La Colombe d’Or
La Colombe d’Or at St. Paul de Vence is one of the world’s great restaurants. Not in the sense of the food, which is very good, but in the whole ambience, as you sit surrounded by millions of euros worth of modern art.
The restaurant has hardly changed since we went there all of those years ago. There is some more art and you can stay in the attached hotel, but that is perhaps all. Even the menus are still the same.
The experience was just as good.
The House with the Private Beach
When we sold Metier in 1985, we bought a house on the Cap d’Antibes called Les Ondes on the Chemin des Ondes.
I had been worried that images from Google showed what looked like a large development where the house had been. But when I walked up the road, the house was still there and appeared to have changed little since we sold it in the early 1990s.
The beach had changed little too, although you will notice there is now a sign, which shows that it is a public beach. It was for most of the year private though, in that there was no parking nearby and others couldn’t be bothered to walk from Juan or Antibes.
But they had made the road one way up the hill!
We spent several happy summers at Les Ones, but in the end sold it as it was always getting burgled when we were there. We also had three hire cars stolen from outside. Talking to staff in the hotel, they felt that things had got a lot better. I hope that’s right. But then it was never too bad until May.
One holiday stands out. My wife and I took, one of her barrister colleagues, Martin, away to the house for a few days. He was and hopefully still is very outspoken. He would lie on that beach and say in a loud upper-class English voice, ‘Look at that lump of lard over there’ at some lady who’d been eating for two. Luckily, no-one understood his English or perhaps most were laughing with him.
That holiday too we went to a Michelin starred restaurant in Antibes, where the wine waiter was the spitting image of Stephen Fry, doing an impression of Lord Melchett from Blackadder, doing a cariacature of a wine waiter complete with tastevin. He never understood why we kept laughing at him.
I also remember this so well, as Martin paid for his holiday with a painting, that sits in my dining room.
Antibes and the Picasso Museum
I at least managed to get to the Picasso Museum in Antibes. When we had the house on the Cap d’Antibes, we did go a couple of times, but inevitably when we tried it was closed. And it was closed on our last visit in April 2007.
The museum is very much worth a visit as it is one of the best collections of Picasso’s work. I suspect too, that it has got bigger in the twenty years since I last visited. There is also a large collection of works by Nicolas de Stael, who is an artist, of whom I’d never heard.
But then what do I know about art?
As you can see in the pictures, there is still a lot of work being done around the museum.
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.
The Anonymous Widower 