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Following our week skiing in Isola we met our
landlords, the Schmidies, at our new house in Valbonne. This was not without a little vomit on the
way by middle A. Poor thing she really
doesn’t travel well which will be interesting when we head off (by car) through
Italy! Anyway, we got the keys and moved
our stuff in. Our villa is right in the
village and whilst the little cobble streets are just wide enough for a car it
really isn’t suitable to drive through (unless you are a crazy local). We have 3 double bedrooms, two bathrooms,
two lounge areas and a kitchen spread over 3 floors which are accessed by
traditional stone steps and then steps that look more like a ladder they are so
steep. The villa has so much space that
we decided to stay out of the top bedroom and en-suite to preserve it for any
guests we might have. The girls have
commandeered the second lounge room, also on the top level, for their American
Girls and rehearsing their plays and concerts.
The Schmidies had filled the house with flowers and supplies making us
feel truly welcomed. It was a stark contrast
to our experience in Isola.
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| Our backyard and village square |
While we were skiing Big A had managed to
get UVA burn to both his eyes. This
meant that he was in a lot of pain and for the remainder of the girls’ school
holidays we managed to occupy ourselves with our French lessons (more on that
below), catching up on some school work, visiting the English Bookstore http://www.englishbookcentre.com/
to purchase a couple of books and hire some English speaking DVDs, short lunches in the square and one trip to
Monaco. Monte Carlo (Monaco) is a 45 min
drive from Valbonne. We had lunch at the
Café de Paris and strolled around the port and along the track of the Grand
prix. It’s hard not to feel like an
under-achiever though with all he amazing exhibitions of material success on
the streets and in the water! We piled
back into our leased Renault Scenic and, after a few wrong turns, headed home.
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| The Brague |
5 weeks on we are all settled. Big A has managed to find some running and
walking tracks around the Brague (without getting lost) which has made him
immensely happy and I have a plan to visit every restaurant in the village. It’s funny I never thought about a career as
a restaurant critic but this could be the perfect thing for a food lover like
me – and certainly gives me the excuse to eat out more often! I guess I’ll have to join Big A on his runs
and walks every now and again to burn off my consumption of food or my girth
could be in big trouble by the time I leave!
I’m ok for now though as eating out has been cut back to accommodate
some other expenses; the Monaco Grandprix, French lessons and tennis club membership. This is funny as I am rubbish at languages
(even though my mother thinks I have a keen ear – bless her) and I am rubbish
at tennis. The grandprix is on the bucket
list though so that makes it worth it.
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| Markets in Valbonne (right outside our front door) |
We kicked off French lessons just before we
went skiing with a language school called Elika. Elika is run but this beautiful French woman
called Elisabeth. I don’t normally use
real names in my blog but she deserves a plug.
I split my lessons between Elisabeth and Berenger (gorgeous, gorgeous,
gorgeous). I loved them both. I also picked up a lot of French in the 20
lessons I did over 2 weeks and learnt how to ask questions, all about the 4
golden rules, avoir & etre, prende, mettre and faire, a stack of verbs,
adjectives and nouns and a trick to use when trying to identify an object as a
male or female. I would have loved to
continue but 1 on 1 French lessons are not cheap and while Big A and I were
spending 2 - 3 hours a day learning French we couldn’t afford to do anything
else. While it is Big A’s ambition to speak
France (and regardless of what he says, he is well on his way to achieving this),
I’d rather be out and about using a bit of French, English and sign language to
get me by. So we have put our lessons on
hold for now and will decide what we will do to continue our French
education. As a side note, each morning
before our lessons Big A and I would take a coffee at a sunny little café
called L’ Australian. After two visits there the guy behind the bar
knew our order to the point we didn’t need to ask – he just delivered our
coffee and hot chocolate after we’d seated ourselves – great Aussie hospitality
from a French man in Valbonne!
The local Vignal Tennis Club http://www.tennis-vignal.com/
is about 10 mins drive from home and is less “sophisticated” than the other
private clubs we’ve been to. It has a
pool, restaurant and is set in bushland which feels like it’s in the middle of
nowhere. We’ve made friends with the
tennis coach (who just happens to be another Gorman), the restaurant owner
“boss” and one of the regulars “Biggles”.
It’s a lot of fun. The girls take
lessons each Wednesday afternoon and Big A and I play every other day – which
is fun for me and frustrating for him!
Big A actually gave “boss” a hand one Monday when he had a booking for a
large group. I hung around with Middle A
and Zar (who was visiting for the UK school holidays). It’s very chilled out and we love spending
time there. Boss needs to figure out how
he can make money from the restaurant as the locals like eating and drinking
but struggle to pay. He’s new to the
place so I’m sure he’ll find his way eventually.
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| Lunch at St Paul de Vence |
So back to the food… in Valbonne we have managed to eat out at Le
Kasmir (Indian), Cafes des Arcades (French), Restaurant Pizzeria le Valbonnais
(French / Italian), Le Pigout (Moroccan), Terra Rossa (French), Le Creperie Valbonnais
(French) and Jimmy’s Killer Prawn (Prawns!).
They all have their own highlights (except for the Creperie which was
unfortunately very poor). Le Kashmir,
Pizzeria Valbonnais, Jimmys and Cafes des Arcades are our favourites and we go
back there regularly. We have about
another 12 restaurants to go before we can claim to have dined at all the local
establishments, but we are well on our way!
We’ve done a fair amount of sight-seeing
since we’ve been living on the Cote D’Azur.
Some highlights include:
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| Dolceacqua |
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| Dolceacqua Old Town |
Dolceacqua …. An hour and 30 mins drive
away in Italy. Dolceacqua is a wonderful
medieval village dominated by an 11th century castle. It has the most spectacular old village which
is quite cavernous, set under the castle almost in the mountain and by a
beautiful stream. Walking around the
ancient town is like walking through tunnels.
The locals say there is nothing like it and I believe them. We spent a couple of hours walking around and
then left for Sanremo, 30 mins drive away.
Sanremo … probably not a town I’d go back
to as there are so many other more interesting and beautiful locations but it
was nice to pop in and have some lunch in Italy while we were on that side of
the border. A fantastic frito misto and
salad at Dick Turpins (???) overlooking the port on a sunny Thursday definitely
beats working!
Saint Tropez … It took us 1.30mins to get
there but the locals say in summer it’s more like 3 hours due to the
traffic. We hung out in the old town
near the port, bought a great pastel sketch from one of the artists around the
port and had an over priced totally hideous salad and sandwich at lunch at Senquier
(apparently a landmark in Saint Tropez???)
We loved the port and will hopefully go back to the beaches before the
tourist season begins but we will never be back to Senquier.
Juan Le Pins … 15 mins away with a great public
beach and about 10 beach restaurants to choose from.
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| Chilling out at Juan Le Pins |
Gordon … 30 mins away. A tiny medieval village dominated by a castle
on the edges of a cliff. A perfect place
to go for a drive on an overcast day when it isn’t so great on the beach (and
these days are rare here).
Grasse… 15 mins away. The parfum capital of the world and home to Fragonard,
one of the oldest perfumeries. Fragonard
has a free museum and factory tours.
There are probably more interesting museums and factories to visit but
they charge.
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| View from Eze Chateau Gardens |
Eze… 35 mins away. A medieval village and chateau set on the
cliffs above the French coastline. Its
one of the prettiest villages in France and a must see for the cruise ships
that pass along the coastline. Lunch
here is at a premium because of the view.
A one restaurant the mains range between €50 and €950 a plate (but then
again it includes Beluga!). A cheaper
option is to grab a takeaway and eat in the gardens – which are spectacular and
have billion dollar views. Unfortunately
it was too chilly the day we went so we headed for some shelter. We ate at yet another restaurant, La Taverne,
serving average Italian food.
I’m not sure if it’s because pizza and
pasta are cheap and you don’t have to be a sensational cook to create an edible
dish or the proximity to Italy or a combination of all of the above but there
seems to be a dominance of restaurants in the area selling Italian food – and
most of it is average! Can’t wait for
Italy, I just hope that I’m not completely OVER pizza and pasta by then!
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| Eze Gardens and sea view |
We’ve had a few interesting social events including
a wonderful easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday at the Schmidies home. I think Madame Schmidie planted over 10 kilos
of eggs in her garden for our 4 children
to find (we had the Stormans visiting).
We also got invited to a birthday party by one of the school families. They
had only invited 3 other families to join them so we felt very honored to have
been given the invitation. It was a
lovely afternoon drinking ‘too much’ wine and meeting some of the characters
you expect to find in one of the most glamorous parts of the world. Big A did equate it to a sophisticated
version of the Real Housewives of OC.
We’ve had a visit by the Stormans over the
UK Easter break which was great. We took
them to some of our favourite haunts and hope they had a lovely time. They left 2 days ago and we now have a week
to go before we pack up for a week at the beach and enjoy 2 weeks of French
school holidays. It’s raining today
which is rare so let’s hope it breaks before Friday!
Big A’s perspective:
Following our epic ski trip I ended getting
an acute infection in both eyes and having 3 weeks of visits to the doctors,
eyedrops, pills, eye pain and headaches. Apparently the UV rays were the cause,
so our family activity for the last week of the girls vacation pretty
restricted.
Having said that we did take off for a day
in Monaco. The drive took about 45 minutes and was pretty straightforward until
you hit Monaco. I will definitely disregard ‘English Jane’ and our GPS next
time ….given the tunnels you need to pass through the GPS just goes mental and
you could end up anywhere! Better to just follow the road signs.
We parked at the casino and then walked
around a bit before heading back to the Casino square passing the numerous Bentley’s,
Maserati’s, Ferraris, Rollers,…..although disappointingly they also let lowly BMW’s
park there…god forbid!
So …Café De Paris for lunch…..as one does. Monaco
is a wonderful place to people-watch and the Café De Paris is a fantastic place
to do this.
There are the newly wealthy Russians with
bundles of cash, bling and young, sour-faced females in tow but absolutely no
class at all…..the businessmen, the designer handbag dog, moi-moi kissing
lunch-buddies, those people who are trying
to look as though they have money and those that are just there to look at
others.
The number of Russians there was really
surprising. However, apparently Russians are buying up the mega real estate on
the South of France and prepared to pay a premium and are the only ones with
money to buy mega yachts. The father of a girl that goes to school with Middle
A is the skipper on a Russian-billionaires motor yacht….one of 5 he has around
the Med with another 3 in the Caribbean…..obviously the GFC hasn’t affected
everyone too badly! It will be interested to see what happens when Chinese and
Indian money starts to arrive!
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| Cafe de Paris |
As for the Café De Paris, the ambience was
fantastic, service was OK, the food was just OK but very expensive….. but its
something you (ie The Child Bride) just have to do…eat at the Café De Paris…another
tick.
As for the rest of Monaco… most of it is
not what I would call a charming place. Its built around the sea, extending
back up the steep hills behind and is actually tiny….. not an inch of space is wasted. In the newer
area where the casino is most of the buildings are either financial
institutions, exclusive shops, exclusive hotels, exclusive restaurants or
apartment buildings, and although the older part of town is lovely the
architecture doesn’t rate with that of old Paris, London, Barcelona etc. However, it is very clean,
apparently very safe and oozes wealth and the harbor is very impressive.
It
just so happened there was a car show on whilst we were in
Monaco…..incredible….so I dragged the girls down to a vintage car show located
opposite the Auto Club of Monaco where the pits are located for the grand prix.
As you can imagine they were thrilled (NOT!) and as is the nature of all 3 of
them…made their feelings known! Despite some stunning unrestored Bugatti’s and
Ferrari’s and a couple of beautiful 1950’s Lago Talbots the number and caliber
of cars was pretty poor.
However, I have never seen so many Maser’s,
Lambo’s, Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, Bentley’s, Roller’s around so for anyone interested
in cars Monaco is amazing…wow…if only they had been from the 50’s or 60’s.
I didn’t see any graffiti or a single
homeless person on the streets of Monaco. Now if I were a hobo I’d live in
Monaco…sunny all year round…..strip off for a wash in the med, including your
clothes….dry off in the sun for a while…..beg for a few hours outside the
Banque Du Monaco…or even better…save up for a harmonica or ukulele and busk
outside the Café De Paris.!
And speaking of busking or street
performers…what better place to busk than Monaco?….I’m sure you must stand a
better chance of being spotted here than in the London tube! But no buskers or
street performers here thankyou very much….but maybe I’ve found my new
vocation…all I have to do now is learn to do something that the mega rich and
famous are prepared to donate small change for…even if it is just to shut me
up!
So we decided to walk around Monaco for a
little (coincidentally following the race track!!!). The girls were thrilled to
walk around the Monaco Grand Prix circuit and take photos of various corners
and sections of the track….NOT…especially when we just happened to find the most
famous part of the track…the Loewes hairpin outside the Fairmont Hotel..… if
you sit for 10 minutes at the Hairpin you are guaranteed to see a number of
super cars giving it some on the approach to the hairpin and the short straight
away from it and down towards the entrance of the tunnel….in such a confined
area, the sounds of the engines are truly amazing…I could sit there for
hours…..but I love cars…and my girls don’t…so we didn’t even manage 2 minutes
before the whining started……so we ended our tour of Monaco and the track, headed
back to the car and commenced the drive home.
I must have the memory of a goldfish as I
turned the GPS and ‘English Jane’ back on for the trip home. And as predicted the
GPS sent us to an underground bunker and then around the city in circles for 10
minutes before we turned it off and followed the road signs. 5 euros (tolls)
and 45 minutes later we were home in Valbonne after a wonderful, albeit expensive
day out with my 3 girls in arguably the most exclusive city in the world…life’s
good…another tick!
The next day the Child Bride and I decided
to head over to the Vignal Tennis Club near Chateauneuf....the club itself is a
wonderful, rambling old place…the type of place
where you feel a little worried that every time you sit down the chair
might give way….I love it…so relaxed and not at all snooty.
So having spent a fortune in Monaco
yesterday we obviously thought just hadn’t spent enough money today ….so we
decided to join the tennis club.
We bought some cheap gear and went down for
a hit and to see if the girls were interested in playing too. Both Middle A and
Little A were ok for their first time and so we all agreed they would have lessons….our
hope is for them to find a sport they like so
they will have at least one healthy activity in their lives!....I really
do struggle with kids spending so much time playing on computers and watching
TV.
So with a return to school drop-off and
pick-up life for the Off Rampers went back to ‘normal’ ….with the exception of
our first family invitation. Our girls have made some school friends since
we’ve been here and we were invited by some parents to their house for a BBQ.
We arrived first in our little
Renault…the gates to the house were more expensive than our entire house
backhome! The driveway was long and winding and crept its way through the
beautifully manicured gardens to the large house.
The
ensemble included 5 couples and their kids:
1. A
Danish multi millionaire sports agent and his Danish super model wife.
2. A
broker from London who has lived with his ex model wife in Monaco for the last
15 years with offices in London, Monaco, and New York.
3. An
Irish couple...he owns an insurance company and just spent 2 weeks with Clooney
and Pitt in LA negotiating a deal to insure their productions for financial
loss. She owns a software development company that just won a contract with
NASA.
4. Another
couple from the UK – he is a skipper that works for a Russian billionaire. The
billionaire owns a few super yachts in the Med and a few more in the
Caribbean….GFC; what GFC?!
5.
Oh…some poor backpackers from Brisbane that keep themselves busy watching their
bank balance plummet!
Based upon the people invited you’d have
thought the Child Bride and I would have spent the whole evening standing in
the corner talking amongst ourselves and stealing cutlery…but it wasn’t like
that …we didn’t take any cutlery!
Actually they were really nice and made us
feel very welcome…so much so that, despite the girls having school the next
day, we ended up staying on once the others had left….finally leaving around
10.30pm. The Child Bride had too much
to drink and ended up holding hands with her ‘new best friend’ and trying to
pick a black spec from her teeth….yes it was embarrassing to watch!! Suffice it
to say the Child Bride had a wicked hangover the next day….luckily for her I
drop off and pick up the girls from school so she spent the next day recovering!
Over the next few weeks we continued with
our French lessons until we came to the realization that we really couldn’t
afford such an expense but also without living here and immersing ourselves
totally we would never speak the sort of French I wanted to speak. A bit of a
sad realization for me…Oh well…I’ll just have to retire here…and believe me…I
would absolutely love to do that.
The Child Bride has no doubt detailed al of
the places we have visited including what she ate for lunch etc etc…so I wont go
over that. However, I must be honest…from my perspective the food has not been
as great as I had expected. Maybe I’m just not into food enough to actually
know when I’m eating great food. Food is a bit of an inconvenience to me…not an
event. Its just something you do when you are hungry. However, for the Child
Bride it is an event.
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| Lunch at Marco Polo (on the beach) |
Don’t get me wrong I have enjoyed a lot of
meals since we have been away but none have really blown me away.
Funnily enough the trip to the Fragonard
perfumery in Grasse with the Stormans didn’t blow me away either, although it
was very funny. A sales woman disguised as a museum-guide explained the
intricacies of perfume-making and the
Child Bride and Bumchinya dutifully paid a fortune for some of their over-priced
smelly spray. We were all asked to sniff scents and then try to distinguish
what they were. And as always there are always those tossers at the front of
the line who raise their arms and get it right. On this tour we had Mr and Mrs
Right from England. Him in his brown sandals and black socks and roman Senator
bowl haircut…and her in her floral dress and sandals with factor 30 sunscreen
on a day when we were all in coats! People should be warned when there are
those sorts of people on your tour!
So whilst Ceasar and his wife were getting
all the answers correct unfortunately when I was asked to identify what was in
the perfume my answer ‘Shower-Power’ went down like a cup of cold vomit…much to
the amusement of Storms and myself but to the condemnation of the rest of the
tour, especially Caesar and his wife and The Child Bride and Bumchinya.
So whilst the girls became increasingly
excited at the prospect of buying some perfume straight from the 300 year old
factory Storms and I amused ourselves by dreaming up a situation where somebody
farted just as the sales woman asked the group to identify the various scents
and seeing if Caesar picked the right answer then!!
The Stormans have now departed and our
house is quiet and empty again. School routine has returned and the rain they
brought with them has remained here. We’ve had about 8 days of rain and 5
overcast days now in the 3 months we’ve been here…..I am reminded of what I can
expect when we return to Oz!!!
Je
vis le rêve!
