A Year in Villefranche sur Mer - Moving to France

  Day 1697 (Sunday) 30 th January 2022 It was another glorious day and after a nice lie in we caught the bus to Nice to meet Andy for lunch. We met at the horrible Irish bar Ma Nolan’s in the Old Port in Nice. We both hate this Irish pub but Huw fancied a pint of Guinness. From there we walked to Place Garibaldi and had a superb lunch.  Both Andy and Huw chose ‘fish and chips’ and I had the pasta with Italian ‘corned beef’. I knew it wasn’t going to be corned beef as we know it but I was very curious and it turned out that I chose the right option – it was superb. On the way back to the bus stop we saw this wonderful window display of giant corks Fascinating Facts about Nice Nice is a veritable kaleidoscope of history, traversing scoundrels, artists, aristocrats, monarchs and martyrs.   Here are a few of the highlights… First Tourists    Nice’s first tourists started coming almost 400,000 years ago and were transient cave-dwellers that came to Nice once a year to hunt woolly mammoths!

  Day 1696 (Saturday) 29 th January 2022 It was gorgeous again this morning and after doing some household chores we had a lovely lazy day in the sun. Last night I got my fluffy parka out from under the bed and my every-day parka was already on the bed. Badger was spoilt for choice and went from one to the other kneading them. I felt so guilty when I had to take him off fluffy to wear to Le Phare. We had a really good time in the Le Phare and it was wonderful to see Andy again. Adam, one of the new expats in town, is a musician and he needed a video of himself playing the guitar and singing so Huw took the video. There were about ten of us so we stood close to Adam making it look like there was a big crowd of fans at his gig – it was really good fun and the video was great. The video was for a job interview to perform regularly in a bar in Antibes, fingers crossed he gets it. Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns called Le, La or Les An old WW2 photo taken in the French port

  Day 1695 (Friday) 28 th January 2022 It was lovely and sunny again and I caught the train to Monaco. There was a big market in the Centre Commercial with sales of -50% and -70%, so even the rich Monegasques like a good sale. I had a pleasant ten minutes in Princess Grace’s rose garden before heading into the hotel. This is the hallway of the 9 th floor And this is the view from their enormous terrace, one of their enormous terraces. I worked with Olga first and she told me that it was their youngest granddaughter’s first birthday yesterday and showed me photos of the party. They were taken in a lovely room with a conservatory and I asked about the house. This is her middle son who is probably in his late 20s/early 30s and they rent a house in Chelsea, which is very narrow but has five floors, a conservatory and a small garden. This is the same child who had a birthday party in the villa in the summer every month, and whose first flight was on a private plane when she was four month