Family gettogether

Mum and Greg came over for a week and we enjoyed some more time together. Program was: Villa Kerylos, Villa Rothschild, Saint Tropez, MMV Resort and Cannes festival. All was perfect!

Villa Kerylos: I-LOVED-IT! If that place was on sale, I would be the first buyer! The audioguide gave us all information regarding the place and the house was lovely, decorated with taste and in the perfect Greek tradition.

Villa Rothschild: I didn't like the house that much. Too heavy for me. But the gardens are a marvel. Different styles, music, all sorts of plants... and my special flower: the Rothschild rose, big, colourful and smelly. A real beauty!

Saint Tropez: This was a very nice day. We took the boat from Saint Raphaël and as soon as we saw the bell tower, we started singing the opening music of the serie "Sous le Soleil". We enjoyed the market and rested on a little beach. We had transparent water, lots of sun, sailboats and mountains on our sight... Chillaxing! ;)

MMV Resort: This was kind of special. My mum managed to get a free appartment in the resort and I travelled all the way from Nice to Mandelieu to enjoy it with her and my brother. The resort is lovely and it was nice staying there and enjoying the sun a bit. Next day was spent at Cannes movie festival. Just the time to take a couple of pictures and back home again.

Fairytale in South of France

Kid, a good friend of mine, had decided to take me on a special week-end. He took advantage of the bank holiday of 8th May to take me away from Nice and make me visit the surroundings.

After a night spent in the Suite of the Westminster hotel in Nice and a lovely breakfast, we left with our private driver-guide towards Aix-en-Provence. There we had a private half day visit. Aix-en-Provence is a very nice little city full of cafés to stop and enjoy the nice weather.
We visited as well Paul Cézanne's studio and learned quite a lot of things.
Back to the city center, we had lunch in a lovely restaurant and headed toward a "ranch" close to Les Baux de Provence, which is known for being a very nice location.

In that ranch, Kid had organised a 2h horse ride. It'd been ages I haven't rode a horse and just seeing them and getting close to them I felt like a child in Disneyland! I love horse riding and that was just a magnificent gift!
So there I was, wearing my jeans and helmet, riding a white and brown horse named ... (Gosh! I can't remember it's name!). After a lovely ride we all had a chat and a drink in the ranch.

Time was flying but sparkling eyes remained when I saw the hotel in which we were about to stay. Kid had booked the best room of the hotel: a white-and-red suite in which only the kitchen was missing for me to buy it straight away! Space, peacefull atmosphere, luxurious bathroom... a white-and-red bunch of flowers and an iPod Touch.... uff! That was just too much!

We were too tired to go out having dinner so we decided to skip it... though we were pretty hungry. That evening each one chose a couch and we stayed there discussing. It was lovely...

Next morning, after a great breakfast on the terrasse of the hotel with local products, we had a taxi waiting for us that drove us to Arles train station. With a first class ride and in no time, we arrived in Nice and just had the time to rush home leave our stuff before going to the airport. There Kid had his last booking made. No, not his flight back but a 20 minutes helicopter ride.

When he first told me that, I thought he was out of his mind, maybe jocking. But he really did it!
We jumped in and soon the helicopter flew. A bit shaked at the very beginning and then up in the sky. We flew all above Villefranche, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat then Eze and Monaco. The Côte d'Azur is such a beauty!
We continued our ride until Cap Martin and came back from there on the inside seeing the mountains and the small villages. It seemed it was just a second but the number of memories I have from that ride shows me I enjoyed every minute.

We spend the evening in a lovely restaurant down town and Cécilia joined us for desert.
We ended up on Paloma beach in St Jean-Cap-Ferrat taking pictures and having big laughs.

Thinking back at it, this seems to have been some kind of fairytale. I did nothing, was brought to do things I have wanted since ages and was just asked to enjoy, which I obviously did!

Thanks Kid for bringing me over that marvellous ride. It was amazing and fun.
I wish we could do it again someday soon.

Among stars

Today my manager came to Cécilia and me and said that she was invited to the TV Festival in Monaco and she wasn’t feeling like going. So she gave us her tickets adding that before the beginning of the show she was invited for a drink at the Meridien Beach Plaza, one of the most beautiful 4*hotels in Monaco and that we could go at her place. I looked at Cécilia and together we agreed that this was just awesome and we would spend one more unbelievable evening.

Straight after work, we both rushed home to get prepared. We had decided during the day what we would wear for the event and it didn’t take us long to get ready.

Cécilia came to pick me up and we drove towards Monaco to attend this special occasion.

When we arrived in Monaco, and introduce ourselves at the desk of the hotel, it was already late and the festival had already started since a while. We therefore agreed to go see it first and then to come back to have our free drink (how could we miss that?!)

The ceremony was presented by Tonya Kitzinger, the famous actress of the serie Sous le Soleil and Bernard Montiel, a TV animator. It was kind of impressive being there, among all those very well-dressed people and attending such event. Cécilia and I really felt like we were privileged (and we were indeed!!) and we decided to take the most of it, even though we could be ridiculous at stages. We obviously took pictures: pics of the stage, of the magnificent theatre, of the people attending… We even were lucky cause we found two seats at the 5^th or 6^th raw and therefore could see perfectly the show.

Among the famous people there was Bruno Salomone, a French humorist and actor and Isabelle Adjani.

The show ended and we walked towards the hotel to get that drink. We sat at the terrace and thought of what was happening: we were in Monaco, at the terrace of a wonderful hotel near the beach, listening to the waves, all dressed up, we just attended a very select show and walked among famous people. We are 24! Who else can say he did such things at our age? I guess that’s the time we realized we were really privileged not only to be there but to work for a company, and more than anything for a manager, who gives us such occasions.