A Year in Villefranche sur Mer - Moving to France

Day 238 (Wednesday) We are still relishing in our superb new view without the tops of the olive trees and after the initial shock of seeing such leafy trees being hacked back, they are now starting to look pretty again. I have no idea why the tree man left all these dangly bits but they are rather lovely. As you know I am reading Stephen Clarke ‘In the Merde for love’ at the moment and I was tickled pink by his reference to ham and cheese in French cuisine. As I’ve said before wherever we have travelled all over the world, well mostly, there is always ham and cheese, particularly in France. The character in this book has just opened an English teashop in Paris and is talking about where the ingredients in their products come from saying … …Our curried potato salad was made with the best French mayonnaise. All our other salads came with the least English vinaigrette in Europe. And the ingredients for our toasted sandwiches – cheese, cheese and ham, cheese and tomato, or, if y...

Day 237 (Tuesday) It was a bit cloudy this morning and it lasted most of the day – quelle horreur! I found a few more fun facts for you today…   1. France was the first country to introduce a public transport system. In the 1660s,  "five-floor carriages"  were a system of horse-drawn carriages circulating at a fixed time and on lines linking various neighbourhoods of Paris. The concept was developed by Blaise Pascal. 2. Until World War II, France was on the same time zone as London. After occupying the country in 1940, Germa ny forced France to  conform with Berlin time , and this change has never been cancelled. 3. In France, traders  are under no obligation to give change to their customers . According to the law, it is the customer who has to pay with the exact money. 4. In 1940, France and the United Kingdom  briefly considered  merging into one nation to face the German invasion. The project included  common citizenship an...

Day 236 (Monday) I was woken up this morning by a very strange thing; I could hear a man’s voice that wasn’t Huw’s and it sounded very close. I went onto the terrace and I was quite taken aback when I saw a man at the top of the neighbours’ olive tree cutting it back. He looked up and I think we were both feeling a bit embarrassed so we both sort of smiled and I said ‘bonjour’ and so did he and I went back inside. Geoff picked me up at 10am and we did a good solid four hours work at the restaurant making the kitchen look like a kitchen again. While I was up there Huw sent me a text saying that he’d seen that he’d seen a number of large fish jumping in the bay and he’s pretty sure they were dolphins, damn, missed that! When I got the tree cutting man was still at work and he was cutting the second tree. The transformation of our view was spectacular; we can now see the whole bay and the lighthouse. This is what it used to look like… And this is what it looks like now ...

Day 235 (Sunday) As predicted by the weather forecast we woke up to a gloriously warm sunny day and had breakfast on the terrace wearing t-shirts. We had planned to do a 5km walk today from Menton to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin and it was difficult to know what to wear as it was so warm yet we know that as soon as the sun goes behind the mountain the temperature really drops. Huw settled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt putting his hoodie in the bag and I decided on knee-length leggings, a pretty summer top and espadrilles, putting long leggings, a cardigan and socks in the bag. It was so exciting to set out for the day not wearing socks in January! We caught the bus to Menton, which took about 45 minutes and when we were driving through Monaco I worked out that it was 35 years ago that I first set foot in there – how old am I? When I was in my early 20s I camped in a camping ground on a hill outside Menton and I was bit disappointed that I didn’t recognise anything.   We headed do...