front lately...

After consulting our hiking guides, we decided upon the Circuit de la Forna, a nice and easy little coastal hike near Le Turbie (a pretty little village located west of Nice, overlooking Monaco). We started off after parking near the village, climbing up for a bit and then following a footpath that was more or less following the A8 motorway, with some rather nice views towards the Mercantour national park.

We then got onto a road which took us up towards Fort de la Revere, a military fortress constructed in the 19th century. From there, we were more or less following the coastline back towards La Turbie. The culminating point of the hike was the Simboula, at a rather respectable altitude of 675 meters. The views from there towards Eze and Cap Ferrat were simply stunning - classic Cote d'Azur landscapes. The sea, the mountains and a pretty little mountain village - some of the elements that make life on the Cote d'Azur great, were there in perfect harmony (along with quite a few swimming pools and fancy villas...). As a nice bonus, we checked out some cows on the way back...

Pretty much a perfect way to get back to reality after our wonderful holiday to Japan, one could say...

Back to Tokyo via Kyoto

Our holiday was creeping towards its end, sadly, I mused as I watched the landscaped fly by on the Kyoto-bound Shinkansen... Still a couple of days to enjoy Japan, though!

We arrived in Kyoto (needless to say, on time), and made our way to the hotel, conveniently located near the main train station. As we got to the hotel, we had this odd feeling in our guts, kind of like cultural shock. Tourists, plenty of them! After almost a week in peaceful Kyushu, it was very strange to turn up at this hotel, filled with foreign tourists. This may sound a bit hypocritical (since we, obviously, were also tourists), but we almost felt disappointed, brought back to reality... One shouldn't be surprised of course, Kyoto is much more touristy than Tokyo, everybody who visits Japan comes here (with good reason, of course). Anyway, after an easy check-in (the good thing with being in Kyoto is that people speak English!), and dropping off our luggage, we hit the road. We had a rendez-vous with our dear friends Aude and Magaye (who were visiting Japan at the same time as us - fancy that eh?) in Gion.

After a brief ride on the metro we arrived in Gion (the old geisha district - which today has mostly been transformed into a shopping district), and managed to hoock up with Aude and Magaye (who were biking around Kyoto). We celebrated the happy reunion by having a drink, naturally! They had just arrived in Japan, but seemed already to be rather enthralled by this fascinating country.

Anyways, our stomachs were grumbling by now, so we decided to set about looking for a restaurant. We crossed the river to the area around Ponto-cho (a traditional district of Kyoto, where one can still find geishas today, apparently). We tried to find a couple of restaurants in our guide books, but gave up after a while, and just picked a restaurant more or less by random (it has worked very well for us so far). An excellent choice - we were once again treated to an absolutely delishous meal for a mear 12 Euros each (the waiter described the meal as "Japanese appetizers" - it was more like a set menu).

After our meal, we walked around for a bit in the main street of Ponto-cho - a place where the "old Kyoto atmosphere" is still well present. This is the area of Kyoto where geishas and maikos (apprentice geishas) can still be found - in fact I think we saw a few, discretely leaving a house in the street with some clients. At least that's what I like to imagine (there are a quite a few fake ones about as well, apparently). Plenty of discrete establishments in this street, where I reckon tourists like us would have a hard time gaining entry... ;-) We finished off the evening with a drink in an English pub. Yes, a bit sad, I suppose...

The next day, we met up early-ish, to do a bit of visiting, before me and Mathilde had to catch our train to Tokyo. We started by visiting the twin temples Higashi Hongan-ji and Nishi Hongan-ji, located near the train station. The temples are the main temples of the main branches of Shin-Buddhism (there was originally just one temple - the "split" was done by Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in order to reduce the influence of the sect). The temples are quite similar, with the second and older one we visited (Nishi Hongan-ji) being the more impressive one. It is actually a UNESCO world heritage site.

The mandatory temple-visiting out of the way (the thought of visiting Kyoto without going to at least one temple is simply inconceivable!), we headed down to Nishiki, which is the covered food market of Kyoto. My kind of place! What you can't buy here food-wise, just ain't worth buying, I reckon. And what's best, a lot of the merchants sell nice little tasters/munchies for quite reasonable prices. Lunch-time was approaching, so we indulged ourselves a little bit ;-)

There is a nice shrine just next to the market - Nishiki Temmangu Shrine. Apparently, a scholar and poet, Sugawara Michizane, is worshipped here as a god of wisdom, study, good business. Interesting indeed ? At any rate, I rather liked this little, intimate shrine. We finished our visit in Tokyo with lunch in a noodle bar in the covered market. It was nice, but a bit expensive, we thought. I suppose we were in a rather touristy place...

Time for me and Mathilde to head back to Tokyo then, after saying our emotional goodbyes to Aude and Magaye. After a train journey that included a sighting of Mount Fuji, we arrived in Tokyo main station in the evening. After a fair bit of hiking, we eventually arrived at the dubiously named "Smile Hotel" (the place was a bit dodgy as well, to be honest!), located in the Asakusa district. After checking in and dropping of our stuff in the our room, we hit the streets to hunt for some food. We put our trust in our guide book, and ate in a traditional local eatery, which apparently dates to the Edo-era. I got the impression we were the first tourists to ever show up at the place, but we had no complaints about the food (no we can also say we've been to a Japanese steak house!).

After dinner, we decided to explore Asakusa by night a bit. It's obviously not a party district, and wasn't very lively, but we quite liked the place, anyway. It's got a nice working-class feel to it. And then there is Senso-ji, of course. This Buddhist temple was the first one we visited on our first trip to Japan, and remains our famous temple in Tokyo. It's very nice and atmospheric by night as well, as we witnessed tonight. After a quick stroll along the riverside (checking out the Tokyo Sky Tree across the river - the highest structure in Tokyo), we headed back to our hotel.

After a good night's sleep, we got up, ready for our last day in Japan (snif). We quickly checked out of our hotel, and made our way to downtown Asakusa, where we eventually managed to locate our accomodation for the coming night - a Capsule Hotel. Another one of those Japanese experiences that just has to be tried - more about that later. Having "checked in" (which basically amounted to putting our bags in a locker - there are no rooms as such in capsule hotels), we jumped on the metro train down to Shibuya.

Shibuya is one of the main districts in Tokyo for shopping, night-life and other important modern-day activities (it's also a well-known fashion district, apparently). There is also the famous Shibuya crossing, made famous by the film Lost in Translation.

It's a"scramble crossing", which stops all vehicule traffic, allowing pedestrians to filter across the crossing from all directions. We figured that the Starbucks overlooking the crossing was a pretty good place to have breakfast. The crossing wasn't at its busiest, but, you know, it's one of those Tokyo things to do ;-).

After a bit of "depato shopping" in Shibuya, we made our way to Omotosando, that Tokyiote version of the Champs-Elysee. We found a nice place, Oriental Bazaar, for souvenir shopping there, where we purchased yukatans and some other nice stuff. Our shopping spree done, we made our way back to Asakusa, where we had a rather excellent lunch at a random place next to the metro station (again, we were amazed at the value for money...). We spend the rest of the afternoon shopping in Asakusa - there was a department store next to the train station, with plenty of cool stuff to bring home to Europe...

For the evening, our dear friend Matsuoka had planned a Tokyo night cruise with dinner for us. We met up in a bar at Ginza for a couple of pre-cruise beers, after which we made our way down to the river, from where we were catching the boat. I am normally not a big fan of these types of cruises (to me, they tend to be overpriced, the food tends to be bad, and they cram loads of people onto the boat), but given that we haven't had a single bad meal in Japan so far, we weren't overly worried. And I can confirm that it was indeed a very nice experience. The food was excellent, and the unlimited alcohol service (sake, beer and other stronger stuff) was nothing to be frowned upon either! (me and Matsuoka in particular made good use of that service).

After the cruise, Matsuoka joined us in Asakusa for a couple of drinks more in a nice little Izakaya. (and naturally a couple of sashimi - drinks usually come with snacks in Japan). A very nice to end an unforgettable Japanese holiday. After emotional (well, quite stoic actually, Matsuoka is Japanese, after all) goodbyes, we made our way to our capsule hotel.

So, as I've already mentioned, we spent our last night in Japan in a capsule hotel, another of those Japan experiences we wanted to try out. A capsule hotel is a cheap option for salary men who miss their last train home (perhaps due to having had a drink too many?). Basically you pay for a capsule, which basically contains a bed (as well as a TV and a radio, and an alarm you can set). A locker, a towel, slippers and a yukatan are also provided (along with a tooth brush). One could see it as the Japanese version of a youth hostel dormitory. Not a bad concept, actually! And pretty good value for money, especially if you travel on your own (we paid about 20 Euros per person for our  capsules).

So, a very Japanese experience to end our holiday, then... And as you have probably gathered if you've read the last few entries of my blog, a quite simply unforgettable one. Our last trip to Japan, a couple of years ago, left us both yearning to come back. And I have to say that my this second trip has, if anything, increased my fascination for this truly unique country. We will be back, that's for sure!