Here are my early morning observations. Maggi has continued her campaign of attack. She woke up and completed wordle by 6:20. I think a combination of the early start and my complaints regarding her overbearing instructions have triggered her attack mode.
Jane and Ray’s behaviour has interested me. When it comes to helping to lay the table or clear up Jane will always help. On the other hand, Ray hasn’t lifted a finger yet.
This morning I drove everyone down to Leclerc, R&J to buy food for Friday evening and us to purchase for Saturday evening. While I found it difficult to find a parking place the actual store seemed relatively easy to move around in and we all exited fairly easily.
I’ve noticed that Jane carries her binoculars with her all the time and is frequently looking up, presumably to spot different birds.
Maggi’s war of attrition continues into our lunch break. As I came outside I asked if anyone wanted wine. An angry response from Maggi telling me I have interrupted the story she was telling Jane.
A few minutes later when I looked a bit fed up Maggi asked why the long face. When I started to explain she cut me short saying I always complained when she interrupted me. Then came her pitch about the last word, which of course is a means of having the last word. I hope this bickering stops soon.
More help from Jane making and clearing the lunch.
In the afternoon I drove everyone to Nice. Adam had suggested we go to Nice port and use the Parking Entrecasteaux (which I think means between castles) and then walk along the coast eastwards towards Villefranche. We found the parking spot and headed along the rocky coastline.
On a warm and sunny Friday plenty of people lie sunbathing on the rocks and tiny stony beaches. It all looked a bit too crowded for my taste, and I would definitely have needed my beach shoes to navigate the beach.
While we followed the coast we came across the small Theodore de Banville garden which contains a large Greek-like statue with two major figures, one of which has lost its arms. The garden seemed quite well maintained and offered some shade on our little tour of the coast.
From the garden we returned much lower down and closer to the bathers. We watched kids somersaulting backwards off the cliffs. Very impressive. We’d ambled along for about 90 minutes and decided we would stop and have a drink at Le San Juan, the only cafe along this piece of coast.
Maggi, Ray and I all decided to have the Cafe Frappe (iced coffee) which I thought expensive at €11.90. We all refused to drink the watery, almost tasteless cup of cold coffee. We needed to make a bit of a fuss but they did take all three drinks back and we ended up only paying for Jane’s fruit drink. I won’t be visiting Le San Juan again.
After the disappointment of the iced coffees we thought we would find a Gelateria and enjoy a nice ice-cream. The only ones we could find were situated in places where I couldn’t park so we had to drive on. Fed up with this we decided to return to La Colle for a drink. On the way back we became caught up with a traffic jam on the A8. A lorry an a car had come into contact and now three of the 4 lanes on the motorway had been sectioned off. We couldn’t tell if anyone had suffered any injury. I hope not.
In the evening Jane and Ray made the evening meal consisting of scallops to start and hake with potatoes, asparagus and mange tout. All very nice.