The trip & the holiday...

Well now that Wifey has gone to work for the first day of her new adventure at Amadeus Sophia Antipolis, I figured I would finally setup this blog to keep you all up to date with our adventures over here in the French Riviera. I did send some of you a brief email about our first few days here and some of that content is included here for those of you who didn't get it the first time.

A special mention must be made of the kindness and generosity of Helen, John and Christine in Birchgrove Rd Balmain. They kindly took us in and looked after us when we found ourselves homeless and even provided a venue for my 40th / farewell party on the Saturday before we left. You guys are fantastic and we will always remember the help you gave us at such a stressful and critical time.

The trip itself was long but uneventful. The most memorable bit was getting off a 23 hour long haul flight at Nice-Cote d'Azur airport and wandering around the carpark in 36 degree heat looking for the Europcar outlet all the while lugging 100+kg in about 8 bags! Fortunately when we did finally find the outlet they had a wonderful tent set up with misting water to cool us down whilst we queued for service - definitely something you wouldn't see in Oz with the water restrictions there.

We also managed to find our way from Nice to Antibes in one piece despite having to drive on the wrong side of the road amongst absolute maniac drivers. By the time we arrived in Antibes I think we had been on the go for about 28 hours since leaving Balmain.

Our temporary accommodation is in Antibes - pronounced "onteeb". We really like it in Antibes though and we think we will stay here. We have had a look around some of the other areas - Juan Les Pins, Valbonne, Biot & Mougins - and Antibes seems to be the one for us. It is an awesome little town of about 70,000 people with quaint, classic south-of-France alleyways and town squares, a cosmopolitan town centre and a port with some of the biggest privately owned yachts I have ever seen.

Whilst we may have survived the trip here in one piece, Cathy somehow managed to tombé d'un trouer (fell down a hole) on the sea wall shortly after taking the shots below. Here's the sequence...

It's OK - she was up and running (literally) two days later...

I have uploaded some photos of Antibes, most of the old town (Vieil Antibes) and the sea wall / rampart areas. You can see these at http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrian_cathy_france/sets/72157622204126686/

Read more about Antibes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibes

As far as the language is concerned, we are getting by on Cathy's long-forgotten French skills and my uncanny ability to read it, but I can't speak it to save myself, nor understand a thing they are saying because they speak at a million miles an hour (much the same way as they drive really...). But we do have to make a very special mention to Elizabeth M.C Stibbs and the generous gift of her old French-English / English-French pocket dictionary. It has come in very useful and we are slowly building our vocabulary. We will cherish it forever.

We drove to Monaco on Sunday, for want of something better to do! Definitely worth another visit - probably for a weekend or so. I understand there's some big car racing event or some such thing there in May....?

We might drive to Italy next weekend...

We are now in the hunt for some real / permanent accommodation. This will undoubtedly be an apartment of some description - we're not in Oz anymore Toto!! We have seen a bit already but nothing has really taken our fancy. Fingers crossed for something which really has the feel of southern France / the Mediterranean...

It's Cathy's first day at work today. And I start an eight week long, full time French course on Monday. We will update you about these two activities next week.

Au revoir for now.