Queen + Adam Lambert, Air Canada Centre, Toronto – 13 July 2014

Most of my favorite musical acts are Serious Artists who come out with Concept Albums (Arcade Fire) or Rock Operas (The Who), who tackle serious issues (U2, Sting) and write deeply intelligent, complex lyrics (Elvis Costello), who explore deep emotion (Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos) or at least serious anger (Nirvana).

But my very favorite band, Queen, does none of that (or least, not very much). Though a bunch of seriously intelligent guys, they chose to write about love and lust and bicycle races and seasides and “having a good time, having a good time.”

So it’s fitting that their live show is basically an over-the-top, entertaining, fun fest.

Complete with lasers and disco balls.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of Adam Lambert” — someone at work, to me

So let me ask you. What do you think about the new guy? — Brian May, to Toronto crowd

I thought Adam Lambert was great. I’m not that surprised that I did, though. I first saw him perform with Queen on this iHeartRadio YouTube concert, and I was seriously impressed. Sunday night, he did not disappoint.

No, he doesn’t sound like Freddie. So he wisely doesn’t sing the songs as Freddie did. With May and Taylor (and Spike Edney, long-time tour keyboardist) providing the musical backbone, they’re recognizably the Queen songs we all know and love, but he gives them his own phrasing and pitch and emphasis. For example, even when he does a Freddie-like call and response, he doesn’t play on day-o sounds as Freddie did. Instead he gives an increasingly a funky play on the “need your loving” line from “Tie Your Mother Down”.

It was a variations on a theme like that, all night.

And doesn’t hurt that the boy’s voice is truly amazing in its own right. “Show Must Go On” is supposed to be his major showcase, and I have no complaints about his singing on that, but I was particularly blown away by his take on the gorgeous “Who Wants to Live Forever?” And unlike the old coots I usually go see, he’s only 31. He could and did confidently hit and hold every note he went for.

I also didn’t mind that he’s gorgeous, and that he changed his costume five times during the show. I think my favorite was this one, with the Daltry-esque fringes:

If one thing did surprise me, it was just how camp his performance was. Note the chaise lounge above, used during the performance of “Killer Queen”. He spent most of the song reclining on that, batting his eyes, and even fanning himself. It was hilarious and fantastic and so gay.

Adam Lambert fans himself on the couch — Image from Montreal concert, courtesy @Grrrr_girl

(I wondered briefly if this is more how Freddie would have performed had not felt inclined to be discrete about his personal life. Then I realized that was a stupid thing to think about man who wore ballet tights as a stage costume, and refused to shave his “gay” mustache no matter how many razors fans threw on-stage. Freddie clearly performed exactly how he wanted to perform.)

Edited to add this amazing video of “Somebody to Love” from this concert, by someone with way better seats than me.

Tell me you don’t love Adam Lambert after watching this…

On Roger Taylor

Isn’t that fantastic? He’s singing and playing the drums! — Adam Lambert, on Roger Taylor

The first part of the show definitely highlighted Lambert and Brian May, as they of course are down front and can play off each other and run down the ramps whose design confused us at first, but when lit revealed themselves to be a giant Q.

Adam Lambert in the giant Q, down front with Brian May — The top of the Q is cut off here, but hopefully you get the idea

But the other original member of Queen on hand was, of course, drummer Roger Taylor. Roger is not one of the rare, flashy drummers (like Tommy Lee or Keith Moon) who draw your attention away from the musicians in front of him.

However, he’s also more than just the drummer. He wrote many of Queen’s best songs and biggest hits. He sang all the highest notes in those layered harmonies, and often took lead vocal duties as well. His solo oeuvre is the best of any of the band members, and on those albums, he plays guitar. He also bore the burden of being the best-looking member of Queen.

So I was pleased that that Roger also got some time in the spotlight, heading down front to play tambourine when Brian sang “39”, then taking his own lead vocal on “Days of Our Lives”, sung over a backdrop of Queen photos and videos from the past. Then back on drum kit (miraculously moved out front) he took over the David Bowie part of “Under Pressure” while Adam Lambert did Freddie’s. (And Adam’s correct; I’ve always been impressed at Roger’s ability to drum and sing.)

The drum parts during Roger’s solo turns were covered by his son Rufus, who can now compete with Adam for “best-looking member of Queen”. Father and son also did a bit of drum-off, revealing that Roger had passed along musical skill along with the blonde hair.

Rufus, Roger, Adam, Queen — Rufus (left) may need a haircut to *really* compete with Adam on looks… Photo by @Glam4Mama, from New York show

I don’t like to go on too long on drum solos. I don’t want the audience to get bored.

It never seems to bother Brian, though. —Roger Taylor, on Brian (Not to the Toronto crowd)

Dr. Brian May

Brian May definitely seemed to have the greatest affection from the crowd, though. He earned a standing ovation merely for walking to the front of the stage to introduce the more acoustic part of the evening, the “Love of My Life” singalong. I became rather choked up during that part, I must admit, which surprised me, especially as it occurred well before Freddie appeared on the big monitor to sing the final verse.

But Mr. Brian May also teared up during that last part of the song, so I was in good company.

Brian then went on to explain the astrophysics behind 39 (he does have a doctorate in physics, after all), commenting, “I used to think it would be a great idea to go and explore other planets. Now I’m not so sure, since we’ve fucked up this one so badly.” And that anger also surprised, though it probably shouldn’t either, given that I follow him on Twitter…

And a little later in the evening, he indeed did a long guitar solo.

Now, thank God the effects during that thing were really pretty incredible. The photo below is just a tiny taste; they used the screens and the lighting and the lasers and that was pretty riveting.

Unlike the solo, which was just too long, at least for me (and every Toronto critic I read, though they didn’t agree on much else). Of course, I still joined the standing ovation after, but that was just to maintain my sight lines. Really, I was thinking, “Don’t! You’ll just encourage him!”

The hits keep coming

I think this every time I see a Queen-related show: Man, they’ve had a lot of hits. But they fortunately do include some less well-known numbers also, like “Stone Cold Crazy” (made more famous by Metallica than Queen), “Lap of the Gods,” and “Love Kills”, which is actually a Freddie solo track that the band will be re-releasing with new instrumental backing.

The song I was happiest to hear was “I Want It All”, not only because I love it, but also because it was made for the stage, and is one they were unfortunately never able to perform with Freddie, as he was too ill at that point.

The song I was most surprised to enjoy was “Fat Bottomed Girls”, because I don’t love it, normally, but damn it was so much fun live!

This was the set list:

Now I’m Here ♦ Stone Cold Crazy ♦ Another One Bites the Dust ♦ Fat Bottomed Girls ♦ Lap of the Gods ♦ Seven Seas of Rhye ♦ Killer Queen ♦ Somebody to Love ♦ I Want It All ♦ Love of My Life ♦ 39 ♦ Days of Our Lives ♦ Under Pressure ♦ Love Kills ♦ Who Wants to Live Forever ♦ Guitar solo ♦ Tie Your Mother Down ♦ Radio Gaga ♦ Crazy Little Thing Called Love ♦ The Show Must Go On ♦ Bohemian Rhapsody ♦ We Will Rock You ♦ We Are the Champions

That’s amazing, right? And it still leaves out so many great songs (Keep Yourself Alive, You’re My Best Friend, I Want to Break Free, One Vision, A Kind of Magic, Dragon Attack…)

Someone still loves you

This press said this show was sold out, and certainly the Air Canada Centre looked very full. (Though the two people next to us didn’t show up, so we had extra elbow room!)

And it was lovely to be in a room full of Queen fans. This was a first for me.

I’ve been to a lot of Queen tribute-y things, but the people there never seem to know anything beyond the chorus of We Will Rock You.

This crowd knew the verses to We Will Rock You. And all the lyrics to “Love of My Life” and “39”, which were never singles. And they knew exactly how to clap during “Radio Gaga”. And when their matches (or cell phones) needed to “still light up the sky”.

Adam Lambert and crowd — Among the devoted

And unlike the Globe and Mail reporter who reviewed this show, I’m sure they knew that Queen always just leaves the stags plays the video during the operatic part of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. That it wasn’t just getting excessive on the Freddie tribute.

Of course, that video Freddie and live Adam traded off the final lines of “Bohemian Rhapsody” was a new addition, but who can complain of that? It was lovely. (And made for only the third Freddie appearance all evening. Hardly excessive.)

The photographer’s review

“It wasn’t bad. The light show was really good!”

Queen stage, lit up — Lights, camera, photo…

Photo: Queen + Adam Lambert

Full blog post coming soon, natch, but for now, a photo, courtesy Jean:

The concert was so fun…

Enver’s of Morriston

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.)

Dinner and a concert: Times three

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.

Hep Cat Hoppers performance on YouTube

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.)

Video: Mr. Pinstripe Suit by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

2. Three Kretans and Ballroom with a Twist

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.

Ballroom with a Twist promo video

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 reception — 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:

Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug — 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.

French food

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.

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:

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 .

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.

Cities of the French Riviera

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.

Small town charm on the French Riviera. — The sand is imported; naturally, beaches here are rocky

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.

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.

Villa Ephryssi de Rothschild: Opulence now in public trust and still very impressive! — 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.

Of walks and weather

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.

a view of the principality of Monaco — 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.

Roquebrune, France — 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.

Our route to Eze, France — 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.

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.

And hereth endeth this tale of walks and weather.

About the red hat

We’re just back from a trip to the French Riviera, and I expect I’ll be writing a few blog posts about that.

I feel a need to start, though, by explaining my attire.

I have travelled the world (well, Europe and the Americas, anyway) with this green hat that has served me well, and that I still have, but for this new vacation, which was a walking tour, I felt it was time for a new one.

Jean’s had a series of hats over this same time frame, most of them Tilley Endurables brand. This is a Canadian company that was built around these well-made, lifetime guarantee, water resistant, floatable, breathable, hats. So I thought I’d get me one of those.

And I just couldn’t resist the bright red one. It was fun, it seemed to suit me, it was Tilley.

What I didn’t think about what that red just doesn’t match with everything. And it particularly didn’t match either of my Gortex jackets, one turquoise and purple, another pale mauve, that were basically the required outwear for a walking tour. And though I didn’t have to wear the jackets all the time (mostly, we had nice weather), it also didn’t go with my light blue top, or my deep blue top, or my purple top, which again were of the breathable fabric one kind of has to wear when exerting oneself outdoors.

Me, clashing, in the small medieval town of Roquebrune

Then at one point, we got enough rain that I felt compelled to pull out the rain pants, which I hadn’t worn since the 1980s, and were therefore a lovely 1980s turquoise green. So picture this in your mind: Turquoise green pants, pale mauve jacket (if only I had the other coat that day, but no!), and red hat.

In fact, you’ll have to picture that just in your mind, because I refused to let Jean take any photographic evidence of it.

Here, up in the French alps, wearing the only “outdoor” shirt that somewhat matched the hat…

Easter is all about… fine dining?

That’s not right, is it? The foods of Easter are homey ham and scalloped potatoes and cheap chocolate. Good Friday is fish. Restaurants are not full to bursting for Easter; in fact, some close for the holiday.

So I’m not sure how we came to mark the start of Easter weekend by going out to not one but two of the area’s finest restaurants. It was as spur of the moment as can be for places that require reservations.

First up, Thursday night before the long weekend, was Verses. We just… Hadn’t been there in a while. We’d hoped to have one final crack at their fine fall / winter menu, but we were just too late for that. Upside was: First crack at their fine spring / summer menu.

The place was fairly quiet this Thursday night, and being there just felt nice. As restorative as a visit to the spa.

A lovely place to be after a busy work week

We were hungry, and it was a bit difficult deciding what to choose on the new menu, most of which sounded delicious. Jean made it easy on himself appetizer-wise by going for his standby foie gras, this time served with “saffron, vanilla waffle, slow poached orange supremes, and Vin Cotto”.

Le foie gras

And I suppose I also went for the somewhat habitual: They usually have some kind of seafood trio as an appetizer, which I usually can’t resist. This time it was scallops:

Sake Kombu cured on arame salad in toasted sesame rice wine vinaigrette
Ceviche, layered with pico de gallo and avocado croutons
Fennel wrapped pan seared on champagne vinegar dressed fennel fronds

Why have scallops one way when you can have them three ways?

Jean favored the tart ceviche style; I thought it was hard to beat the traditional pan seared, but we both agreed the avocado croutons were just the coolest!

We had a heck of a time selecting our wine, partly because I somehow wanted white despite have selected duck as my main course. But we finally settled on a very lovely French Gewurtz. It arrived just after our appetizers, which may be a first (for this restaurant)! (And by after I mean, like, 30 seconds after.)

Andrew suggested this wine

It certainly suited Jean’s main course of three kinds of seafood: tempura shrimp with aioli, grilled octopus salad, and crab and lobster cannelloni with mushrooms and broccoli.

Why have one kind of seafood when you can have four?

The octopus salad had a pleasant smoky taste and very nice texture. The cannelloni were rich and delicious. But perhaps the best were the crispy shrimp, which did not suffer the fate that large shrimp often seem to, of ending up kind of tasteless.

My main was seared duck breast served with a mole sauce. The duck was perfectly prepared, and I loved the chocolate spiciness of the mole, served in its own mound. The dish was called Duck Duck Goose, and the goose was in the form of a quesadilla, which was crispy and rich. The sides were “dirty” rice—wild rice with black beans—and a Brussels sprout slaw.

We resolved to share a dessert, a plan that was complicated a bit when we didn’t agree on which one. Finally Jean just agreed to go with my choice, the maple mousse.

Maple mousse

Of course, this wasn’t just maple mousse in a little dish. It was served in delicious dark chocolate, and accented with a fleur de sel tuile and caramel “dust” that tasted rather like the inside of those Crunchie bars. Everything was quite exquisite.

The Friday outing came about because Langdon Hall somehow put me back on their email list, though I haven’t been there in years. And the email mentioned they were doing an oyster and wine tasting on Good Friday, in Wilk’s Bar. Wilk’s Bar is the somewhat less formal, and somewhat less expensive, dining area at this luxury hotel. We didn’t have any particular plans for the holiday Friday, and most things were closed, so trying that out seemed like a nice afternoon outing.

We didn’t want to have another full three-course meal, but we figured that three oysters likely wouldn’t be enough to sustain us til dinner, either. So we each went with another appetizer. I ordered the squash soup with morels, duck confit, and foie gras. Jean ordered the terrine. We received the 2 oz servings of the white wines that were to suit the three oysters to come: a very dry Chablis, a good sparkling Reisling from Tawse winery, and a delicious oaky Chardonnay.

Why have just one kind of wine when you can have three?

And then we waited. The warm bread basket served with butter made in-house topped with sea salt helped, but it still seemed a long wait for just soup and paté.

When the food did arrive, it came with apologies for the delay; clearly something had gone awry. And they were forgiven when we tasted everything. Hmm. Some of the best examples of squash soup and terrine ever.

Yay! The food is here!

The rest of the meal proceeded at the expected pace. The three kinds of oysters—raw, crispy, and baked—were each just amazingly delicious, and it was fun to have a matching wine for each.

Oyster trio. (It’s high time I drop the “why have one” “joke”)

And we again indulged in dessert: One each this time! Jean had the so-called “ice cream sandwich” while I went with cranberry fritters and “hot chocolate”, which turned out to be warm chocolate mousse. And yes, I dipped the fritters.

Walnut ice cream and daquoise

The least pleasant part of these types of meals—paying the bill—wasn’t quite as bad this day. They gave us the desserts on the house to compensate for the delay in serving our appetizers.

On Saturday, we gathered with extended family. Interestingly, that was also more of gourmet Easter dinner than one might expect: baked lamb, two kinds of potatoes (neither scalloped, exactly), French green beans, asparagus and mushrooms. And fancy chocolate mousse pastries for dessert, along with fruit salad.

The food was delicious. And the company was even better.

Birthday dinners

Jean was away for my birthday, but my friends kindly stepped in, and I wound up with more than the usual allotment of birthday outings.

First up was a dinner at Masala Bay. This was on a freezing cold Wednesday, and two of us could not resist having the mulligatawny soup, which was indeed very warming and delicious. But also very filling, making it difficult to finish our main course curries and naan. But hey, Indian leftovers are good.

The day after my birthday, I was taken out for both lunch and dinner. Lunch was at Bauer Kitchen, a place I tend to avoid because it’s so noisy. But it wasn’t so bad this day. We arrived earlier so the initially smaller number of people helped; but even as it filled up, because we were sitting against a wood backing. it wasn’t as loud as it can be at more central tables. I made a meal of two appetizers: mussels and duck confit wings—both very tasty, though the mussels really would have been enough. Well, the duck confit wings were pretty good leftovers, also.

Dinner was at a new place to me, but one that people speak pretty highly of: Redhouse, on the site of the former Yukiko’s. Quite a nice meal here, too. I, like several others, started with the Iron Horse Trail salad, in which the greens are topped with various nuts and dried fruit. And my main course was the Boneless Cornish Hen: Porcini-dusted & pan-roasted, truffled wild mushroom ragout, wilted blonde frisee, goat cheese & lemon potato croquettes, tarragon puree. (Did I remember all those details? Of course not. I just copied it from their online menu.) It was just about as good as that description made it sound.

Oh, and I got a free birthday dessert at both of those meals as well.

I have no photographic proof of any of those meals [so how do we know they really happened?], but this was made up for last night at Jean’s birthday dinner. We went to 39 Carden Street restaurant in Guelph, which I got interested in after its rather good review in The Record.

It’s a small place, and seems rather popular, so we had some concerns about the noise level here also, but it wasn’t that bad. They change their menu frequently, so instead of printed menus, we had to select everything from chalk boards on the wall. Not crazy about that, particularly as the far ones at an angle are rather hard to read. And it means you spend the first part of your meal turning away from each other, staring at the wall.

But the chalk boards did contain many interesting-sounding items. They call their appetizers “snacks”. For these, we finally settled on six raw East Coast oysters (to share), to which I added deep-fried oysters (mysteriously called chicken-fried oysters, though I do not believe any meat was involved). In all its forms, the oysters were just perfectly delicious.

And Jean tried potatoes croquette with salt code aioli, which was also a mighty fine dish. Crispy and not too salty.

We were a bit disappointed that it seemed they had no white wines by the glass (as our main courses were definitely red wine fare), but when we asked, he said they did have a Sauvignon Blanc available. And that was perfect with this.

But while we were on the track of thinking that we had to pick a red that would work with everything, we settled on a Pinot Noir from Chile. Then we didn’t change that when we found out we could start with white after all. That turned out to be a mistake, as the Pinot was a 2013, so really quite young and thin. It wasn’t bad, on its own, but it didn’t stand up to the food that well.

On the other hand, it was only $30, which is quite good in a restaurant, and we just corked the remainder to bring home. (After informing the waiter that, yes, it is legal to do that in Ontario, even with screw-top wines.)

Jean had roast duck over risotto as his main course, while I went with lamb sirloin with lentil cassoulet. All the meat was prepared very well, tasty, with good texture. I also found the lentils were very well flavored. Jean wasn’t bowled over by the risotto, but it was a reasonable presentation.

For dessert we had: A cheese tray! (Well, it was Jean’s birthday, and that is his favorite food.) The best of that lot was the blue, which wasn’t too strong. One of the cheeses, a raclette, was just so-so. Nonetheless, we took the leftover of that home along with the wine.

Given that it’s a 45-minute drive to Guelph, I’m not sure how often we’ll get to 39 Carden Street again, but overall they acquitted themselves well. It was a nice evening out.

———————

And more related to my last post: It reminded me that the last (only) time I’d previously seen Brian May and Roger Taylor perform live also involved the “Idol” franchise—Canadian version. As with Adam’s year, one of the non-winners is the one who ended up with the big career: Carly Rae Jepsen. Yep.Jean was too busy at the time to join me, so my younger sister stepped in. It was nearly seven years ago, and I wrote about it here: An Ironic Night at the Rock Opera.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of Adam Lambert” — someone at work, to me

On Roger Taylor

Dr. Brian May

The hits keep coming

Someone still loves you

The photographer’s review

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1. Food trucks and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

2. Three Kretans and Ballroom with a Twist

3. Marisol and KW Symphony Superheroes

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