Bon Appetit

The winter is not a particularly busy time on the Cote d'Azur. Many of the hotels and restaurants are closed for the season and several of the little cities are like ghost towns. We were able to see a few museums, but for the most part, this trip was not about sight seeing. We instead planned our visit around food. Jenn and I love food. We are not food snobs (though I probably can be a bit particular about some other things). Good food can be found anywhere whether it's a local dive, a farmer's market, a popular or trendy establishment, a Michelin starred restaurant, or even at a Cheesecake Factory. We just like to eat and we prefer that what we eat simply be good.

If you aren't interested in pictures or descriptions of food, this post is not for you.

DAY 1 - Dec 26
We almost didn't make our flight. We took an early morning taxi to Vienna and right before we were to exit for the airport, Jenn realized she forgot her carry-on bag. We asked the driver to turn around and we headed back to Bratislava, where Jenn ran up and grabbed her bag. Our driver then could sense our urgency and turned what is normally a 45 minute journey into a 25 minute trip back to the airport. We made it in plenty of time to check our bags and board the flight. It was amazing. I couldn't take my eyes off of the speedometer the entire ride. I was mezmerized.

We arrived to a cold (in the 40's) and overcast Nice on Sunday morning. We expected it to be kind of chilly, but the gray skies were not a good sign.

After checking in at the hotel, Le Meridien, we quickly hopped on a bus for St Paul De Vence, but not before enjoying a morning croissant (the first of many). After arriving, we walked to the Fondation Maeght, a museum set up by private funding. The museum sits a little outside of the town in the middle of a wooded area. The large surrounding courtyard contains sculptures from Miro, Giacometti, and others, a cool fountain and a Chagall mosaic. It's a beautiful setting for a museum. The museum is open and has large windows letting in lots of natural light. We loved it.
Unfortunately, when we walked outside, it was pouring down rain and for some reason neither of us was wearing a rain coat and or even brought an umbrella to France. We walked in the rain and then waited in the rain for the bus back to Nice. It was miserable. For the record, Jenn read that the Cote d'Azur has 300 days of sunshine. Needless to say, we were less than thrilled to be witnessing one of the "off" days. We stayed inside for the afternoon and took a stroll through the Matisse museum, which was cool.

Dinner was at L'Escalinada, which was outstanding. It's a small unassuming place that honestly, we wouldn't have even thought twice about if Food & Wine Magazine hadn't recommended it. We sat at one of the 10 or so tables and dined on pissaladiere (a kind of pizza with onions on top), zucchini beignets, and a few other appetizers. Jenn had what she deemed the best lasagna she had ever eaten and I had fish in provencale sauce. We finished up with lemon meringue pie and I had a kind of peanutbutter pie. Everything was delicious. It was the perfect start to the trip.
DAY 2 - Dec 27
We awoke the next morning still on a high from the previous night's meal. We spent the day in glitz and yacht filled Monte-Carlo. I was actually expecting it to be much flashier than it was, but it was nice. To me, it looked a lot like a movie set. Everything was very clean and looked too perfect. We were early for our lunch reservation, so we walked around town a bit and trough the shopping mall attached to the Hotel Metropole. There were some very high end stores as expected, but the highlight was picking up some macaroons (one vanilla, one chocolate, and one salted caramel each) to go from the Paris based Laduree. Dare I say, they rivaled Pierre Herme's (our favorite).

Our lunch at Joel Robuchon at the Hotel Metropole was very good, but it would be quite an achievement if the food was able to live up to the exorbitant prices. We tried to not let that affect our judgment, but it wasn't easy. From the lobster ravioli to the scallop filled cannoli to the quail, the presentation was beautiful. It was like artwork. This is going to sound ridiculous, but the highlight of the meal was the cart filled with various different types of unbelievable baked breads. We joked that we should have just ordered water and bread. We seriously would have been perfectly happy with that. I am still having dreams about my pesto bread.
We spent the remainder of what turned out to be our only day with slightly decent weather walking the whole town and touring the Oceanographic Museum and aquarium. We held off on hitting the casino and decided we'd come back one evening as it's only about 30 minutes from Nice.

We got off the bus on the ride back with the intention of walking down to St Jean Cap Ferrat, but realized that it was not only a 90 minute walk to get there, but also down a path that was in complete darkness. Everything in the area was closed. It was eerie. It felt like were were in a horror movie. We walked to a bus stop, took the bus to St Jean, recognized that it too was dead, and then made our way back to Nice for the evening. We learned the importance of making reservations on the Riviera as we were turned away at a couple of restaurants. We ended up just picking up socca, a chickpea pancake, from a stand (Chez Rene) and then topped that off with crepes for dessert.

DAY 3 - Dec 28
The bus ride to Grasse took a little longer than expected (over an hour). Grass is known as the perfume capital of Europe. It has something to do with fertile ground being good for growing fragrant flowers used for perfume. We first had lunch at Jacques Chibois, the restaurant at the Bastide St-Antoine, a really pretty boutique hotel on the outskirts of the city that screams French countryside. In order to find it and get there though, we needed some help, and it came in surprising fashion.

We went inside the Museum of Perfume which by the grace of God (for me) was closed for the day, but the gift shop was open. A man happened to walk in who spoke good English and not only knew the location of the hotel, but also called a taxi for us. We found out from our taxi driver that the man that called was a city official. We never figured out exactly who he is, but it really pleases me when people do nice things for one another. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the world would be such a better place if everyone was just nice and considerate to one another. It's a simple thing, but humans just can't figure it out.

The setting at the restaurant was really nice, but a little quiet and stuffy. The service was off the charts though. When places like this charge the amount they do, service should be part of the deal, and it was impressive to see how hard the staff worked to make it a memorable dining experience. The food itself was good, but as with Joel Robuchon, it's hard to feel like you're getting value for the price. The presentation of each dish was beautiful. I started with tuna and Jenn had this shrimp dish with purple potatoes. For the main course, I had the butterfish and Jenn had beef. Before dessert, they brought out an exceptional cheese course, with the superstar being this creamy one with truffles in it. We finished with the strawberry souffle for Jenn, which was outstanding, and a big upside down profiterole of which I do not know the name. They also brought us this edible wrapped present with petit fours surrounding it. It was a nice touch. It's always good when a restaurant finishes strong and that they did.
We realized that it wasn't that long of a ride in the taxi to get there, so we walked back. We visited both of the big perfumeries in town, Molinard and Fragonard. Neither was incredibly interesting or exciting, but there is of course lots of stuff for sale.

We headed back to Nice and after an afternoon nap, we ate dinner at Oliviera, which is a small (5 or 6 tables) restaurant run by a husband a wife who cook comfort food and sell homemade olive oil. The place was tiny, so the kitchen was out in the open. We could watch and smell our meal being cooked. It was nothing fancy, but everything was very good. We started with buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes, which was easily the highlight of the night. It was awesome. Jenn had lasagna, which she didn't like as much as the one she had the first night and I really enjoyed my beef cannelloni. Everything tasted so homemade. With each course, the owner came out and told us about a different olive oil as he drizzled it over our dish. I enjoyed this meal more than Jenn, but we both liked the experience. We skipped dessert as there wasn't anything too enticing on their menu. Plus, we were full. Keep in mind, throughout the trip, even if I don't mention it, we stopped at almost any chocolate shop we passed and bought something to sample.

DAY 4 - Dec 29
After a few days of riding the bus, we hopped aboard the morning train to Cannes, and in 30 minutes (maybe a little more), we were there. Our first stop was the Forville Market, where we picked up a few things for a picnic lunch. We still have a hard time understanding why almost every European city has a nice farmer's market except for Bratislava. It was a bit cold for a picnic lunch, but we still enjoyed snacking on bread, cheese, and tapenades on a bench. The setting wasn't all that nice either as we were on a busy street next to a bus stop, but we kind of had a view of the water. Our hands were numb at the end, but it was worth it.

There wasn't any sight-seeing we were especially interested in doing in Cannes, so we just walked the streets, window shopped, and hit up just about every chocolate store they had. Maybe it was the weather, but I really expected Cannes to be much nicer and prettier. There is a lot of shopping, some of which is incredibly high end (more thank likely to accomodate those docking their yachts there). There's also plenty of regular shopping, but that's really about all there is to do there. We had enough late in the afternoon and headed back to Nice.

Dinner that evening was at a place with the unfortunate name of Don Camillo Creations, but surprisingly still had very good food. I had fish again, which was fine, but not spectacular, and Jenn had the scallops, which she liked a lot. Dessert was a pretty good chocolate fondant. A chocolate fondant is always a nice way to end a day.

DAY 5 - Dec 30

We started off the day at the Cours Saleya Market in Nice, which was fantastic. We liked it better than the Cannes one from the day before. We ate croissants (as usual, regular for me and chocolate for Jenn) and then topped that off with cookies from a place called Emilie's cookies that we found. We discussed how grand life would be if every day involved a morning walk to the market to grab a croissant for breakfast and then everything else we needed to cook our dinner that evening. Maybe we need a winter cottage in France. If you're thinking that we should hold off on having a second home before we even own a house, I hear you, but I kindly ask that you to let us enjoy our fantasy for now. If your response to that is that our whole life is a fantasy, I agree with you to a point, but as someone who has spent most hours of most days for nearly 32 years worrying and stressing about things that don't need to be stressed or worried about, I think I'm entitled.

We then took the train again, this time to Antibes. Walking to town from the train station, we passed yet another port filled with yachts. I haven't mentioned it yet, but in all these towns, there are not only tons of yachts, but also tons of yacht brokers, which leads me to believe that there is quite a lot of turnover. Someone's got to be keeping the brokers in business. I'll say this.  If you have some extra cash, a couple million or so sitting around, there does not seem to be any shortage of yachts or property for sale along the riviera. It's really a sad sign of the economic times that all these people have to sell their yachts and 3rd or 4th homes.

We walked through the Picasso Museum, which I would call half a Picasso Museum. It seems in many towns in Europe, if an artist spent time there and there's a handful or so of their artwork, they get a museum with their name on it, in hopes to lure tourists. The building itself is cool. It's in an old castle that overlooks the water. The art itself wasn't bad. Besides the painting, Picasso's time in Antibes also included work on ceramics, so there was a nice collection of plates and vases as well.

After walking around town a little and once Jenn had bought a postcard and a souvenir spoon (her standard purchases for everywhere we travel), we went back to Nice. One of the problems with not renting a car, is that it wasn't so easy to go back and forth between towns, so we ended up eating most of our dinners back in Nice. This night, we walked over to the port, which ended up being a little farther than we thought it was, but not too bad, and ate a little Italian place called L'Allegro. A woman, who I assumed was one of the owners, made the pasta fresh in the middle of the restaurant to order. That was worth the price of admission. Jenn's mushroom ravioli was huge and tasty. The chef was a bit heavy handed with the salt on my shrimp pasta, but it wasn't bad. The very rich chocolate brownie thing we had for dessert was nice.

We talked through New Year's Eve plans on the long walk back to the hotel.

DAY 6 - Dec 31
I'm getting exhausted just writing this, so I congratulations if you've made it this far reading it. I'll try to keep this one simple.

We had surveyed the options for dinner along the coast and after reading through fixed menu after fixed menu that cost a small fortune, we decided we would have our own New Year's Eve picnic in our hotel room. We hit the market again in the morning and picked up breads, cheese, tapenades, and a couple of clementines. We bought cookies from Emilie's again (double chocolate was my favorite), some chocolate from a couple different shops, Patisserie Lac and Cornet Philippe, and a bottle of champagne (Fleury, recommended by them) from La Part des Anges, which was a great shop recommended by Timeout. We were excited.

We quickly walked through the small, but nice Chagall Museum.

For the remainder of the afternoon, we walked around Eze and took in the beautiful views from the Jardin Exotique. We stayed up in Eze Village and didn't make it down to the water as we assumed it would all be closed as we saw with most of the small towns on the coast. We'll have to make a return trip to the Cote d'Azur when it's warm to hit up some of areas we missed.

Our New Year's Eve picnic was just as good as we thought it would be. The hotel didn't even charge us for the bucket of ice for the champagne or the glasses. Merci beaucoup, Le Meridien.

We showered and as Barney would say on How I Met Your Mother, we suited up. Actually, I suited up, but Jenn got dressed up too. We took the train to Monte Carlo to bring in the new year with the pretty people. Actually, Monte Carlo is really filled with a lot of people hoping to rub elbows with the pretty people, but not sure if anyone there is that pretty. The main square in front of the casino was packed with people, but they were kind of just standing there and not doing anything. I guess it was like Times Square in that way, except with no Ryan Seacrest.

We went into the casino and contributed some money to the economy of Monaco. The building itself is ornate and quite pretty, but the atmosphere was kind of lame. It was extremely quiet and very business-like. I got the feeling it wasn't a lot of regulars and no one really knew how to act in there. Everyone, including us, seemed to want it to be high class and feel like we were in a James Bond film, but it wasn't to be. After taking in the fireworks at the port with the masses, we took one more peek into the casino, were not inspired to stay, and headed for the bus stop for the night bus back to Nice. The bus was 45 minutes late. We were frustrated, but at the same time, we were thrilled that it showed up at all and that we wouldn't be stuck for the evening on the streets of Monte-Carlo. It wasn't all ideal, but we had a fun evening. New Year's Eve never lives up to expectations, so we should all understand that by now.

DAY 7 - Jan 1
Bon jour, 2011.

We had a 3 and a half hour delicious lunch at La Petite Maison in Nice that could have been 2 and a half hours if not for shitty service. It's a small restaurant that has been very popular with locals that is becoming more and more popular with tourists. The food is clean, simple, and fantastic. We did the 10 course small plate menu which included artichoke salad, shrimp salad, buratta and tomatoes, smoked salmon, stuffed vegetables, fried calamari, zucchini flowers, scrambled egg with truffles, langoustine, and truffle mac 'n cheese. We liked every single thing we were served. Jenn chose the buratta and the shrimp as her favorites, and I would go with the truffle mac 'n cheese. We couldn't leave France without one more dessert, so even though we were full, we had white chocolate mousse with raspberries.
Needing to walk off the meal, we walked up to the old Chateau up on the hill overlooking the city. The views were great
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And as our vacation then came to an end, so does this very long blog post. Yes, it would have been nice if it would have been sunnier, warmer, and if more things were open, but we still really had a wonderful trip. We woke up the next day back to snow, Slovak food, and reality. Unfortunately, vacations (as with most good things) must eventually come to an end, though we're trying like hell to fight it.

For a few more pictures, click here