Morriston is a tiny town about 40 minutes west of KW. Enver’s is a fine dining restaurant that, inexplicably, is located in this town. I’ve been curious to try it for, oh, 20 years—but it’s just hard to find a reason to drive to Morriston for dinner.
Finally, though, last Friday, another couple invited us to a wine tasting dinner there.
The food was matched with these Tandem wines, none of which are available from the LCBO:
Coal Pit Sauvignon Blanc 2011
Coal Pit Pinot Noir 2011
Teusmer GMS “Joshua” 2012
These were all were quite nice. The Sauvignon was very complex and lovely; the Pinot was fruity but not excessively slow—still had tannins; the GMS was big but sophisticated.
Unfortunately, the wine seems to have clouded my recall for how the food was, exactly.
Truly, it’s a bit sad how tipsy I feel from a mere three glasses of wine over about three hours. And what’s with the waking up all sweaty about 4:00 in the morning after? Is that some “old lady” thing I have now?
I do have the menu, so I do know exactly what we had. There is some photographic evidence as well, though the photos didn’t turn out as well as usual. And I definitely enjoyed the company; it was a fun night.
But the food? Hmm…
Well, the amuse was definitely nice: “Maple hot smoked wild spring salmon on buckwheat blini with crème fraiche, rhubarb “caviar” and chive flowers.” A bit hard to eat, standing, but very tasty.
And the appetizer featured spot prawns, from BC, which apparently are quite the delicacy, and only available for a short time of the year. Those were served with avocado frozen yogurt, grapefruit, passionfruit coulis, and shaved asparagus salad.
Unfortunately, travel doesn’t seem to suit spot prawns, and they were just not as tasty as good prawns can be. All the sides were good, though.
Then, the menu informs me, we had porchetta with baked romano beans on rye toast and beets. Very homey. And I think everything tasted.. fine? [Lamest blog post ever!]
And after that came, says menu, saddle of lamb on braised lamb and mint ravioli with porcini mushrooms and currants. As for taste and texture, I got nothing. But Jean said the ravioli, while not bad, was not as good as he was hoping. The lamb looks nice in the picture, though:
Dessert, wine-less and photo-less, I do recall being rather light and pleasant. (Will say that with the number of courses, they did a good job of making sure the serving sizes were reasonable.) It was a rhubarb tart with citrus curd. Refreshing!
But overall, that was a most unsatisfactory review. We’re just going to have to go again. (And I’m just going to have to stick to two glasses of wine.)
We recently watched the 2011 movie, The Muppets, which “rebooted” the characters from The Muppet Show, which ran from 1976 to 1981, and then launched a series of movies. It was fun, especially if you do remember the show. (If you don’t, as with most kids, a lot of the references would go over your head). It’s a musical, with catchy original songs and some hilarious covers, such as a barbershop quartet versions of “Smells like Teen Spirit” and chicken-clucking version of C Lo Green’s “F(orget) You”.
But I became super-distracted by something I’d never really noticed before: Almost all the freakin’ muppets are boys. You have Miss Piggy, of course, and then… Janice, in the band, who rarely says anything, and then… The chickens? Who also don’t talk. So one speaking female Muppet character.
This, my friends, would be your Smurfette principle in action: the tendency of movies for children to have only one female character amongst an ensemble of male characters.
And speaking of sexism, we also saw It Happened One Nightrecently. This romantic comedy, starring Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert, maybe didn’t always have the most enlightened view of the role of women? It does have the excuse, though, that it was made in 1934.
I don’t watch a whole lot of 1934 movies, but some movies are classics for a reason. The two stars have chemistry, the script is lively, and it’s enjoyable watching them play out the romantic comedy pattern of meet, repel, attract, obstacle, reunion.
Not really sure about the title, though, since it doesn’t all happen in one night; it takes places over a few weeks. Unless that’s a reference to the night the walls of Jericho came down? In which case, naughty, naughty!
Speaking of naughty, naughty, I also saw The Libertine, 2006, starring Johnny Depp as John Wilmot, notorious for writing bawdy poems and plays. The movie wasn’t a hit with audiences or critics, but it’s not that it was badly made. It just took a rather dark view of this character, and that made the movie rather less fun that it might have been. It particularly didn’t shy away from the effects of alcoholism and venereal disease in the last third of the film.
Documentary about the obesity epidemic, linking it to changes in the food industry, particularly increased use of sugar.
He says: That was depressing.
She says:Fed Up gives the stats on the increasing obesity rates, particularly among children, and includes interviews with several such young people and teenagers. You can’t help but feel for how miserable their weight makes them, and how tough is it to lose.
Various experts than give their views that just saying “kids need to exercise more” is misguided, because the amount of calories burnt during exercise is so limited. (This is further bolstered by showing that one of the obese teens profiled is very active, every day, yet can’t seem to get the weight off.) Instead, they point to the changes in the food industry in the past 40 years, and how these track with increasing rates of obesity in America—and increasingly, around the world. This has had terrible and unprecedented effects on health, such as teenagers developing Type 2 diabetes.
The problematic changes include greatly increased amounts of sugar, greater use of cheese, and making conveniences food available everywhere—like at the checkout counters of stores that sell other things. Several examples are shown of governments trying to make changes to the food supply to make it healthier, and the food industry resisting them. This started with the McGovern Report in 1977 and continues to this day with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign which started as a call to action to change the actual food supply, but now seems to be more about getting kids to exercise. (Ms. Obama refused to be interviewed for the documentary.)
It’s an interesting movie, and a compelling argument. It ends with some tips for what you can do while waiting for a better world :-), but I got to say, until that happens, it really is difficult.
For instance. In talking about the problem with sugar, the movie emphasizes that it’s not naturally occurring sugar in fruit, for example, that’s a problem. It’s added sugar. The movie also points out that in ingredient lists, sugar can be listed under many different names (corn syrup, malodrexin, sucrose, fructose, etc. — it was a huge list).
But what the movie doesn’t cover is that nutrition labels don’t distinguish naturally occurring and and added sugar. They just say Sugar. (This is the same in the US and Canada.) So if you look at a nutrition label on frozen peas, for example—just peas, now, no added anything—it says Sugar: 4g.
Well OK, you know it’s only peas, so you won’t worry about that “sugar”. But what if you buy a frozen dinner or something else with multiple ingredients? How much of that is naturally occurring and how much added on? Unless you understand absolutely every item in the ingredients list and can confidently recognize it all as real food, you have no way to know.
Michelle Obama proposed changing nutrition labels to spell out the two types of sugar – video link: http://fw.to/KXR6e3W
The food industry is “considering” it. They say it would be expensive, and change would not be possible for several years.
As previously mentioned, May was a big concert month for us. Unusually for us, we went out to eat before three of these outings.
1. Food trucks and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are a band who play retro, swinging jazz music. Before their concert at Centre in the Square, the Waterloo Hep Cat Hoppers were offering a dance lesson in the lobby. We wanted to take part in that, but it was at 6:30 pm on a work night, which seemed a bit tight.
So when Centre in the Square announced they’d have a couple food trucks there that night starting at 6:00, that seemed like a good option.
Seemed. But while food trucks are a whole big thing right now, they have a few problems.
Weather. At least the rain held off until we’d gotten our food and eaten it, but it was windy and cool, making it less than fabulous for eating outdoors.
Eating standing up. I’m a big fan of working standing up, but eating a meal is best enjoyed sitting down. Using metal and not plastic cutlery.
Standing in line. Just not my favorite activity. Made worst by the fact that while we were there promptly at 6:00, the trucks were not really ready until 6:15, allowing other people to get ahead of us in line, and making us a bit late for the dance lesson.
As for food quality… Meh… Jean didn’t particularly enjoy his Tandoori grilled cheese. I thought my Mediterranean crepe wasn’t bad, but not really worth braving weather / eating standing up / standing in line for again, unless I was stuck.
The dance lesson, though, was fine. What we were taught was very similar to the jive that Jean and I know well, only instead of backstep / step / step (or triple step), it was back-step / kick / kick. It was really hard to remember to do the kick / kick when we were so used to the step / step. Occasionally we just rebelled and reverted to jive dancing. But a good time.
As for the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy performance, that was hard not to enjoy also, as the music is so lively and fun. I hadn’t known that the band, the same group of people, had been together since 1995. Jean wasn’t in the greatest mood that night (and I’m sure the grilled cheese didn’t help), but he could still recognize that they gave a really good show. (Should point out that this concert was his idea for a change, rather than mine.)
Three Kretans is a Greek restaurant very close to Centre in the Square. For the past year or two, Centre in the Square’s parking lot has been under construction, making it a challenge to find a spot to leave your car before shows. So Three Kretans has come up with a pretty smart offer: Have dinner there, leave your car in their parking lot (for free), and walk to theatre. They have a pre-theatre menu that gets you to the show on time. With the ballroom concert at 7:00 on a week night, we decided to go that right.
The food isn’t bad. It is a casual Greek restaurnt, so you get your lamb, chicken, or pork skewers with potatoes and rice and Greek salad. And baklava-type dessert, if you want.
But Jean was underwhelmed. “I get better food than this at home,” he pointed out. [Ah, the perils of being such a fantastic home cook! 🙂 ]
The show, fortunately was in no way disappointing. Music was all provided by the KW Symphony, and the evening was hosted by Kym Johnson and Tristan MacManus of Dancing with the Stars, and also featured other dancers that show. That fact probably would have been more exciting if I watched Dancing with the Stars. (By the way, everyone in our ballroom dance class thinks it’s highly peculiar that we don’t watch that show.) And there were a couple singers from American Idol, which, again, I don’t watch, so I didn’t know who they were. But while the woman certainly had a nice voice, I will admit to being particularly impressed by the dude, one Von Smith, who had most impressive range and control.
Mainly, though, this was about dancing. It featured group numbers, solos, duets, mostly in the Latin and ballroom genres (though in that showy TV style with all the lifts and whatnot), but the twist was the inclusion of some modern and hip hop dancing as well. This was largely due to the inclusion of a couple dancers I had heard of: Legacy and Randi Lynn Strong, from So You Think You Can Dance. Their numbers were definitely my favorites. Very cool how the So You Think… training allows them to join the ballroom dancers in that genre, but also shine in their own.
At one point, the hosts even got the audience up dancing! All very fun.
Afterward we got to attend a reception with the performers, though I continued my tradition of never knowing what to say when in these situations. Still, what we learned from other people’s question were:
This was their only Canadian performance.
They don’t always get to perform with a live symphony, but like it when they do
… except when the symphony can’t keep the beat. But apparently, that was not a problem with the KW Symphony.
Randi Lynn Strong at Centre in the Square reception
After taking a few crappy phone photos, we headed home.
3. Marisol and KW Symphony Superheroes
Jean pointed out that Marisol restaurant is also close to Centre in the Square, but offers better food than Three Kretans. So though I hadn’t planned to go out to eat again this month, as we hadn’t been there in a while, I made a reservation before the final month’s concert.
It was a very enjoyable dinner. As an appetizer, we shared six small but delicious raspberry point oysters (they actually gave us seven, probably due to the size) and marinated sardines, served with a salad. There’s no beating fresh sardines from Portugal, but marinating them proved a rather good choice for those of us farther from the sea. We were so excited about these, we forgot to get a picture until almost done:
The remnants of our appetizers
As the wine, the waiter suggested a Portuguese Viognier-Sauvignon Blanc blend that was lemony and well-suited to the food.
I continued the seafood theme through dinner, having the fish of the day, which was sea bream. Served whole, it was really easy to fillet, and had been cooked very nicely. The side was a pasta made in-house, dressed simply with lemon, olive oil, and parsley.
Jean went with the lemon-tomato gnocchi. The texture of the pasta was perfect, and the flavor was more subtle than one usually gets with gnocchi. Not a bad thing.
For dessert, we share a creme caramel and forgot to take pictures, again.
We were in plenty of time to walk over for our concert, which the KW Symphony performing music from Superhero movies. This was conducted by John Morris Phillips, Cincinnati Pops conductor, who is always a lot of fun.
The only themes I knew in advance was Darth Vadar’s from Star Wars, but I found most quite engaging. The themes from Dark Knight, Supergirl, and X–Men were particularly striking. A lot were almost hilariously short, though; just the length of the opening credits, I guess! In some cases they put a few scores together to make a somewhat longer “theme” piece. Nothing that ever really taxed the attention span, though.
It was a great way to showcase the symphony’s skill, and it was nice to see a very full house in attendance.
We somehow ended up with quite a few cultural activities booked in May, the most recent of which was an outing to see the Drayton Festival production of Legally Blonde: The Musical.
And it was heck-a enjoyable. Sure, as in the movie, the perky cheeriness of Elle and her sorority sisters can be a little too much at times, but overall it was really funny, the story moved along well, it still had that satisfying arc of female strength and friendship, all with catchy songs and great choreography mixed in. Not too mention two very cute dogs (one of whom nearly stole the show). What’s not to love?
(Jean quote: “I enjoyed that way more than I thought I would. I’m shocked how much I enjoyed that.”)
But it reminded me just how bad I am at remembering plots of movies (books, too). All I could remember about the movie (apart from the fact that I’d liked it, and that it wasn’t a musical) was that it was about a blonde sorority girl who gets into Harvard Law to try to win her boyfriend back, but who then discovers she’s way more intellectually capable than anyone had given her credit for.
All of which happens in the musical as well, only with more songs. But the hairdresser character? The internship program? The exercise video queen on trial for murder? I had no recollection whatsoever of any of those plot details.
So yesterday I watched the movie again, courtesy iTunes. (By the way, it’s not on Netflix, not available on redbox rental, nor at zip.ca. And iTunes / Google Play / Rogers on Demand all charge the same $5 to stream it, which seems a bit expensive, given you can buy the DVD for the same price. Anyway…) I quite liked it, again. And it turns out that an awful lot of the movie did make it into the musical. But the differences were interesting.
The hairdresser, Paulette, is a more major character
In the movie, her part is pretty small and a bit sad. In the musical she’s one of the best characters, the center point of a couple very fun numbers. And it’s clearer that Elle helping her get custody of her dog back is motivation for Elle to become sincerely interested in the law.
The new love interest, Emmett, is a more major character
This one is a bit more of a hmm. In the movie Emmett’s part is really quite small, and their entire relationship takes place in the dying seconds of the movie, via “Where are they now?” captions. So I can see why they wanted more of a budding romance within the musical. Emmett is definitely fleshed out into an appealing and interesting character. Their subtextual shopping expedition is another highlight of the musical, one that wasn’t in the film at all.
The troublesome part, to me, is that in the musical Emmett is the one who coaches and encourages Elle to buckle down once at Harvard. In the movie, she’s completely self-motivated to do so at the same point: already suspecting it will never be enough to win back Warner, her ex, but wanting to prove herself capable anyway.
So it’s a bit of a dilution of her empowerment, I think.
Though I did like that, in the musical, she’s the one who proposes to him, at the end.
The musical is more gay-positive
Maybe that’s just the difference 13 years makes? Certainly the lesbian law student is much more likable in the musical, no longer seeming as militant and angry as she does in the movie. And the stereotypical gay pool boy earns an entire, completely hilarious, song about those stereotypes: Gay, or European?
The musical has only the one law professor character, Callahan—the one whose sexual harassment makes Elle doubt anyone will ever see her as more than a “piece of ass”. But the movie has another professor character, a woman, who meets Elle after this incident and motivates her to fight back with: “If you’re going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you’re not the girl I thought you were.”
In the musical, Vivian, Warner’s fiancee is the one who talks her into fighting back. In both movie and musical, it’s great that the two rivals for Warner’s affection become friends, though this is given more time in the movie. And, it’s not that it doesn’t work for Vivian to be the motivator here; it’s just that Professor Stromwell was a great character also (albeit in another very small part).
In conclusion
Basically, Legally Blonde, musical and movie, is just meant to be fun, and it is. But behind that is a decent message about female power and independence. It’s not perfect feminism, but it’s feminism nonetheless. (Notably, original novel, film script, and musical book were all written by women.)
A guilty pleasure, only without the guilt. Oh, my God, oh my God, you guys!
Other than its lack of in-house wifi (which we solved by bringing our own), we were pretty happy with our hotel room in Menton, which was Hôtel Club Le Balmoral. The hotel’s location, I think I noted, was fantastic: very central, facing the beach on one side. The room and bathroom was a good size (for Europe), and—a feature I find annoyingly rare in hotels—was furnished with well-placed desks and shelves and full-length mirrors, such that we could set up to work on our tablets, easily arrange the toiletry items, and confirm that in fact my outdoor clothing really didn’t match from head to toe. 🙂 The room temperature was a little bit of an issue until we remembered that with European hotels, you can actually open the window (no screens!), and the natural bit of air conditioning did the trick there.
So the only problem was the food.
It wasn’t all dire. They certainly used a good supplier of food ingredients such that breakfast buffet, which we had every day, was very good: delicious croissant, very fresh fruit salad, nice cheese and ham. Similarly, the cheese course that was always included with dinner featured some wonderful French cheeses. And whoever did the desserts had some talent; those were always nice—lemon meringue pie, ile flottante, crème caramel.
But the cooking was a problem. Overcooked, dry fish. Under-seasoned soup. Mushy, overbreaded shrimp. Spring rolls so tough you could barely cut through them. Oy. They were somewhat better with meat—the lamb tangine we had one night was probably the most successful of the week’s entrees—but it was definitely disappointing to be in France and not be able to count on getting great food.
And it wasn’t just us being over-fussy foodies. We had four hotel dinners included, and everyone in the group complained about them. (In fact, if we hadn’t enjoyed the company of our group so much, we would have skipped some of those dinners….)
Fortunately, the restaurant meals did make up for that, to some degree. Best of the lot was Table d’Oc, which I’d read about before leaving, and which ended up being very close to the hotel. It was a small, funky, fairly casual place with a nautical theme, despite not being particularly focused on seafood.
Table D’Oc
Prices were quite reasonable, offering three-course meals for 21 Euros (about 32 dollars).
I started with roast vegetables with a duck stuffing. Jean, unsurprisingly, started with a cold terrine of foie gras. What was surprising? How it was served:
That, my friends, is a bucket of foie gras
His expression was priceless when this was served. The waitress was very amused. “Nous recommendons de ne pas tout le manger.”
He found it some of the best cold foie gras he’d had, but nevertheless managed to leave some of the container for others.
As a main course, I had more duck, sliced and served in a pepper sauce. That came with carrots, long green beans, and scalloped potatoes. All very good. Jean had the pork and morels, which tasted amazing, and the same veg as I.
For dessert I had the lemon meringue pie that this area is known for (Menton is the lemon capital of France), and Jean had the crème brulée, with the brulée done right at the table:
Except for an unusually long wait for the bill, it was quite a lovely evening out.
Another pretty successful meal was at Le Cirke, which I read about in The Guardian. This was a somewhat more expensive seafood place. Jean started with a seafood soup, while I had an octopus and white bean salad. Then we shared the paella, which contained only seafood—no chicken, no sausage. All well-prepared and tasty.
Lunch most days was on the trail, so was basically unexciting sandwiches and granola bars. But in Nice on our free day, we did have lunch at a bistro, enjoying some pasta in a pot .
Squash ravioli
Later that day we joined much of the rest of the group to see what they were doing for dinner, which turned out not to be the greatest idea. I thought the group of 8 might split into 2 or 3 smaller groups headed for different locales, but instead everyone took off together, which of course made it more difficult to find a place that could accommodate us all. One place claimed to be able to, by putting tables together outside, but then he proceeded to basically ignore us for some time: no menus, no drink orders, while attended to other tables and other people arriving. Most of the group got kind of offended by this and decided to leave; Jean, I, and another lady decided to stay.
Our “congenial” host than got a bit irate about the departure and started barking at us to change tables, whereupon Jean pretty much wanted to leave, also. I was kind with him on that, but the lady we were with didn’t seem to catch it (admittedly, she didn’t have as many years experience as I at reading Jean body language), and persisted in ordering us some wine. So, we ended up staying.
The service did get civil, if never quite friendly (this would be a rare time you’d wish they tipped in France, so you could not leave one). But, upside: The food was really good. Jean had gnocchi with gorgonzola, followed by duck with morels. I had grilled calamari with arugula, followed by risotto with a half lobster. And it was a pleasant evening in terms of the company.
But we would never go back to that restaurant again.
We both acquired new tablets not long before this vacation. I had been managing with a 10″ Motorola Xoom. (A what? Exactly!) The Xoom wasn’t a success in the marketplace, but it still served my needs just fine for many years. It was starting to seem rather slow, however, and had recently become a bit flaky, randomly losing connection to the wireless and needing a reboot.
Compared with my first tablet purchase, I didn’t give the new one that much thought or research. I was basically figuring I would stick with Android. And I was thinking it might be nice to have a slightly bigger screen.
So when Jean pointed out that the Samsung tablet demo I was playing with at Staples actually was bigger than a 10″ tablet, I thought maybe the time had come!
I did do a little research at that point. Apart from some snarky commentary about who on earth would want a tablet that big (me!!!), and pointing out that it did cost more than most tablets (more than some laptops, in fact), it was well reviewed. A bonus payment at work made the price more palatable, so after a bit more experimenting with the demo model, I made the purchase.
And I’ve been happy with it so far. It is much faster, the screen quality is much higher, and it’s actually lighter than the old one. The bigger screen means I no longer have to zoom magazines to read them and it’s also great for the digital sheet music. (The tablet display is about the same size as office paper.) I had to get used some Samsung-isms that still trip me up on occasion, but mostly it’s still Android and familiar. And to my surprise I didn’t have to reinstall any apps; based on Google account, it just set all that up for me, and rather quickly as well. (I just had to sign into everything again.)
This was all making Jean, who’d been managing with a Blackberry playbook, a little bit jealous. But the same device wouldn’t do for him. He wanted something that would allow him to upload and process photos while on vacation, requiring a bit more juice than you get with an Android tablet.
So he bought what was essentially a Windows 8 laptop, but in tablet form. His screen is even bigger than mine. (And he paid more money for his device than I did.) But it’s still a lot lighter and has better battery life than a laptop would.
Setup wasn’t quite so easy for him as for me, either, but it wasn’t that bad. Once he got past the typical feeling of loss and alienation that all new Windows 8 users experience (Where are my programs? What are these useless tiles for? How do I shut this thing down?), he was pretty happy with his purchase as well.
So we were kind of disappointed to find out that the free wireless at our France hotel was available only in the lobby, not in our rooms. Not good enough! [Yes, it’s a bit sad.]
Fortunately, I had come across a solution for that: Portable, rentable, wifi hotspots, courtesy Tep Wireless. I had read some good reviews of this service, so decided to sign up for it.
For $7 a day (10-20% discounts coupons rather easy to come by), you get 150 MB of internet access. They ship the device to you a couple days before you leave (yes, there is an extra shipping charge). It’s a very small device with a charger, set to work with the network of the particular country you’re travelling to.
We set it up in our hotel room, and it was very easy. It has a password on the back that you sign into the wireless with, and supports up to five devices (we had three, with my cell phone).
It was an excellent connection. Fast, reliable, and presumably more secure than open wifi network. I would also take the Tep with me when I brought my cell phone, and that way we could, anywhere, check email or Google maps (or Twitter!) without using data (no roaming charges!). The Tep had about five hours of battery life, which proved enough for us.
And, the 150 MB per day (which carries forward if you don’t use it all), was sufficient until almost the last of vacation, when Jean’s photo uploading brought us to the limit. They told us that by email, we were able to add more data at a reasonable fee to get us through the last couple days, and all was good.
We were sad to see the Tep go by vacation end. They had included a return envelope with the device, and we bought sufficient French postage to mail it back to them.
Of course, we noted that we get highly offended when hotels ask us to pay for wifi access, yet here we were all delighted about a gizmo that cost us 50 some dollars plus shipping for one week of Internet.
But hey. If it appeals to you, and you can afford it, we would definitely recommend Tep portable wifi. Good device, good customer service. (And definitely cheaper than foreign roaming charges.)
I had never heard of Menton, France before this trip, but that’s where we stayed the whole time. It was a great home base. Quieter than Nice, but still offering plenty of interesting shops, good restaurants, and attractive architecture, especially in its Old Town. Our hotel fronted right on the beach, though our view was of the other side, the mountain. Still not too shabby.
The sand is imported; naturally, beaches here are rockyA look at the Old Town streets of Menton
I can’t say we did anything particularly notable in Menton, however. We kept intending to visit the nearby Jean Cocteau museum, but never made it past the gift shop. So I could see going back and giving the place a bit more focus sometime. I would recommend it as a place to stay when visiting that area.
Monaco
Monaco wasn’t far from Menton at all. It is theoretically its own country, though one very much dependent on France, that doesn’t require a passport to visit.
We had thought of spending part of our “free” day here, but ended up deciding against it. So we really spent only about a half hour, 45 minutes here, before one of the walks. It was enough time to climb up the central square and get a little bit of a sense of the place…
… which is that it is very crowded, very dense, and completely paved over. There is no room left here to build anything else. Many people who work here have to live elsewhere.
(And I guess some might be interested to know that when we took the bus to the airport, it did drive on the famous race car track.)
Nice
Nice is where we did spend our free day, and where we finally visited a museum, one devoted to artist Marc Chagall. I enjoyed that more than Jean did. I like Chagall’s whimsical style and use of primary colors. I had no idea he’d done so many works based on the Old Testament, and was amused how many of those had a touch of eroticism. “That’s Jacob fighting the angel,” I told Jean. “I don’t think fighting is what they’re doing.” Unsurprisingly, I guess, Chagall did a whole series based on the Song of Songs (i.e. the “dirty book” of the Bible).
Other than that, we just walked around in Nice, down to the beach, and through its old section. It was more crowded and not quite as charming as Menton, but somewhat more appealing than Monaco.
Nice opera house in Nice
Rothschild Gardens near Villefranche-sur-Mer
Villefranche-sur-Mer seemed a lovely little town:
But we spent our time after our Thursday walk at Ephrussi de Rothschild Villa and Gardens, one of those huge private homes that is now a heritage site that tourists can visit. Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild had ample time and money for decorating, and also pretty good taste:
But most special and impressive were the extensive outdoor gardens, featuring many imported plants. Much of the house was designed to provide excellent views of these gardens.
The gardens continue beyond what you can see here
Every 20 minutes, you had a chance to view the “musical fountain”, which means the water from various fountains gyrating in time to broadcast music. I’m not sure if that’s authentic to the time of the Rothschild’s, but it was interesting to watch.
At one point, Stéphanie, our guide, affectionately dubbed us “the toilet group.”
Because this particular walking group was heavily weighted toward women of a certain age, which meant that we all spent an inordinate amount of time waiting around until everyone had a chance to go pee.
On the Amalfi walking tour we’d done previously, pretty much every walk included a stop in the middle of it at a cafe or convenience store where, for the price of a coffee or chocolate bar, anyone who needed to could also use the facilities.
But on these France walks, it seems you often had an opportunity only at the start, then at the end of the walk. Of course, at the start, the urgency tends to not be so great, but then there’s that concern: If I skip this chance, how bad will be the wait for the next one? Hence, the waiting around for the pre-emptive bladder emptying.
For me, though, other aspects factored into the decision of whether to go now, or wait it out. Because with French public toilets, you never really know what you’re going to get. And I don’t just mean missing toilet paper.
Flashback: It’s 1992, we’re in Dieppe, France, and I really have to go. So we stop in for a meal at a restaurant. After giving our orders, I head toward the facilities, have a look, and immediately head back to the table.
“I can’t use that,” I tell Jean.
He, mystified, heads to the facilities to see for himself what horrors await. He shortly returns, laughing.
It was my first encounter with a Turkish-style toilet.
We’ve been to France a number of times since, and I had never encountered another such facility—until this trip. In fact, calling it a “toilet” problem isn’t accurate, as all it is, literally, is a hole in the ground, with two spots for your feet.
And I still can’t use that, so when it was on offer, I was definitely skipping that “opportunity”.
The French also have a certain concern with cleaning the facilities between use, which of course is nice—unless you’re not aware of the method of cleaning. Like, that when you pull the cord to flush, it will also spray water around to clean the whole general area! Regardless of whether you’re still in there…
And no, I did not get caught in that, but others in my group did, having to spend some time in wet pants afterward.
Thereafter, I would skip that style of bathroom as well.
Then there were the pay toilets that require exact change, though that isn’t as bad when you’re in a group, because someone can usually help you out. Some of those also have a cleaning cycle between use, which—again—is nice, only it’s not a super-fast process, so you’re extending the group wait by lining up for those. One them actually conked out after two uses.
Another more modern example had a voice guiding me through the bathroom process (all in français, of course): thanking me for choosing the lower-water flush option and explaining the actual flush would occur after I exiting; warning that I had 20 minutes (20 minutes!) before the door would fly open; etc. It was sort of hilarious.
Then on one walk we actually did stop midway at cafe with a perfectly normal toilet, and what did I do? I became inexplicably unable to unlock the door until those outside told me I was just turning the lock the wrong way.
Nevertheless, I did not give up on cafe bathrooms.
The two things I fretted about most before our “Walking the French Riviera” tour were fitness and weather. Though the tour was classified as leisurely / moderate, we’d found with the Amalfi walking tour that the Exodus definition of “moderate” could result in pretty seriously sore muscles. So this time I thought I’d prepare a bit, by doing more workouts that emphasized lower body strength.
But for weather, obviously, all you could do was try to bring clothing suitable to different conditions. (Even if it doesn’t all match.)
We went on five walks in total, all focused on a different aspect of the Riviera landscape. Our excellent guide Stéphanie would stop at various points to give information about what we were seeing around us. Though interesting, I wasn’t great at remembering that many of those details.
I have no trouble, however, remembering the weather each day.
Walk 1: Cap Martin
This one started right from our hotel in Menton. We did a seaside walk around a cape, then went up into the medieval town of Roquebrune. And though I say “up”, this walk was more on the leisurely side of leisurely / moderate, with an elevation gain of 350 m. Length was 12 km.
We were pleased to find that we were in the fitter half of the walking group of 12, and even more pleased to find that although rain was predicted for the day, it was more like just cloudy. There were a few sprinkles, but nothing too bothersome, and not really interfering with the views.
View of Monaco from the trail
We saw interesting vegetation in the Cap part—olive trees, lemon trees, cactus (which Jean got a little too close to), pepper trees (like, the spice. Which I didn’t know grew on trees.). And Roquebrune was a fairly dramatic, somewhat Italian-looking city. This part of the France is very close to Italy, in fact, and a lot of areas have traded back and forth between the two countries over the years.
Castle in Roquebrune
Walk 2: Sospel
This was our first mountain walk, a bit more of challenge because of the ascent (460 m) and because the path was rougher. To get to the trail start, we took a bus along the narrow, twisty mountain road. The day was predicted to be nice, so I decided to omit the rain pants and waterproof backpack cover, to make things a little lighter.
We pretty much started with an hour’s climbing, but found it quite doable. Our guide was very good at keeping a reasonable, steady pace, so no one got worn out by early over-ambition. Of course, we would stop periodically for the slower ones to catch up. We learned about some of the wild animals in this part of France— though the only ones we saw were squirrels, we did see evidence of boars, who dig up big piles of dirt. We learned that wolves had been wiped out in France, but they are now migrating back from Italy—which isn’t pleasing the French farmers.
At the top was a bunker, built around 1934 in anticipation of war.
We climbed up above this, where there is now a popular site for para-gliding, so a bunch of astro-turf has been laid down. Not the usual thing to see on a mountain top.
We had lunch here, and it was all very pleasant, until some nasty clouds started gathering.
So we gathered up our stuff and started heading down. But there’s only so fast you can climb down a mountain trail. And it did start to rain. And then it rained harder. And then there was thunder and lightning. And then there was hail.
(That would be one thing I hadn’t fretted about in advance: What if I’m caught in a hail storm.)
It soon turned back to rain, and it was just miserable. My jacket was waterproof, but I hadn’t put the hood up in time, so water eventually gathered in there and started running down into the jacket. I had gloves, but they weren’t truly waterproof. No rain pants, and “quick dry” pants aren’t so useful when being constantly rained upon. At least my waterproof boots appeared to hold (though I later found they were little wet inside; I think the wicking socks did their job).
When we got to Sospel, the rain had finally stopped. We had a bit of a wait for the bus, so we toured around the town a bit. But in the time it took us to get a coffee, it started pouring again for our walk to the bus stop. Yay.
At least the bus was warm and dry.
Walk 3: Monaco to Eze
We did manage to dry everything out overnight, partly thanks to our heated towel rack, and the Tuesday forecast was really good. Nevertheless, I packed rain pants, as I would for all remaining walks.
This would be the most challenging walk, I think, because of a significant descent required—775 m. But we cut out some of the ascent by taking the train to Monaco [I’ll do a separate post on some of the city visiting we did], then a bus to La Turbie.
From here, we climbed, getting amazing views all the way. It was just a perfect day weather-wise, as though a reward for the previous day.
Then, after lunch, began a long series of downs, first to town of Eze, a town built on the edge of a cliff.
The group walking down to the Eze, the clump of buildings on the right
Being in Eze itself was a little weird, as it consists of weaving, tunnel-like streets, so you feel a bit like a rat in a maze going through it. But we did stop for a drink at a cafe before doing the final descent, down to the seaside.
There were a lot of stairs at this stage, and many people found that pretty challenging. Again, Jean and I did fairly well with it. I thought I might have sore muscles the next day, but I was pretty good. I guess the working out worked out. (Jean claimed to be fine also, but I did catch him sneaking Naproxin.)
Walk 4: Saint Jean Cap Ferrat
This was the walk after our “free” day, and it was the flattest of them all, just around two capes, through beach front.
It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful easy 11 km walk on nice paths. We started with a train ride (France has a fantastic train network, by the way) to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, then just walked the easy route. Whereas other walks had been more isolated, here there were many beaches, and so many people out sunning themselves.
We finished this walk around 2:00, leaving us enough time to visit the Villa Ephryssi de Rothschild, which I’ll cover separately.
Walk 5: Castellar Menton
This was another mountain walk, and the forecast wasn’t great, so I wasn’t as much looking forward to this one. Still, the morning was very nice. The plan was to take a small bus to the town of Castellar, then walk up to the Italian border, and back down to Menton.
The road to Castellar was even more twisty than the Sospel road. We walked through the small mountain town before heading up on the trail. It was a fairly easy one as uphill climbs go, as the path was pretty wide and the ascent gradual. The path to the Italian border was more challenging, as it was narrower and more rocky. But everyone made it up.
Nice views up here, must say
We did have a good morning, but once again, on the way down, it started to rain. Lighter rain, though. And yes, this time, I had the rain pants, and put up my hood, so it wasn’t too bad. We actually had a choice here, of taking the bus or walking back to Menton. In the light rain, everyone agreed to do the walk down.
Except then it started to pour. And as we got wetter, more and more people started to change their minds about walking. Until finally, Stéphanie (the guide) declared that we were all taking the bus! She felt it would be too slippy to attempt the walk down (had there been any volunteers remaining for it).
We did get off the bus at an earlier stop, though, to have some time to tour the old cemetery of Menton.
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