Adrian's new hair!!

MADAME MEADE'S MAGNIFIQUE MAKEOVERS

We went to Carnaval de Nice last weekend and met up with Cathy's sister, Laura, who is / was living there temporarily - more on that later. Cathy purchased a can of spray string whilst we weren't paying attention... Got my self a new coif and much cheaper than those hair transplant procedures. YEAH YEAH!

Le Carnaval de Nice is one of the highlights on the Riviera winter events calendar. To quote their website "The main winter event on the Riviera is one of the largest carnivals in the world, offering a programme of unforgettable entertainment". There are carnival parades of floats and marching bands, etc rolling down the streets around the main city square, which is what we went to see last weekend. There is also a parade of flowers, well actually known as La Bataile des Fleurs (literally translated as the battle of the flowers), along the world famous Promenade des Anglais, amongst other miscellaneous festivities.

The word "carnavale" actually has its origins based around a lead up to Easter and Lent though that aspect seems to have worn off over the centuries. The Nice carnival dates back to 1294 and now spans three weekends and ends with "Mardi-Gras" on Tuesday 8 March when they burn the king! Now historically speaking I am not entirely sure where the whole burning of the king thing comes from. It's not like an effigy of a real king or anything. A large float with the king of the carnival arrives into the main square of Nice, Place Massena, on the first night of the carnival. He stays there for the duration of the festivities and is then, on the final evening of Mardi-Gras, taken out to sea and set on fire so that he may rise from the ashes the following year. All research is a little vague on the details so now you know as much as the locals really.

Anyway enough with the history lesson and onto the photos...

That's about it for now really. We've been pretty quiet this last month or so - a bit of skiing but the snow hasn't been great in these parts this season unfortunately. Also as mentioned previously Laura & Rory were staying with us for a couple of weeks in January; they since moved to Nice for a month looking for work, found work in Antibes so are now back with us looking for more permanent digs in our sleepy little winter town. Cathy and I are off to Paris in April for a few days, so our next posting will probably update you with that followed by the Monte-Carlo Grand Prix in May.

Oh and just for the record, since our last posting we received the following two photos from our ski trip to Méribel. Our ski instructor took these on our last day of skiing there when we were trying our hand at deep snow skiing. Well the snow was deep enough to bury the both of us at times...