Menton Citrus Festival

So last week was a very long week. The deadline for the HST proposals was on Friday. At 2am Saturday morning French time. And yes, we were still up working on it at 2am. I got into the office at 10am Friday morning and left 16 hours later! That was a long day.
So I had a much deserved lie in on Saturday morning. In the afternoon, I did my shopping and then headed with Gerry into Menton. Menton is a small town along the coast, just past Monaco on the way to Italy. Every year they have a citrus festival. They have a parade along the see front which we didn't see as it is sold out. However, they also have a citrus exhibition garden.
There are loads of big displays all made out of oranges and lemons. Each one was from one of the region in France.

From the Champagne region

Castle made of oranges and lemons

Giant orange/lemon man

Eiffel tower as you've never seen it before

There are also stalls selling citrus based products. We had some very nice samples of orange liqueurs, lemoncello (Menton is only a few miles from the Italian border), and lime-cello, which is really nice. Unfortunately they were all a bit too expensive and too heavy to bring home. We also tried some of the marmalade. I am not a big marmalade fan but some were very nice.

Lemon, lime and orange liqueurs - very nice!

The best stall in my opinion was the Grand Marnier stall which sold crepes with of course Grand Marnier. I had a chocolate crepe with Grand Marnier. And they let you pour your own liqueur. Mine was drenched! It was fantastic. And accompanied with a hot lemonade.

Heaven!

After that we head back to Nice and Gerry cocked me a very nice meal of grilled fresh fish and veggies, with black rice. This was top off with a really nice bottle of wine called Pouilly-Fuse, which I thought was from the Loire valley, one of the region I still need to sample. But I got the name wrong. I wanted the Pouilly-Fume instead. The Pouilly-Fuse is from the Burgundy region. Still it was a very nice wine.

very nice ending!

Old Town and vineyards

On Saturday, we went into the old town and had a look around. Then we walked along the Promenade des Anglais, which runs along the sea front for miles. We walked down to the Hotel Negresco, which is a really posh hotel on the sea front. We intended to go in for a hot drink (as we were once again freezing). However, it was a lot posher than I had expected and we were way under-dressed. So we gave up on that idea and wondered around the back streets for a while.

Then we meet up with Gerry and his girl friend Françoise, who was visiting for the weekend. We had lunch at a creperie (something I intend to do more of as it is really nice food).
Then Gerry drove us up into the hills to the Bellet wine region. This region is still pretty much in the Nice city limits and contains numerous little vineyards. We got there quite late in the day so only managed to see a few.
We were lucky to see the first one. The man who owns it was just leaving as we got there. He turned around and went back to open up for us. He is a retired Theatre Professor and now runs the vineyard. We tried 4 wines: 2 white (one was very dry), a rose (Mom's favourite) and a red (my favourite). Mom and Dad got a bottle of the rose and I got a bottle of the red. We had to wait for him to put the labels on one of the bottles. This place was pretty much his garage. But the wine was lovely and not something you can get in the supermarket.

Garage Vineyard shop.

The second place we tried was more commercial. We had a look around as it was very pretty though a little soulless after the first place. However the wines were really expensive and we had to pay for a wine tasting. We did not stay.

Expensive vineyard...

...but has a great view!

The last place we managed to get to was another little family run vineyard with a very sweet yet ugly dog. He looked a bit like a staff bull but with very big ears. Still he was very sweet and sat with me during the wine tasting. (I tried to get a picture of him but every time I tried, he moved.) We had a quick look at the vineyards, as the sun was setting. The sunset across the Alps was beautiful.

Sunset over the Alps

Really beautiful

Then we went inside and tried a few of the wines. We tried 2 reds (one was really dry and Mom couldn't drink it so I got her share), one white (very light) and a lovely rose. We didn't buy a wine from this place, but I had brought one of their wines from a wine shop in Nice a few weeks ago (though I have yet to drink it) so I didn't feel bad about not buying one. (And I paid more in the shop for it!) But we did buy some of their home-made fig jams. Fig jam is very popular here and very nice. By this point, I was happily merry.

The wine we brought

On the way back, we stopped for a hot drink in St Laurent, a port just West of Nice. It was very pretty and crazily expensive, so we did not stop for food. However, when we got back to the car, someone had double parked behind us. (Double parking seems to be a speciality of the French.) It took a little interesting manoeuvring and several curse words before we managed to squeeze out.

Crepe party

I went today stairs yesterday to microwave a cup of water for a hot drink (the kettle is too much for the electricity on our floor and often blows the fuses so we have been asked not to use it any more.) The is a small common room on the second floor where people can eat lunch etc. Most places (bar UCLan) have one.
There were a group of people making crepes. Apparently it was Candle Mass, which is a catholic event. No one could tell me what the event was for but they had decided to celebrate it any way. Fair enough. And they asked us if we wanted to join in. Who in their right mind is going to turn down Crepes?
I have never seen so many crepe fillings. Lots of different jams. Nutella. And new my favourite, Congac. The lady doing the crepes poured some congac into a pan and heated it for a minute. Then she added a match. In the middle of the common room in a university building, she was happily flambéing! Added to a crepe with a squeeze of juice from a blood orange and a sprinkle of sugar, makes a very nice crepe. I felt very posh.
And it seems here if you have crepes you have to have cider! And it is very nice cider.
I did go back to work after, but I felt very merry!
:-)