John - Archived Entries for 2013 / 9

Try to pretend you don't want one of these tweed caps.

Dr John Hawkins

Welcome to my bit of the Maison de Stuff, home to a huge load of pictures, and my daily blog.

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Recent Entries:: Box Hill
Mega Blocks Tower
Thursday
Monte Carlo Posters
Tuesday
Lorenzo Meets Erika
Sunday
Pizza Pilgrims
Friday
Mega Blocks
Buckingham Palace
Tuesday
Monday
Canterbury
Truffle, Porcini, Umbrella
Friday
Thursday
Baby Otafuku Sauce
Erika's Birthday
Back to London
The Day After Erika's Party
Erika's Birthday Party
Arriving in Herefordshire
Thursday
Wednesday
Tuesday
Monaco to London
Sunday in Monaco
Saturday in Menton
London to Menton
Cat
Evening Stroll
Tuesday
Erika at the Office
Roding Valley

Box Hill: [Saturday 28th September 2013]
Chie took Erika to see Vauxhall City Farm with some of her friends this afternoon, so I was given the afternoon off from parenting duties. I had a bit of a craving for the countryside, and also wanted an excuse to wear my new red trousers I'd bought last weekend, to go with my tweed jacket.

So after a brief foray out to Jermyn Street with Erika in the morning, to pick up said trousers (the legs were unfinished when i'd bought them) and also an Ordnance Survey map of the Box Hill area, I headed out of London around lunchtime in the direction of Surrey.

Despite only being just outside the M25, the train is pretty slow, and it takes almost an hour to get to Box Hill and Westhumble, the nearest station. On arrival I made straight for the main Box Hill viewpoint as marked very prominently on the map, by way of the stepping stones over the river Mole, and up the surprisingly steep steps to the top. Mindful that I wanted to get to the pub before they stopped serving lunch I didn't linger too long, and thanks to the Ordnance Survey managed to locate a fairly direct bridleway which would take me from there to Mickleham, where the Running Horses was. This was probably my favourite bit of the day's walking, the path led up onto a sort of ridge, and heading North rather than South meant the view was largely of other green hills, rather than, as it had been from the famous viewpoint, of Dorking.

I arrived at the Running Horses just before 2:30 (a whole half hour to spare before they stopped serving food). It's a very smart country pub, apparently 16th century, the staff behind the bar dressed in the way you'd expect waiters and waitresses in an upmarket restaurant to be. In addition to the bar area there's a quite formal looking restaurant area - which was empty. I imagine it fills up for Sunday lunch. I decided to sit outside, at least in part because my hasty descent from Box Hill had left me feeling a tad overheated, but also because most of the tables in the bar were taken when I arrived. I enjoyed a leisurely lunch here before heading off on the final leg of the walk, from there back to the station. I think I devised rather a nice circular route in the end.
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Mega Blocks Tower: [Friday 27th September 2013]
Made a tower with Erika's Mega Blocks.
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Thursday: [Thursday 26th September]
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Monte Carlo Posters: [Wednesday 25th September 2013]
Got a couple of Monte Carlo posters to decorate the space by my desk at work.
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Tuesday: [Tuesday 24th September]
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Lorenzo Meets Erika: [Monday 23rd September 2013]
Lorenzo was in London for a short business trip, giving him the opportunity to meet Erika for the first time.
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Sunday: [Sunday 22nd September 2013]
Nothing in particular!
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Pizza Pilgrims: [Saturday 21st September 2013]
Took Erika and Chie for lunch at Pizza Pilgrims.
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Friday: [Friday 20th September]
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Mega Blocks: [Thursday 19th September 2013]
Played with Erika's Mega Blocks in the evening.
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Buckingham Palace: [Wednesday 18th September 2013]
Erika wasn't feeling so well today, so I took the day off to look after her, and in the afternoon when she was a bit better we did the tour of Buckingham Palace.
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Tuesday: [Tuesday 17th September]
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Monday: [Monday 16th September]
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Canterbury: [Sunday 15th September 2013]
Went down to Canterbury to see Leon, Yukari and the kids.
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Truffle, Porcini, Umbrella: [Saturday 14th September 2013]
Various shopping today. Around 10:30 I headed out with Erika to go to Borough Market, as it seemed like the right sort of time of year to go looking for interesting wild mushrooms. I bought a black truffle from Italy (somewhere near Bologna apparently) and some ceps from France (since the stall was ran by Italians it was interesting they didn't just call them porcini). I also popped into the German deli while I was there.

From there we took the Jubilee line to Green Park where I picked up the second of the two shirts I'd ordered from Turnbull and Asser on Jermyn Street way back in June (there had been a bit of a mishap), and also had a look at some umbrellas in Briggs, in the Piccadilly Arcade. After that Chie met us at Green Park station, and we headed to Bond Street, to go to the Yves Saint Laurent shop where, to my surprise, Chie bought a bag. We've often been into one or the other of these shops on Bond Street and Chie normally has a look at something then goes away to have a think about it, and never goes back to buy it. She seemed impressively decisive today.

For lunch we headed over to Woodlands, partly just because it was the first place that came to mind in the vague area of Piccadilly which seemed baby compatible.

Our shopping expedition then continued on to James Smith, the umbrella shop on New Oxford Street, where I settled on a very modestly priced umbrella (compared to the ones I'd been considered in Briggs), rationalising that I might lose it like I had the last one, or worse still a really nice umbrella might even tempt some ne'er do well to make off with it.

From there we got the bus back home, where we had a bit of a rest, before venturing out again for a vaccination appointment for Erika (yes impressively they do these on Saturdays) and a bit of additional food shopping at Sainsbury's.

So for dinner we had a mycological feast with a Germanic twist - sauteed porcini on toasted pretzel bread to start, followed by spaetzle with black truffle.
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Friday: [Friday 13th September 2013]
My office has seemed very quiet this week, and nobody was around for TGIF at the end of the day today. Instead I went for a bit of a wander after work, to the Strand, where London Fashion Week is on at Somerset House. I stood around outside for a little bit on the off chance I might see someone famous. I didn't see anyone I recognised. After that I had a quick pint at the Seven Stars then headed home.
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Thursday: [Thursday 12th September 2013]
I dropped Erika off at nursery this morning, which made me feel very grown up indeed. She wasn't quite as happy about it as she had been the previous day though, but I suppose some tears are inevitable.

In the evening we had Japanese curry for dinner.

We also took Erika's hand and foot print - see picture.
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Baby Otafuku Sauce: [Wednesday 11th September 2013]
Erika is currently in the settling in period at nursery - she went for a few afternoons last week, and this week is doing a few full days. Chie and I went to drop her off together this morning, and this time at least she seemed to let us leave her there without any fuss at all. After dropping her off Chie and I decided to go for breakfast at the Regency Cafe, before I went off to work.

At lunchtime we met up again briefly, as I wanted to view a flat. As a slight change of strategy I've briefly been considering buying just whatever we can buy for cash, even if it's tiny or not somewhere we'd particularly want to live ourselves - that way at least our capital is rising in value at the rate house prices are rising in London (by some estimates as much as 10% a year) and not just devaluing in the bank. Not sure if we'll really go ahead with this plan or not - certainly the specific place we looked at today was one where we had to put on offer on it the same day, and we didn't feel comfortable enough with this strategy yet to do that.

In the evening Chie made okonomiyaki for dinner, the main reason being that we'd received a bottle of baby otafuku sauce in the post from Japan, which is suitable from 1 year onwards, and Chie was really keen for Erika to try it. We cut Erika's okonomiyaki into tiny baby bite size pieces, and put a bit of sauce and some aonori on each one, so she could eat the bits by hand. She seemed to rather like it.
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Erika's Birthday: [Tuesday 10th September 2013]
The main celebrations for Erika's birthday had been at the weekend, so today was a relatively quiet affair by comparison.

We decided it might be nice to have some family portraits done, and Chie had arranged a session in a photo studio for this morning. It was an hour and a half session, and at the end the photographer gave us all the files on a DVD for us to do whatever we wanted with. I liked this plan, much better than having to pay some extortionate rate every time you wanted to print one. Erika was a little unsure of what was going on at first, so she isn't smiling in quite a lot of the pictures at the start, but did eventually start to relax a bit. We took a couple of changes of outfit (for us as well as Erika!), and it was, overall, quite a fun experience. I think we ended up with somewhere in the region of 300 photos - I've just uploaded a selection of some of the ones I thought came out best here.

I went to work for the remainder of the daytime, and in the evening I thought it might be nice to go back to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and have dinner at the Carluccio's opposite - I'd got takeaway from there the day Erika was born.
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Back to London: [Monday 9th September 2013]
An early start (with Erika it would have been anyway) to do the final cleaning tasks on the house, which included a mad dash out in the rain to catch the rubbish van, which came half an hour earlier than we were told it would.

We left before 10am, but we seem to have a variant of Parkinson's Law which always affects us whenever we drive anywhere, and somehow we didn't drop the hire car off in London until 4:30, which, in line with Parkinson's Law, was the time we'd somewhat arbritrarily told the car hire company we'd be returning it. We did make a couple of brief stop offs en route - to buy some apples at a farm shop in Herefordshire, then for lunch in Cirencester (we ended up going to a West Cornwall Pasty Co, in the absence of anywhere more appealing, and I left my umbrella there), and finally a quick coffee at Reading services as we were starting to flag a bit.

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The Day After Erika's Party: [Sunday 8th September 2013]
Fairly quiet day at the house we'd rented for Erika's birthday, the day after the party.
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Erika's Birthday Party: [Saturday 7th September 2013]
Erika woke us up some time after 5 this morning, as she's in the habit of doing recently, and we went downstairs to make her some milk. I didn't really manage to get back to sleep after that, so a bit later on took Erika down and fed her breakfast, so at least Chie could get a bit more sleep.

After a somewhat drawn out breakfast as people gradually surfaced, we popped out briefly to the nearby farmshop for some final supplies, and then the remainder of the morning then passed in a flurry of getting things ready for the party. I concentrated on the savoury things - in particular a couple of large plates of sandwiches, while Chie put the finishing touches to Erika's birthday cake. Most of the extra party guests arrived some time around midday - Robin, Vera, Louise and Iain, with the final three (Bec, Dave and Jessica) arriving a bit later as they'd been detained by a the hospital appointment in the morning.

I started popping Champagne corks around 1pm, and we sat down to start eating not long after that. The birthday girl was actually asleep for this bit though! Once the party was properly underway she woke up and made her entrance - only a year old and she already seems to have grasped the concept of being fashionably late.

Of course we ended up with far more food than we could ever possibly eat - the two large platters of sushi were particularly over the top - but we managed to work our way through a substantial chunk of the leftovers throughout the remainder of the weekend, so there wasn't too much waste.

By 2:30 we had moved onto birthday cake and desserts - including Louise's famous pavlova. Holding Erika while everybody sang happy birthday to her and she (well Katie really) blew out the candles was a particularly lovely moment, and really drove home the fact that we have actually created a human being.

It was also really nice to see Erika playing with Jessica, there's only about four or five months between them, and I hope there will be plenty more opportunities like this for them to play together.

At a quarter to 4 we headed into one of the sitting rooms in the house, so Erika could open her birthday presents.

Sadly some of the party guests had to leave after that - Bec, Dave and Jessica as well as Dad and Janie. All good things come to an end though, and before they headed off we did at least get a chance for a big group photo out the back of the house, and I'm really pleased with the results - I can't think of any other photo which has so many of my family members in. It really was quite a momentous occasion.

A little later on in the afternoon a few of us went for a stroll around the local area (the kids however could not be persuaded to come with us even with bribery!). Monnington is a tiny little village, more of a hamlet really, but does have a very attractive little church, and a grand residence in the form of Monnington Court, with an impressive yew lined avenue leading up to it.

To our pleasant surprise Vera and Robin decided to stay on for the night, as there was a free room now with Dad and Janie only having stayed the one night, so we still had a full house of 12 even after our daytime party guests had gone home. Adrian popped out and bought some pasta for the kids from the farmshop for dinner, and I managed to cobble together a meal including an extra lasagne I'd made for the previous evening for some of the others.

I didn't stay up much past 10, having been up since not long after 5, and being quite tired with all the preparations for the party. Still though an absolutely lovely day, and all the preparations and planning were definitely worth it!
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Arriving in Herefordshire: [Friday 6th September 2013]
Picked up a hire car in this morning, and headed out of London in the direction of Herefordshire where we'd rented a house for the weekend, for Erika's birthday. We made a stop en route at the Waitrose in Cirencester to do the shopping for the party and have a quick spot of lunch, and arrived at the house a little before 4:30. We were a little late to meet the owner, so had been rushing for the last bit of the journey, but nonetheless the last few miles driving past orchards full of apples - probably just a couple of weeks away from harvest - were very picturesque.

The house was just huge - a farmhouse which had been added to over the years, with 6 bedrooms, a huge open plan kitchen / dining room (with a table big enough to seat 20!) and three different sitting rooms spread out over the ground floor.

Mum and Keith were the first to arrive, not long after we did, and the remainder of our overnight guests didn't get there until much later, thanks to seemingly every road in the southern half of the country having heavy traffic. Dad and Janie made it for about 8:30, whilst Adrian, Liz and the kids ended up arriving some time after 9 I think.

I made a lasagne for dinner tonight for the seven of us there in time for dinner, which seemed to go down rather well.

As Mum commented at the time after the kids had arrived, despite the late hour there was a lovely buzz as they excitedly ran round the house exploring. It was also the first time to have Mum, Dad, and all their grandchildren (plus of course me and Adrian) under one roof, which made it quite a special occasion even the day before the main event.
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Thursday: [Thursday 5th September]
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Wednesday: [Wednesday 4th September]
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Tuesday: [Tuesday 3rd September]
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Monaco to London: [Monday 2nd September 2013]
Erika woke us up around 6:30 this morning, as she had pretty much every morning on this trip.

Last night there had been a Prohibition themed party at "Jimmy'z" - the famous Monaco nightclub which was next to our hotel - and when we woke there seemed to still be people heading home. The whole thing had been an interesting insight into the people of Monaco - the night before we'd seen people looking like they were queueing in their cars for hours to get to the entrance - it hadn't occurred to any of them to just walk the last few hundred yards, presumably because of the importance of "making an entrance". Or maybe they were just extremely lazy. That plus the fact that all over Monaco we'd seen people dressed for this party - it seemed like everyone who lived there was going. Chie said it reminded her of a remote village when there's a barn dance or something. Plus it was interesting to see at least some people had stayed out until daylight the following morning after a Sunday night. They obviously didn't have awkward things like jobs to worry about.

We headed down to breakfast just before 8 (and I think we saw some attendees from the party, who hadn't yet been to sleep), and enjoyed the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel's excellent breakfast out on the terrace, looking out to sea. Hotel breakfasts can be a bit perfunctory, but there, given the setting, it made for quite an event in itself, and a pleasing end to our time in the Cote d'Azur.

The rest of the day was all a bit dull by comparison, if I'm honest. We got a taxi to the station in Monte Carlo, then the TGV from there which would, with a change of carriages at Nice, take us all the way back to Paris.

Return journeys are never as pleasant as outbound ones, but for this one in particular, owing to having made a mistake when booking the seats, and the fact the train ended up over an hour delayed, it really wasn't as relaxing as it could have been. Somehow I'd managed to book Chie and I in two different carriages. I initially managed to get the lady who was meant to be sitting next to Chie to swap - it was after all exactly the same seat in the next carriage, so it didn't seem that unreasonable a request - but later on she came and asked for her seat back, because she believed she'd booked in the quiet carriage (she actually hadn't - both carriages were "Zap" as they call it, which are the non-quiet carriages) and there were people talking near her seat. I thought that was a bit mean of her to split us up like that to be honest, especially as we had a baby with us, but didn't feel like I could say no. In the interim someone had taken my seat, and so I stood sulkily for a while, really annoyed at myself for the stupid mistake, and also frustrated that we were so late, and would probably miss our connection.

When we got to Paris we had a mad dash to try and catch our Eurostar - apparently we checked in one minute before they closed, I think it was about 10 minutes before the train was due to depart. Fortunately passport control and security checks weren't busy so we were able to whizz straight through and get on the train.

I actually cheered up significantly after that as a result of the elation of having caught the train against the odds. So the final leg of the journey was in fact quite a pleasant one.
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Sunday in Monaco: [Sunday 1st September 2013]
This was actually turning out to be quite a frugal holiday, particularly by Cote d'Azur standards. Menton is a pretty cheap place to stay, our hotel there (chosen by Chie) was clean, modern and well situated, but on the basic side of things. For our final night I'd been in charge of booking, and rather uncharacteristically even I had kept a lid on the spending, and found a special offer (a combination of the fact it was a Sunday night, and as of today it was September) at the Monte Carlo Bay, which meant we spent less than half what we did the last time we stayed in Monaco - and that was in March. We'd been keen to go back to the Bay anyway - whilst it's perhaps the least glamorous of the 4 SBM hotels in Monaco, and certainly the least expensive, it does have a really fantastic pool, most rooms have sea views, and the breakfasts are really good.

In keeping with the frugal theme, we rather unglamorously took a bus from Menton to Monaco. Some people arrive in superyachts, helicopters, or at the very least a Ferrari. We went by bus.

We arrived before midday, and our room wasn't ready yet, but they quite generously let us make use of the pool, and so without further ado we ditched our luggage and went for a swim. Erika seemed slightly less averse to the idea of joining us than she had when we swam in the sea yesterday, so we theorised the waves may have been the issue.

After that we had lunch in one of the hotel's restaurants, which was better than I expected it to be (I almost always find hotel restaurant food to be exceedingly bland) while Erika had a nap. It was also the only meal we ate indoors for our entire time on the Cote d'Azur - in fact here we'd initially planned to sit outside too, but with Erika asleep it was hard to find a spot with sufficient shade for her.

By the time we'd finished conveniently our room was ready, so we headed upstairs and got settled in. In fact we didn't leave the hotel for the whole afternoon - we spent a while sitting around in our room, enjoying the views from the balcony, and then later on went for another swim. By this point Erika was really relaxed in the water, and was happy to more or less "swim". Of course she saw no necessity to actually exert any effort and move her arms or legs, when we seemed quite prepared to just pull her along in the water. Nonetheless this was rather lovely.

We finally managed to prise ourselves away from the luxurious surrounds of the hotel around 6:30, to go for dinner. I'd again done a bit of research on where to go, and had settled on an Italian restaurant called Mozza, which looked pretty good, and, perhaps most importantly was an easy walk from the hotel, which is actually right out on the Eastern edge of Monaco. We'd learnt from past experience that Monaco can be a bit of a maze, and with all the different levels the streets are on, two places that look almost next door to each other on the map can have you wandering around for an eternity trying to get between.

This turned out to be an excellent choice - we sat out on the terrace and ordered their degustazioni antipastioni (or whatever it was called) which was a large array of small dishes for two people to share, most of which by happy coincidence were vegetarian. I particularly enjoyed the panzarotti (essentially an Italian take on fried bread) and the burrata. There was also a dish of tomatoes and basil sauce which was half way between a salad and a chilled soup. The pizza was pretty good too.

After dinner we walked back along the seafront to the hotel as it was getting dark, and Monaco was lighting up for the evening, which was all very atmospheric.

Chie very kindly offered to look after Erika for a bit so I could go out to the casino for a bit after that. I think Chie's at the point where she feels she's "done" Monaco now, and is quite happy to just come here to enjoy the very nice resort hotel we were staying in, but doesn't feel a strong urge to go and revisit the famous landmarks. I on the other hand really like keeping up little rituals and traditions, and on all three times we've been to Monaco now I've gone for a little flutter at the casino. On all three occasions I've left the casino with more money than I went in with. In fact tonight it was a particularly good haul - I turned 50 Euros into chips, and walked away with 130. A modest but nonetheless satisfying profit of 80 Euros.

Whilst mostly the casino seems to be frequented by American tourists these days, solely there to tick another item off their bucket list (and sadly most of them don't even seem to make an effort to dress up for the occasion), I was quite pleased that a man who I assumed to be a young millionaire came and sat next to me at the roulette table while I was playing. He was very well turned out, wearing a white dinner jacket, and accompanied by a young lady in a similarly glamorous looking evening dress. He changed about 500 euros into chips - and asked for pink ones - explaining to the croupier he was just there to teach his companion how to play. Whilst most people would probably find this display crass, I was quite entertained by it - it's always nice to know that the sorts of exaggerated stereotypes you see in films really do exist in real life.

I took some of my winnings over to Le Bar Americain at the Hotel de Paris, and tried out their Negroni. It was pretty unadventurous in terms of the ingredients, but I liked the atmosphere of the place - unlike the casino, just a stone's throw away, this place doesn't really seem to be on the tourist trail, and judging by the standard of dress here these were mostly locals.

I walked back to the hotel from there, keen not to further deplete my profits, and it turned out to actually be a much shorter walk than I expected. I think the trick in Monaco seems to be to wherever possible stick to the seafront which for obvious reasons minimises your chances of getting lost.
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Saturday in Menton: [Saturday 31st August 2013]
At the moment Erika typically wakes some time after 6 in the morning, and wants a bottle of milk fairly soon after waking up. I had assumed her body clock wouldn't adjust from English time, and that would translate to 7 here, but that did not turn out to be the case. As we didn't have a kettle in our hotel room this meant we had to go downstairs around 6:30 to get some hot water. That actually turned out to be a good thing, as we were treated to a rather nice sunrise, which we wouldn't have seen from our room as it was facing the wrong way, and didn't really have much of a view.

We had breakfast at the hotel, then after breakfast decided to go for our first swim. Menton's beaches, like much of the Cote d'Azur, are pebble rather than sand, but it was extremely convenient to have the beach right in front of the hotel as it was, as our hotel room then became our own private changing room and shower.

The water did actually feel slightly cool at first - probably a combination of the fact that it was morning, and the beach was relatively steep, but I had no qualms about diving right in. Erika seemed less convinced, and even with the big flotation aid we'd brought along didn't seem to like being in the water.

After showering and changing we went for a walk in the direction of Menton's old town. It's actually quite an attractive little town, and I think is often overlooked in favour of its flashier neighbours on the riviera. We had lunch outside at an Italian restaurant (we only ate one meal indoors the entire weekend) in one of the little squares, before heading up the hill to see the church and the cemetery, from where there were very nice views over the town and out along the coast.

We headed back to the hotel after that, stopping off for a quick look around the museum of prehistoric things, which was actually a bit naff. Spent most of the remainder of the hotel lounging around at the hotel - they had a sort of roof terrace with some sun loungers and a jaccuzzi which Chie made use of.

I popped out for a stroll by myself a little later on while Chie and Erika napped, and had an Aperol Spritz in a cafe - we were just a couple of miles from the Italian border after all.

For dinner we headed back in the direction of the old town, and in particular the old harbour. I'd done a bit of research on the web which suggested the best pizza place in Menton was to be found there (Al Vecchio Forno). They didn't have any tables available until much later on in the evening, so we decided instead to order takeaway and sit and eat in on the beach. This turned out to be much nicer anyway.
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London to Menton: [Friday 30th August 2013]
There had been some debate over this trip between Chie and I, chiefly over the method of transport. I as always was somewhat determined to maintain my policy of not flying in Europe, and go by train. It's been 8 years now since I've flown within Europe, and yet have in that space of time averaged about two trips to the continent a year. Chie on the other hand argued that, now we have a baby, long train trips would be a lot more arduous than they had been before (and she was never entirely convinced it was a good idea even before that).

Eventually though Chie had caved in and let me have it my way, so today we embarked on Erika's first trip to the continent, by train.

In a sense this was Erika's first time to be abroad - being half Japanese her trips to Japan don't really count - and so it was quite an exciting moment to go through passport control, headed for a country she doesn't already have a passport issued by.

In order to keep the overall journey time down I'd barely allowed any time to hang around in Paris, so on arrival at Gare du Nord we got straight on the RER to Gare de Lyon. We did have a little bit of time to buy a few things for the journey there, so in additional to a rudimentary lunch (a baguette and some salad for me) we got Erika some French books to read to her on the train.

To me the time on the TGV seemed to pass quite quickly. The high speed part is only really up to Aix en Provence or perhaps Marseilles, and it always seems like we're at the South coast in hardly any time at all, but from then on it's at a much slower pace.

We arrived in Nice about 6:30, where we had to change to a different carriage, as we were on the idTGV portion of the train (it's a bit cheaper than the normal TGV carriages) but that section only goes as far as Nice.

We arrived in Menton at 7:15, and walked from the station to our hotel on the seafront, checked in, then headed out for a stroll along the beach before dinner. I know the same would technically be true had we flown, but I always have a sense of wonder at this point on a trip, in thinking that this morning we were in London, and this evening we're in the South of France. Somehow, perhaps because we've seen all the land between here and there, that sense of achievement (or whatever it is) is much greater by train.

There were quite a few restaurants along the seafront in Menton, which looked tempting in term of their atmosphere, but French restaurants are useless for me (there was also, even more uselessly, a Brazilian restaurant), and the Italian restaurants we saw looked kind of tacky. So we decided to go to "Loving Hut" - probably the only fully vegetarian restaurant on the entire Cote d'Azur, which just happened to be a couple of doors down from our hotel.

Clearly vegetarian cuisine is struggling to get a foothold still here in the South of France, as we were pretty much the only customers in there - on a Friday night in August.
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Cat: [Thursday 29th August 2013]
Took some pictures of my nodding cat at work to try and work out why pictures of my phone were uploaded at a strange resolution.
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Evening Stroll: [Wednesday 28th August 2013]
Out for an early evening stroll with Erika, and looking rather dapper, even though I do say so myself.
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Tuesday: [Tuesday 27th August 2013]
A couple of miscellaneous pictures of Erika.
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Erika at the Office: [Monday 26th August 2013]
Chie and Erika came to my office for lunch.
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Roding Valley: [Sunday 25th August 2013]
Went for a barbecue at Chie's friend's house in Essex this afternoon.
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