Wandering Around Nice
Nice was only a short bus ride away from Cap Ferrat and it was a Euro well spent.
Cycling Around Cap Ferrat
Over the last two days, I’ve been getting a bit of sun and cycling around Saint Jean Cap Ferrat as far as Beaulieu-sur-Mer one way and Villefranche-sur-Mer the other. It’s not been all about eating and drinking the occasional glass of rose.
Sadly, there seems to be a shortage of OTT rose.
Fountains at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild
This video shows the fountains in the gardens.
In some ways this video is a bit disappointing. Or at least the sound is!
Musee Ephrussi de Rothschild
This is a series of pictures taken at the Musee Ephrussi de Rothschild.
Booking for the South of France
On Friday, I’m going away for a few days to the South of France. My late wife always threatened me with the legendary Pierre Gruneberg at the Grand Hotel du Cap-Ferrat to get me to swim.
So I’m going!
My doctor says that I shouldn’t fly and although I sometimes disagree with medics, I’ll take the advice, so that I can go on the train. My late wife and I always said we’d take the train one way and fly the other. Now, I’m going to take it all the way from Cambridge via St. Pancras and Paris to Nice. And all the way back, but that trip means changing at Lille instead of Paris.
The cost is £510 for the round trip, but that is a fully-flexible first class. I’d pay half-that to just get to Manchester from Euston on Virgin Trains, so I think it is good value! Interestingly in the 1980s, you used to pay £300 return to fly London to Nice in Economy.
It will be the longest trip, that I’ve ever done on a train.
The Paris Metro does History
I have posted several articles about how the London Underground is making sure that it restores old stations sensitively and creates new ones of class.
So here’s two pictures from Paris.
Pigalle Metro Station, Paris
This shows the entrance to Pigalle station near Montmartre. The French have resisted any thoughts to change the design.
To match the Gillespie Road tiling, here’s the tiling at Concorde.
Tiling in Concorde Metro Station, Paris
Note too in the picture above that the instructions on how to use the Metro are shown. They’ve also started to put maps of the area around the station on the platform. This and putting maps upstairs should always be there. London always does the latter and I always use them when I visit an unfamiliar station.
The non-Eclipse of 1999
I say non-Eclipse of 1999, as despite being at the centre of it, I saw nothing, as it was overcast. At least it wasn’t raining, as we were in the middle of a ploughed field, when it went totally dark.
Hotel Mercure, Peronne-Assevillers
This is where I stayed on that trip and also where I stayed on Tuesday night. It hasn’t changed much, but then it is almost the only hotel actually on the motorway between Lille and Paris.
I still intend to see an eclipse of the sun.
Cambridge to Holland via Paris
I left Cambridge at 19:00 hours on Tuesday and took the Dover Dunkirk ferry, stopping overnight on the A1 to Paris. It was a crap Mercure and I’ll be posting something later on my blog about it and the non-Eclipse of 1999, where a Belgian weatherman told me to go to the wrong place. I don’t think they’ve given it a proper once-over since.
I then drove into the centre of Paris, did Montmatre, had a meeting and then left at 4:17, only to get stuck in traffic on the Periphique. I arrived at my destination five minutes over five hours later having done about 625 miles from Cambridge most of it at about 130 to 140 kph. How many 18 year old cars could do that? Most of it during the day was with the top down, which was perhaps a bit ambitious, but then top down is the only way to travel for safety, as the visibility is so much better.
The only problem was the peage, as to get the ticket, I had to get out. And I had a very irate Belgian behind me. They always seem to be in a hurry. And then around Lille and towards Gent, the Belgian road signs leave something to be desired. It’s called logic! Like the signs say follow Gent and then they call in Gand or even miss it off completely. They even manage to give Lille in France a completely different name!
Perhaps, I should write to that nice von Rumpy Pumpy, who heads the EU and complain about his country’s signage. On the other hand, perhaps the Belgians drive like lunatics all the time, as they are forever getting confused by their signs?
France and Haiti
I like to look at history. Often it gives strong reasons, why things are done in the way they are or in Haiti’s case, it points to why the country is such a basket case. I had vaguely heard that the country had been founded by a slave revolt acouple of centuries ago, but I didn’t know the truth.
Now Ben Macintyre in a powerful article in The Times lays the blame firmly on France. Here’s the history.
In the 18th century, Haiti was France’s imperial jewel, the Pearl of the Caribbean, the largest sugar exporter in the world. Even by colonial standards, the treatment of slaves working the Haitian plantations was truly vile. They died so fast that, at times, France was importing 50,000 slaves a year to keep up the numbers and the profits.
Inspired by the principles of the French Revolution, in 1791 the slaves rebelled under the leadership of the self-educated slave Toussaint L’Ouverture. After a vicious war, Napoleon’s forces were defeated. Haiti declared independence in 1804.
As Haiti struggles with new misfortune, it is worth remembering that noble achievement — this is the only nation to gain independence by a slave-led rebellion, the first black republic, and the second oldest republic in the western hemisphere. Haiti was founded on a demand for liberty from people whose liberty had been stolen: the country itself is a tribute to human resilience and freedom.
France did not forgive the impertinence and loss of earnings: 800 destroyed sugar plantations, 3,000 lost coffee estates. A brutal trade blockade was imposed. Former plantation owners demanded that Haiti be invaded, its population enslaved once more. Instead, the French State opted to bleed the new black republic white.
In 1825, in return for recognising Haitian independence, France demanded indemnity on a staggering scale: 150 million gold francs, five times the country’s annual export revenue. The Royal Ordinance was backed up by 12 French warships with 150 cannon.
Haiti finally finished paying the debts to France in 1947. But by that time it was a bankrupt nation with no resources.
Read the full article.
Roy Keane on Ireland-France
Roy Keane was very blunt about Ireland on the BBC yesterday. There’s a video on the link, but here’s some of what he said.
France were there for the taking and Ireland didn’t do it. Same old story.
If I’d been there in the dressing room after the game, I wouldn’t be talking about the handball. I’d focus on why the defenders didn’t clear it. They should’ve cleared it.
I’d be more annoyed with my defenders and my goalkeeper than Thierry Henry. How can you let the ball bounce in your six-yard box? How can you let Thierry Henry get goal-side of you? If the ball goes into the six-yard box, where the hell is my goalkeeper?
He has a point, but there is one point that no-one has made in the media.
I play real tennis a lot and like anybody who plays these sort of games, you play to where the ball lands. So if you know if an opponent’s serve is going out, you never run for it. It’s the same in football. Does a goalkeeper jump if the ball is going two metres over the bar? Of course not!
I have not seen a shot of the face of Shay Given, but did he think that Thierry Henry’s handball was so blatant that the referee would blow his whistle? So he didn’t go for the ball as it came back across the goal.
So perhaps the real fault of the Irish team was that they didn’t play to the whistle.
The Anonymous Widower 