A British expat in Nice

This blog is sleeping. Tread quietly.

2014-04-27T12:28:00.000+02:00

Since I've moved to Brussels, I've left this blog to sleep and dream in the sunshine, and you can now find my random musings here.

(I'm more than happy to carry on answering Nice-related questions, but I'm more likely to see them on the new blog than here, so do pop over and say hi!)

What a difference a year makes...

2014-01-01T11:45:00.001+01:00

Even by our somewhat unstable standards, this has been a year of change!

For a start, this is the first time in 7 months that I've been to Starbucks: something I would have considered unthinkable this time last year!

This time in 2013, I was living in Paris, with a job I liked, colleagues I loved, and a husband living and working in Monaco. And so, despite the job and the colleagues, I was fairly miserable. (Even though Paris has Starbucks and Monaco - until about a month ago - did not.)

At the end of January last year, Paul's job was made permenant, and we decided that commuting was too grim to carry on with indefinitely, so it was time for me to make plans to move down south properly. It took me a few weeks to wrap up some work projects, but by 1 June, I was unemployed and on the beach in the sunshine. I started a small web design business and picked up some freelance translation work over the summer, but by and large I carried on in glorious sunny unemployment for the next few months.

Then, in August, I was unexpectedly invited to a job interview. It was part of a long and almost-forgotten recruitment process that I started way back in the summer of 2010. I figured I'd screwed the interview up right and proper, so thought no more of it. Until they got in touch to offer me the job, subject to paperwork. That caveat took up more time than for any other job I've ever held (seriously, I had to find the dates and places I attended *primary school*...) but eventually (several months later, for real - the end of October) I managed to complete enough of the formalities to have my job offer confirmed. So, it was time to move again. (Monaco at this point waied until about the week after I left and then opened Starbucks - something long-term readers of this blog will remember me suggesting years ago. Well, whinging about, but that's basically suggesting. It's not very well-furnished though: no armchairs, no sofas, it's not feeling very Starbucks to me...)

And so, the end of the year finds me starting a new job, in a totally different field to that in which I've worked before, in a new town in a new country. One I was definitely not expecting to be living in. But Brussels is working out for us so far, the people in my new team are great, and the job seems to be going well. Our new flat is fabulous (noise issues aside...), overlooks a park, and is about 4 times the size of our Monaco shoebox.

For the first time in a while, I can see us possibly staying in one place for a while. (This, of course, depends on probation periods at new work and a couple of other issues to sort out. But the potential for a long-term future is definitely there in a way that I don't think we've had for quite a while. All this moving gets tiring - or I'm getting old - either way, I'd be glad of a rest for a bit, if it turns out to be possible!)

This also seems to be a good point to formally close this blog, at least until the next time I manage to run away to the sunshine! So, here's to a happy, healthy, stable 2014 for us all, and I hope the year ahead brings you nothing but good things!

Another month, another update...

2013-11-28T18:50:00.001+01:00

So. The last couple of months have been full of pretending to be a grown up, pretty much.

I'm now vaccinated with all the vaccines one could ever want - I have had jabs for tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, Hep B, measles, mumps and rubella. I am basically immune to everything in the world, now. (Except those things they don't have vaccines for. There are a surprising number of these. Clearly we need more medical researchers working on this stuff. Get cracking, people!)

I have had an apparently long overdue smear test - one of the benefits of moving around a lot is that invitations for regular medical checkups can't find you. It was as much fun as you'd expect.

I have had blood tests to a) check the vaccinations worked and b) see whether my internal organs are functioning properly and that my arteries aren't all clogged up and the like - somewhat to my surprise, all is well.

I have an appointment tomorrow to check out some teeny tiny lumps and bumps that shouldn't be there; this will, hopefully, turn out to be nothing - but I'm now working on the basis that it's better to check and be sure, while I'm being all medicalised and stuff.

And lastly, some slightly bigger news, which I've mentioned to some of you, but not all: I'm about to start a new job in a new town in a new country, so this blog will soon be shutting down (again...) - as will (at least temporarily) my jewellery and web-design work. My jewellery and web-design stuff will hopefully come back once I work out the tax situation and legal registration stuff I'll need to do in the new place, but given the somewhat location-specific nature of the blog, it probably needs to stay closed once I move.

I'll think about this some more and let you know what I decide - if you've got strong views, do let me know in the comments! And if you want me to let you know if/when I start a blog in the new place, let me know that, too, and I'll drop you a line once I'm a bit more settled.

Irish pub in Nice - Nice's finest (only?) gastropub

2013-11-24T18:51:00.006+01:00

I know I've mentioned this before, but if you're looking for an Irish pub in Nice, I highly recommend the Snug. They do probably the best Sunday roast lunch I've ever had - certainly the best I've found outside the UK - and on finding out we're moving on soon, they gave us glasses of fizz to say good luck. You have to love people who would do that!

The Snug is at 22 Rue Droite, in the centre of the Old Town in Nice - if you're passing, do drop in for a drink, at least!

Also, if you're a museum type person, just up the road from the Snug there's a really well restored 17th century mansion, the Palais Lascaris which is well worth a look if you're at all interested in tapestries and/or musical instruments. I've got some photos from when I visited that I'm hoping to put up sometime soon. (Really, genuinely intend to. When I can find time to sort through them...)

A picture of Sunday lunch at the Snug from last year - I didn't have my camera today...

Winter on the Cote d'Azur

2013-11-10T20:28:00.002+01:00

I know some of my readers don't live in places quite as blessed by good weather as down here, so as I was walking round Nice today, I thought I might take some photos for you.

These photos start in Nice Port, then we go to Place Garibaldi, then along the new park that's been created to replace the hideous monstrosity that was the old bus station, along the beach and back to the port. The last couple are of Villefranche, where we stopped for a drink by the beach on the way home. Enjoy!

Note: If any of you are reading this on a mobile device, this is a very image heavy post - it might be better to wait until you get home!

Nice port:

Place Garibaldi:

Tram line:

Promenade du Paillon (a huge improvement on the old bus station!)

Promenade des Anglais and the beach in Nice:

Every time I see this little building, I think it should be refurbed and turned into a seafood restaurant:

On the way round the point towards the port:

War memorials:

Dog drinking from a water fountain. Took him a while to get the hang of it, but then he was set!

Nice Port:

This is the boat I want to try and buy when I win the lottery. I adore it!

Villefranche:

It's been a busy month

2013-10-06T10:54:00.000+02:00

What have I been up to?

Well, I've been brave and had a haircut. (Those of you who know me will maybe begin to appreciate how traumatic I find haircuts. Adding in the complexity of a foreign language actually makes it easier, because it's expected that I won't know the relevant vocab. Not knowing the vocab in your native language does tend to make you look like a bit of an idiot...)

I've started remaking my jewellery website, and been learning more about responsive web design, as part of my new web design venture. (Did I ever tell you about that? It's here.)

I've continued dealing with the unemployment centre - a post on how the whole unemployment system works here is bubbling away in my brain, since it's (I gather) quite different to the UK one, and I couldn't find any information on the process when I started dealing with them.

I've made a thing: a green variscite and copper pendant

I've seen lots of sunrises.

I've been to the Monaco Yacht Show, and watched the Red Arrows flying over the port. (As an aside, unless you own a yacht I think you would not believe the peripheral industries that spring up around yachts. I was certainly surprised - I guess defining a niche market is good, but I'm not sure I'd ever have imaged that the number of customers looking for a handmade mattress to go in their yacht is big enough to support a whole business. How wrong I would have been... I also liked the handmade furniture - the inlays on the dining room tables, with sterling silver finishes, were particularly stunning.)

Prior to the yacht show, Monaco also hosts a series of events with classic boats, like this one:

I watched a couple of those sailing around, and realised I love them. Maybe I was a sailor in a past life, or something. I certainly couldn't be one in this life, climbing rigging is probably not for me!

I watched the moon over the sea for a while one night. The photos didn't come out well, but this is a nice picture of the moon.

I've watched several firework shows. Last night's was nice - over at Fontvieille, rather than the big port, but still lovely. (You can see quite a lot of the skyline from our flat.)

Making bread in a slow cooker

2013-09-15T07:00:00.000+02:00

My flat doesn't have an oven. A fabulous sea view, but no oven.

My parents recently gave me a slow cooker.

I enjoy baking bread. It seemed to me that an oven and a slow cooker essentially work in the same way, and so I decided to try making bread in a slow cooker.

The first hurdle was yeast. I normally (like, always until now) use dried yeast in those convenient sachets. My supermarket doesn't sell convenient sachets, it sells cubes of what is apparently fresh yeast. (Google Images and friends on Twitter, thank you for helping me work this out!)

I have to admit, at this stage, I had some doubts about this bread. Using yeast I'd never seen before and a slow cooker instead of an oven, I could think of many, many things that could go wrong. But I had nothing better to do with my morning, so I thought I would press on regardless!

Ingredients: 1 cube of yeast, 600ish grams of flour, a pinch of salt, about 400ml of lukewarm water, a teaspoon of sugar.

Cube of yeast

Flour and salt

Mash and stir the yeast into the water/sugar, until it's all dissolved:

Yeast dissolved into water and sugar mix

Mix the yeast/water/sugar mixture into the salt/flour mixture until it makes a dough. It should look something like:

Dough, unrisen

Leave to rise, covered loosely with clingfilm, until doubled in size. (This took me about an hour, but may take longer depending on how warm your house is. Don't overheat in an effort to speed the process up, because that will kill the yeast.)


Dough, risen

Get your slow cooker ready, punch down the dough, and then put your punched down, deflated dough into the bowl of the slow cooker. I didn't use baking paper, because I didn't have any in the house, but I would recommend it for getting it out of the pot more easily at the end!

In the slow cooker

In the slow cooker with lid on!

Heat on high for as long as it takes to cook - it took my slow cooker about two hours, but check regularly as it's going to see how long it takes with yours. Note that you will not see a crust forming on the top of your loaf of bread, because of the way slow cookers cook - the crust forms on the bottom and the sides - so you'll need to test the top for springiness.

Try not to touch it until you're fairly sure it's set though, else it will probably collapse. (See below...)

Bread, cooking

When it's done, the top will be soft to the touch, but not squashy - you'll know it when you see it, no doubt! Mine looked like below - you'll see that where I touched it after an hour and a half, it's collapsed. I'd avoid doing that, if I were you...

Cooked loaf, still in the slow cooker

Crusty bottom and sides of the loaf

Wait for it to cool before cutting it, else it will go all gummy. This will be torture, as you'll have to endure the smell of warm fresh-baked bread, and not be able to eat it. Resist.

Sliced loaf

Soft, fresh, warm bread

Enjoy!

Cambridge

2013-09-13T07:00:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, friends of ours got married in the Essex countryside. It was a beautiful wedding, in a medieval castle, with harpist and magician and everything. Fabulous. I hope they're enjoying their honeymoon!

The day after the wedding, though, we had some time to kill before our flight home, so we decided to go to Cambridge. I'd never been before, and was surprised by how much I liked it - though I think the reusing of old buildings to house chain coffee shops is an Abomination unto Nuggan. (If you're not a Pratchett fan, you should be, but you can google that if you don't get the reference...) Cambridge is like a distilled essence of England, and it's mostly rather nice!

Photos

Notre Dame, the Cambridge version:

Apples!

Flowery bikes (there were several, this was just the one I liked best):

Cambridge city centre:

Inside one of the college gardens:

Top of the bulding in which Costa Coffee now lives:

Abomination unto Nuggan:

Punting on the river Cam:

There's a very nice restaurant just next to the river there - excellent steak sandwiches.

The spikiest wrought iron fence in the world:

A doorway, which I did read about but have now forgotten:

Some more photos of the colleges:

Raspberry and rose wine sorbet

2013-09-11T09:31:00.000+02:00

So, there's been a few blog posts I've been meaning to put up for a while now, but life has kind of got in the way. (I'll tell you more about that once things are a bit more settled...)

In the meantime, you can have a recipe that would have been very timely, had I put it up when I actually tested it out - it's lovely for the summer, and down here, that still goes on for a little bit longer yet, though the days are noticeably cooler now than they were in proper summer...

I bought myself an icecream maker this summer - I'd wanted one for ages, and summer in a hot country with some spare money (thank you former colleagues!) seemed like an excellent time to try it out.

The machine came with some recipes, but none of them particularly inspired me. So, to Google I hied. (Other search engines are available, blah blah blah...) It produced two fabulous recipes - well, two that I've tried so far, others are on the To Do list. (Stop laughing, you at the back, I do make To Do lists, even if the stuff on them never manages to get done!)

One was a basic vanilla custard icecream, which was lovely, but this post is about the Raspberry and Rosé wine sorbet the Guardian kindly shared. It. Was. Divine.

I even have some step by step photos (well, almost step by step - I missed a couple of steps because I wasn't paying attention. You get what you pay for, on this blog!)

Note that this is best made the night before you actually need it, since it will need some time in the freezer, unless you have an amazingly awesome icecream maker, I suppose...

Instructions:

First, heat up 500ml of rosé wine with 130(ish) grams of sugar in a saucepan. Make sure the sugar is dissolved, by stirring occasionally.

Then, add your raspberries (340 grams of them, or the nearest equivalent depending on the size of your punnets) to a large container (this bit's important - it needs to fit all your raspberries *and* the wine...) and pour on the wine/sugar mix. Leave to cool.

Once the mixture is cool, blend with a blender so all the raspberries are properly mixed into the wine mixture. (You can probably also do this with a fork, if you have no blender, but it will be fiddly and messy if you do.)

In an ideal world, at this stage you would sieve the mixture into another jug, to get rid of all the raspberry pips. I don't have a sieve, so that didn't happen. (I would recommend doing it if you do, though, the pips were quite noticeable in the final sorbet! Not a problem, just noticeable...)

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the fridge, so it takes less time for your sorbet maker to freeze it. I put it in the fridge for an hour or so while I did other things.

Add the mixture to the machine, in line with the instructions for your machine. For mine, that means starting it up, then pouring it through the little hole in the lid. Which always leads to spilling, because I am just that gifted. Then you can go away and do other things for half an hour or so, while the sorbet machine does its thing. Note that the wine in this sorbet will slow down the freezing time, because alcohol always does.

Once it's done, it will probably still need some time in the freezer to properly solidify, because of the wine. Pour into an appropriate container and put in your freezer for a couple of hours.

Leave it out of the freezer for a few minutes before scooping - it will soften quickly and be much easier to serve!

Eat, and enjoy the concentrated taste of summer. It is bliss.

The calm after the storm

2013-07-31T06:23:00.002+02:00

We had a massive, but very brief storm on Monday - for about half an hour, it absolutely chucked it down. (Video and pictures at Nice Matin, if you're interested.)

You couldn't see across the road from our flat, the rain was so heavy - and the wind was blowing the rain right at our windows. Which, this being early morning in the summer on the Cote d'Azur, were open.

Much swearing, slamming of windows and mopping of puddles followed. Not how I generally like to start my day, being more of the traditional "Don't talk to me until I've had at least THISMUCH coffee" type.

The rain stopped and started for an hour or so after that initial burst of fury, and then by about 9:30, the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was as if nothing had ever happened.

There was a nice cool breeze on Monday, at least, which had largely died off yesterday - but the storm did clear the haze from the air, leaving bright blue skies and sea:

And this morning is starting out well, with a beautiful sunrise:

(Yes, I know, for a not-at-all-morning-person, I do see a fair amount of sunrises. Insomnia is a many-splendoured thing.)

What are your plans for the day? And what's the weather like where you are?

Gluten free, dairy free healthy lunch - 3 bean tuna salad

2013-07-30T15:18:00.000+02:00

Today I had the healthiest lunch in the world. Well, ok, perhaps not in the world EVER, but certainly compared to my recent crap eating, it's pretty healthy:

It is a tuna and bean salad: kidney beans, chickpeas, white beans, a red pepper, spring onions and tuna, with a balsamic vinegar, mustard, thyme-and-oregano and olive oil dressing.

It is lovely.

Which is good, because there is so much of it, I may be eating it for the rest of my life...

A Weekend in Digne-les-Bains

2013-07-28T19:50:00.000+02:00

Digne-les-Bains is the capital city of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department, with a population of approx. 17,000. We decided to visit this weekend: it's somewhere we've never been, and you can get there easily from Nice on the train, on the special train des pignes line.

The train des pignes has run between Nice and Digne since 1911, originally run by the Sud de France railway company and now run by the Provence railway company, calling at a series of small villages like Entrevaux along the way, the majority of which are on-request stops (you wave the train down if you're on the platform, like hailing a taxi - and let the ticket-checker know if you're going somewhere that's not a main station, so he knows to tell the driver to stop there!). Note that there are only three or four trains a day, so if you miss one, you're in for quite a wait...

One of the pretty, but really very small train stations along the way...

The trains are (very well!) air-conditioned (at least, the ones we took were nearly arctic), and each station is announced in French and what I can only assume is nissart, the original language in Nice. Could be anything, really, though - a couple of names just sounded made-up... There is nothing ressembling a buffet car, so take food and drink with you if you think you'll need anything, especially if you're travelling with children or dogs. (Dogs are allowed on this train, it seems. Even mangy ones that look a little rabid.) There isn't time to get anything at stations along the way, so I'd recommend at least taking some water - for you, your children and/or your dogs, as you prefer.

You catch the train des pignes from just back from the normal train station in Nice, at the Chemin de fer de Provence railway station near Liberation tram stop. (At Liberation tram station, you can see the original Chemin de fer du Sud de France railway station, which has been renovated since we lived round there, and now looks as lovely as I imagined it once used to!)

From there, pay your €23ish and it's a picturesque three-and-a-bit hour journey through pine-tree-covered mountains and valleys, up to Digne-les-Bains.

While Digne may be the capital of its departement, its really not very big. It sits at the base of towering forest-covered mountains, by the side of a large river (well, in the winter I expect it's large - in the summer, it was a small river in a very large riverbed...).

And I, slightly to my surprise, rather loved it.

Digne train station clearly used to be busier, back in the day...

We stayed in a hotel that was cheap (approx €60 a night) and clean, with friendly staff. We even had a balcony! (Overlooking the picturesque Picard and burger place, but with mountains in the background...) It was quite a long walk out from the centre of town, though, (about 45 minutes) and buses stop running just after 7. (Before 7, it's on bus route 1, and a quick and easy ride into the town centre or to/from the train station.)

The first thing to note about Digne is that everyone in Digne is friendly. Bus drivers, waiters, hotel staff - all the people that normally hate their jobs and hate tourists, were all smiley and nice to us, (bar one guy working at the lake, who was presumably having a bad day) and to everyone around them, all of whom they seemed to know. Customer service in France is alive and well after all - it's just all concentrated in Digne. Random strangers smiled and said "Bonjour", or "Bonsoir" as we passed them. A little disconcerting for those of us from big cities, admittedly, but charming once you get used to it.

If you happen to be in Digne around dinner time, I totally recommend the Cafe de France at the end of Boulevard Gassendi on the square. The food is good, cheap, and the waiters are friendly if perhaps a little insane, and who can blame them. We ate there the first night and a woman and her young daughter sat near us with a purple shoebox. We jumped a bit when the box moved, but ignored it and carried on talking.

A small bird then stuck its head out of the (really quite large) holes that had been cut in the lid. A long explanation followed to the waiter that the bird had fallen out of its nest, so they were going to take it home and look after it and then it would get healthy again and be free.

I had my doubts, especially since they then covered up the airholes with a laminated menu, to stop the bird escaping prematurely.

The food was great - duck in orange sauce for Monsieur, and I had a salad-pizza hybrid thing that was actually brilliant. It was basically a salad with a thin layer of pizza base lining the bowl, and I'd have it again right now, if you put it in front of me.

The second thing about Digne is how pretty it all is. Everywhere you look, there's green and mountains against bright blue skies, and it's just lovely.

Digne is famous for its lavender production. I don't think this roadside lavender quite shows the plant off at its best, but it has been planted in lovely neat rows!

The last of those photos were taken as we walked back to the hotel on the first night we stayed in Digne. We wandered through residential back streets, and every single house I saw that evening was lovely. There were even people working on allotments (who all said "Bonsoir" as we walked past, not suspiciously, just friendlily) and someone who owned horses. This is the departmental capital, and small enough that people own horses. Did I mention I kind of fell in love with the place?

Also, it has warning signs for low-flying helicopters:

Actual helicopter, immediately afterwards:

On the Saturday, we woke up early and went to the R é serve Géologique. (By bus. The bus driver's little daughter came out to say hi when we got to the end of the line, apparently right near their house. Did I mention this is a small town?) The Réserve is a national park, with an educational museum at the top of the park, and a focus on natural history, dinosaurs and fossils.

We took the introductory route, walking up past streams and waterfalls, along the medieval ramparts of old Digne (the only bits left from that time, I think) past the museum, and down past the butterfly garden and cairns by Andy Goldsworthy (the Réserve funds residencies for artists, providing a studio in the centre of the reserve overlooking the river and Digne town). The cairns were impressive, but I can't help but wonder what archaeologists in a thousand years will make of them.

"This area must have been the focus of a massive now-extinct religion. I wonder what they used these cairns for - there are no bodies, but perhaps they were memorial markers for rich and famous people!" "Maybe they were monuments to their gods?" "Perhaps they were altars, for sacrificing to the gods!"

See? They'd have no idea. Maybe Stonehenge was just a giant prehistoric art installation.

Anyway, pretty pictures from the Réserve Géologique:

Unlike the motorway lavender we saw earlier, this lavender was healthy and full of butterflies and bees!

There is apparently something of a lizard problem in wet weather. The mind boggles somewhat.

From that far up, you get some great views of Digne:

From there, we decided to walk back to town, rather than waiting for the somewhat infrequent buses.

This was actually a good idea, since it was a gorgeous, well-signposted walk of about 45 minutes, but if you do this, I'd suggest three things:

Take water. Especially if you do this in the summer. It gets very hot, very early in the morning, and you will bake without water.
Use suncream. See above.
Don't wear flipflops. There are lots of ups and downs, loose gravel and some surprisingly sheer cliff-edge drops.

I had water. I had (and used) suncream. However I also had flipflops. I am pleased to have so few blisters and would definitely recommend wearing shoes more suited to hiking in woods if you're planning to do this.

We arrived back in town and had a restorative coffee while we thought about what we would do next. Our original plan had been to go to the thermal springs for which Digne-les-Bains is named - but it was about 30 degrees, and I wasn't sure hot springs were quite what the doctor ordered.

Saturday is market day in Digne, and as we sat with coffee and Perrier, a plan formed. We would buy picnic things from the market, and go to the plan d'eau. I wasn't entirely sure what the plan d'eau was, but the internet made it sound like a sort of lake, a beach equivalent for mountain towns. Sounded perfect, so off we went.

Let me say now that I begin to understand why tourists have raved about markets in France. I never did before, because frankly all the food markets I've been to have been a bit lacklustre, populated by bad-tempered people who've had to get up at the crack of dawn, and poor-quality fruit and veg. This one, however, was not like that - it had friendly people selling locally-produced things (some labelled the actual farms their fruit / veg / cheese had come from) and it had amazing bread, black olive tapenade, and melon confit. If you've never had melon confit (which I have no idea how to translate), you should. It's fabulous. Essence of melon in a sweet, chewy awesomeness. Plus market food was much cheaper than we were expecting.

Actually, on that, everything was cheaper than we were expecting. Turns out living in London, Paris and the Cote d'Azur can give you a somewhat inflated view of pricing. Who knew?

Anyway, the plan d'eau was brilliant. It's a pair of large, man-made lakes just outside the town, with plentiful grass and trees to provide shade for picnics. One of the lakes is reserved for canoeing and water-sports - though definitely not swimming - and the other is for swimming. The water was absolutely bloody freezing, but did wonders for inducing mild hypo-thermia and reminding me what cold felt like - it hasn't been cold since I moved down here!

Photos below are from the Not-Swimming lake, since the other one had people in, and I wouldn't want random strangers taking photos of me while I was in my swimming costume!

And then it was time to go back to town for dinner. We went back to the Cafe de France, only to discover that the poor little bird had died overnight. (I was, as you can imagine, shocked at this news.) And dinner was again superb, followed by a walk back to the hotel and a collapse into bed after the longest day in the world.

And then, sadly, it was time to go back to the world. We got back on the train des pignes (which has been officially translated as pine cone train, though I don't think it's how I would translate it) this morning and started the long journey back to the coast. We marked our return to the crowded noisiness and sweltering temperatures that is Nice by going to the old town and having a Sunday Roast in the Snug. It was brilliant. (It always is.)

What have you been up to recently? Do tell!

The ballet

2013-06-30T21:10:00.001+02:00

I haven't forgotten I need to write about the ballet, but yesterday and today have been full of CV-writing, bracelet-making and talks of car-buying.

So, I'm knackered, and not writing anything at this point - it would be even more incoherent than normal!

But soon - probably tomorrow - I'll write about the prettiness that was Friday's ballet performance.

Ballet in Monaco

2013-06-28T16:19:00.000+02:00

Tonight I'm going to the ballet - l'histoire de Manon, by The Royal Ballet, with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. I've never been to the ballet before, so I hope it's as good as I'm expecting - I'll let you know tomorrow.

In case you're looking for ballet in Monaco, this appears to be the place to look for shows that might coincide with your visit (or desired timeframe, if you live here - in which case, do say hi in the comments, and let's go for coffee sometime!)

More fireworks! (Also: the moon, and the promise of a long-delayed book review)

2013-06-27T08:42:00.001+02:00

Yesterday saw another fabulous (and totally unexpected) display of fireworks over the port in Monaco. These fireworks were full of brightly-coloured explosions, and those shimmery golden rain type fireworks, which I adore!

I'm afraid I don't have any photos - not only does my camera not take great firework photos, but it has no battery at the moment. But you can rest assured that they were lovely. I'm glad I live somewhere that has so many random fireworks displays outside my living room window!

Also, the moon. It's been a gorgeous red colour when rising for the last few nights - has it been like that everywhere, or is it something weird about the sea that makes it red? (I'm a big fan - it's stunning, seeing a dark red moon over the sea. Does anyone know anything about moons, and whether this will happen again/for a while?)

And, lastly, I have a huge apology to make. Weeks and weeks ago (months, now, I fear), just before we decided it was time for me to move down here permanently, Chris Alden got in touch with me to ask whether I'd review his book, 101 reasons to live abroad. Of course I said yes (note to any other authors reading this: I love reading, and I love free books, so if you'd like me to review your book, do get in touch!) and then promptly fell off a cliff with insane amounts of day-job work, on top of planning the move down south.

So I've not yet managed to write this review, though I did read the book and enjoyed it - I'm going to re-read it this week/next week, and will review it in proper depth after that. In the meantime, if you'd like to check out Chris' book and let me know what you think in the comments, you can find it on Amazon and you can find Chris' other books here.

Happier things

2013-06-26T14:45:00.001+02:00

Before yesterday went badly awry in the evening, it was an awesome day! My husband has recently learnt to drive, and yesterday was the first time I'd got in the car with him. (He is, as I always knew he would be, an excellent driver!)

We rented an Auto Bleue - one of Nice's electric cars, for hire hourly/daily - and drove around the coast, heading up the mountain behind Villefranche and Eze. You get some amazing views from up there, and I'd recommend making the trip that tiny bit in-land if you're here on holiday - there are buses that do the same route, if you don't have a car or don't fancy driving on French roads!

Migraines

2013-06-26T14:28:00.000+02:00

Horrible things, migraines. Last night was spent with a head feeling like it was about to explode, pain with every pulse, following by horrendously undignified, painful throwing up, until I was too tired to stay awake and finally passed out into blissful unawareness.

When I woke up, all the pain was gone - it's amazing, waking up without pain when everything has been hurting so much. I fully recommend pain-free mornings to all, without hesitation.

I'd quite like to avoid that happening again, though - it's been a long time since the last one, and I hoped they'd go away, but clearly not. Since it's so long in between them, it's hard to keep track of what might cause them - I wasn't doing anything yesterday afternoon that I hadn't done a million times before, and each of those previous times didn't cause hideous pain. Nor did I eat anything unusual, or drink anything unusual.

So, any thoughts on how to avoid them? Or, if I can't avoid them, minimise the effects and make them go away earlier?

Random fireworks in Monaco - because it's Saturday?

2013-06-08T22:08:00.003+02:00

There are lots of things I like about Monaco. One of them is its ability to put on really good firework displays - the one tonight was a little unexpected, but all the better for it!

(If anyone knows what they are actually likely to have been celebrating, do let me know in the comments. I choose to think they are just celebrating Saturday, and this will be a weekly occurrence...)

Some somewhat blurry photos follow - you can just about see the giant ship at the bottom left of the photos, which has been parked there all week, plus a couple of other boats passing, all outlined in lights. All the boats applauded at the end of the fireworks by sounding their horns, which I quite liked in a generally anthropomorphic kind of way.

Salmon, green beans and rice with a garlic-chilli-lemon sauce

2013-06-07T19:56:00.000+02:00

Today's dinner worked surprisingly well! Salmon fillets with rice and remaining green beans, with a chilli-garlic-lemon butter sauce (based, more or less, on this recipe - except with more garlic, and cayenne pepper instead of hot sauce.)

I think I shall make this again one day, it was lovely.

I have beaten the Washing Machine of Doom!

2013-06-07T15:06:00.001+02:00

Well, sort of beaten. More snuck past and luckily it was yawning, or something, so it didn't notice and so I triumphed! (That analogy is lacking quite a lot, I know. This is the level of incoherence my washing machine has driven me to.)

It started so well. I came back from the beach, and decided that, in keeping with my new domestic role, I'd do some laundry. I've done millions of laundry loads, this can't be too complicated. Once I'd found the laundry powder and fabric softener (the worst part about moving into an already occupied flat is finding where everything lives...), just dump that in, pick the temperature you want, and Bob's your uncle!

You'd think.

The first complication is that my washing machine speaks Italian. I, bar a few useful words like caffè and grazie, do not. Still, even with this linguistic gulf between us, I figured "30°C rapido" was easy enough to understand, and so turned the dial appropriately. There's three buttons on my washing machine - process of elimination (and Google) suggest that "Avvio" is the one to make the machine go.

And, on pressing it, lights happen and the machine starts up. Water sloshes in, all is going fabulously. I open Twitter and stop paying attention to the domesticity around me, bathing in a warm glow of success.

Some minutes later, it dawns on me that there's an odd silence. The machine is not actively washing. Even "rapido" can't be *this* quick, I think. There are lights flashing.

Lights flashing are never good, have you noticed? No rhythmic reassuring blinking ever happens, it's always "PANIC NOW SOMETHING'S BROKEN" type flashing.

My washing machine flashes the start button (which is also the pause button - do washing machines commonly have pause buttons? It's not like it's a DVD player...) and the "washing in progress" light. A blatant lie, at this point. Washing is very much not in progress.

I try tentatively prodding the start button. Maybe this would make it work again. No. OK. I try turning the dial back to 0 - all the lights go off. The door still won't open. I run the whole cycle again, thinking it was maybe just a fluke, but sure enough, the lights start flashing and the washing stops at the same point.

I call my parents. They laugh. I call my husband. "That's never happened to me before."

Bereft of other options, and devoid of hope, I turn the machine back to 0 and wait. Eventually, the door locky thing clicks, and I can open the door. For once, luck was with me and water didn't gush out all over the nice clean floor. But the clothes were soaking and not yet hang-up-able.

There are symbols at the end of my washing-machine-cycle-dial. One is a shower-head, one is a spiral, and one is a bucket with a hole in the bottom. I decide that if the cycle of 30°C rapido hasn't ever managed to finish, my clothes probably need showering (which I assume means rinsing) and set the dial accordingly. Nervously, I watch its every spin and slosh. Eventually it starts spinning on its own, and draining follows. Success is mine, at last!

Sadly, my swimming costume was in the washing machine, so going back to the beach to recover from the stress now looks unlikely. Wearing a cold wet swimming costume must be one of the worst feelings ever. I may take myself for a restorative coffee in the sunshine...

Cleaning all the things

2013-06-06T11:35:00.000+02:00

Today, I have cleaned all the things! Well, ok, maybe not all. But I have started, that counts for something, right? (If you haven't seen this Hyperbole and a Half post, you've clearly been living under a rock. Go read it now. In fact, read all of her blog, she's amazing. Then don't come back, because the comparison is not flattering to me!)

Anyway, assuming you did come back, welcome back. Have a couple of nice pictures of some mini-boats I took this morning.

My own epic struggle has not been so epic, nor so much of a struggle, yet. I have decided to try a new thing, and deal with the whole mess in bits, rather than doing it all, becoming knackered, and then hating everything because it's all too much. So far I have cleaned the bits that were the most visibly in need, and I've unpacked the boxes that were most in my way. (See, seeing small results motivates people - who knew all those L&D trainers and consultants were right after all?)

Tomorrow, I shall tackle the rest of the bathroom in its entirety. Once I have a clean bathroom, that's a third of the flat done. (At least - our bathroom seems proportionally big compared to the total flat size!) Then I shall tackle the bedroom, and after that I shall consider tackling the living room. This consideration may take a while, because God. Our living room.

Once that is clean, it will probably be time to start all over again - this is what I hate about cleaning. It never, ever ends. Even if no one's actually living in a place and getting it dirty, it gets itself dirty! Why dust - if I had a chance to ask one question, it might be that. (Though I'd regret it afterwards, I mean really, what a waste of a question. But still. Almost as bad as mosquitos, dust.)

Lastly, and more seriously, I have some bad news. The padlocks from the Pont des Arts appear to have spawned a Cote d'Azur branch of the species. Parasites, clutter, declarations of undying love, call it what you will. But it was bad enough when confined to one bridge in one city in one country. Since then it's started spreading to other bridges in Paris, and is widely present in other cities. And now, they've got as far as Monaco. It's like Pandemic 2, but with padlocks. Madagascar should consider closing its port...

Summer arrives - couch 2 5k and strawberries

2013-06-04T17:07:00.002+02:00

The sunshine has arrived! This is a momentous thing, having come from the frozen north where winter lasts for ever (especially this year!) and it has inspired me to be healthier.

I know, I know, me and every other person in the Western world. But still. I'm at least 10 kilos heavier than I want to be, and 2 dress sizes bigger than I'd like, so it's time to do something about it.

In this case, "something" is starting out with beginning some exercise and eating more fruit and vegetables (bonus: they're cheaper than eating out, so there's that) - I think baby steps are definitely the way to go here.

I've started doing the Couch 2 5k programme again (I'm sure I blogged at length about this previously) - it aims to get people who do no exercise (hi!) from that point to being able to run 5km. It worked last time (in that I went from being totally utterly unfit to being able to run for 30 minutes consecutively without dying), and I surprised myself by finding I actually enjoyed it, so keep your fingers crossed for me this time too...

The first run went well - I didn't die - and I had breakfast on the beach. Strawberries are awesome. Tonight we are having salad nicoise, which rocks.

Breakfast of champions

(Side note while I think of it: I'm likely to write a bit about food and the like on this blog - and not all of it will be the super-healthy food you probably think I ought to be eating in order to lose weight. I thank you in advance for not commenting on this.)

Freedom!

2013-06-03T06:29:00.000+02:00

OK, so, it's been a while. How are you all?

Me? Well, let's see. Since we last spoke, I've quit my job and just finished moving house - I'm now down south full-time again! Hooray!

All I now need is for summer to actually start... Today's not looking likely, but maybe tomorrow. It's June - is a little sunshine on the Mediterranean coast really too much to ask?

My major tasks over the next week or so are:

Unpack
Clean
Work out how the French unemployment system works
Launch the web design business I've got floating around my head
Make lots of shiny things!

These will all, admittedly, be easier to focus on if the weather's not so awesome. But I'd still quite like some sunshine, please...

Menton lemon festival - fête du citron 2013

2013-03-15T19:38:00.003+01:00

EDIT: I accidentally deleted this post, but have managed to recover it. More or less. So, if you think you've seen this before, you have...

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I wrote this post on Sunday last week. Technical difficulties have meant I can't post it til now. I see no reason to let that stop me actually using it now, so here you go...

So. The sun didn't last after all. Your intrepid author didn't let that stop her, though, because today, my friends, is lemon day.

Each year, Menton hosts a festival of lemons and oranges.

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This year is the 80th anniversary of the festival, and it's as brilliant as I remembered. Sadly, I forgot my camera in Paris, so you'll have to make do with phone-photos. Note the grey sky- the thunder started just as we got on the train to Nice, and by the time we got off, the rain was torrential!

Birthday cake!

As this is the 80th anniversary, the theme of this year's festival is Around the World in 80 Days. Places around the world, and methods of transport feature heavily.

House of cards:

Big Ben:

Trains:

Hot air balloon:

A wolf in the frozen snow. (No, I don't remember that bit in the story either...)

The Statue of Liberty. (Her torch lit up when the clouds got heavier. Light sensitive citrus fruit statues. Awesome.)

I think we then moved on to China:

And then to India:

Then, we travel by boat:

And, lastly, we move into the Middle East:

Going through security at the airport

2013-03-15T14:40:00.001+01:00

This seems to be a source of some confusion for some people, but luckily I am here to clear it all up, based on my extensive experience with going through idiot security procedures. Please follow the below instructions, so that you don't hold up the rest of us who have looked this stuff up before we get to the security scanner.

1. Don't leave a bottle of water in your bag. Don't, if you have done so, try to argue that you should be allowed to take it through, even if it's sealed. I know it's a stupid rule, but it's a very clear one, and you won't win. You're just slowing down the process and pissing everyone off.

2. Put your make-up (all of it, especially liquid foundation) into a small, clear plastic bag. Make sure it all fits into the small bag and that you can close the small bag around the make-up. If it doesn't, take less. How much make-up do people need? Similarly with hand cream, face cream, whatever the hell that all is...

3. Don't wear high-heels. Not only are they dangerous if you need to get out of the airplane if something goes wrong (and I will consider killing you myself if your heels break the inflatable life raft thingy, should we crash into the sea) but you need to take them off and have them x-rayed. This is also true of boots in general, even flat boots (but with less emergency escape danger) - trainers are good. Try trainers.

4. Don't wear a belt. This may mean wearing different trousers, but you'll have to take your belt off anyway and have it x-rayed, and it'll be quicker to just wear other trousers. If you do wear a belt, please don't wait until you're about to go through the scanner before you think about sloooooowly taking it off and carefully coiling it in the little plastic tray. Especially if you also have to then take off your heels and carefully put on the plastic bag shoe replacement things.

5. Take your coat, scarf, gloves, etc off before you get to the xray machine. Empty your pockets while you're waiting, not after the scanner beeps at you. Yes, it will notice your keys and coins. Really.

6. In general, don't argue with the security people. They have clearly got strict instructions and not a lot of scope for initiative. They presumably know the rules are idiotic, but they still have to enforce them anyway. These are not the people to complain to - try the companies running the airport or, better yet, the Ministry of the Interior or your local equivalent. I also recommend starting a blog to bitch about the trauma of the whole thing. It's remarkably cathartic. (cf 80% of my recent posts...)