Yak & Natter

Photos from a lovely weekend in Nice

To celebrate English Wine Week we decided to take a trip to Nyetimber Vineyard, a vineyard under an hour away that produces sparkling wines that we’d heard good things about and which isn’t usually open to the public. We tasted three of their wines before joining a tour to learn more about how they put the fizz in. On the way to Nyetimber we’d spotted another vineyard close by, also open for tastings and so popped into the more tourist focussed Nutbourne Vineyards for more tasting. A great way to spend a bank holiday afternoon.

A few months ago we went to Indian Summer and tried their Bhel Puri which was lovely. We really enjoyed it and thought we’d like to try it at home and so bought some puffed rice. All we had to do then was find a bhel puri recipe. After much searching we gave up and headed to Planet India and tried their Bhel Puri, which was quite different to the Indian Summer version. Today, we headed to the new Taj food store in Western Road and found a ready to eat Sitar Bhel Puri kit, comprising of 10 puris, bhel mix, sev, chilli sauce, garlic sauce and tamarind and date saurce – this has given me more confidence to narrow down that recipe search.

I popped into Sussex Stationers at lunchtime and spotted The Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code: History, Legends, Locations. An interesting concept that one. A book about the facts behind a book. There also seems to be an accompanying book for another of the Dan Brown books Angels and Demons of Illuminating Angels and Demons: The Unauthorized Guide to the Facts behind the Fiction.

On a related note, I also noticed that there is an Angels and Demons tour in Rome, and a Da Vinci Code tour of Paris and Fodor have A DIY Da Vinci Code Tour: London.

A lot of people seem to be cashing in on the Dan Brown thing.

Nice 2005

We took Lorraine away for a weekend in Nice. We travelled with EUJet from Manston airport, Kent and flew directly to Nice airport, a 20 minute bus ride from the centre of Nice.

We took a walk towards the Fruit and Flower market and had a lovely wander around before it started to rain and we took this as an opportunity to grab some lunch. We headed to the hotel Solara and checked in. We headed off towards the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and walked around the outside, but as it was only an hour before closing we decided to head off to the beachfront for a couple of beers in the sunshine.

On Sunday we headed off along the Promenade des Anglais to the Port and admired the huge boats before catching a bus to Cimiez and having a wander through the beautiful Franciscan Monestary gardens before heading back towards the airport and back to Kent.

Nice was a great place for the weekend, lots to do and see and I think it is safe to say that we all enjoyed it.

I forgot to say thanks to Ray and Helen for the poster. Helen had a work meeting with the film director Garth (that’s Mr Jennings to you) and he signed it for me. It’s great being a fan sometimes. Sad, admittedly, but great nonetheless.

This only makes sense if you’ve watched the UK version of Apprentice… but don’t you think there’s a similarity?

I was endeavouring to be fair to all parties and so kept all the bumf that we’ve received through the letter box. The end result of this is that I can’t be bothered to read it all, and so have decided to count them instead. Not sure what this tells us, but the honour of “Most leaflets” must be shared between the Conservative Party and the Green Party.

I always used to use BT OpenWorld’s Pixology service for getting prints from digital over the internet. When I tried to do this on Saturday I was informed that the service was no longer available. Richard pointed out that there is an iPhoto service linked to Kodak which does prints, so we investigated, discovered it was 14p per print cheaper than I used to pay and ordered some prints. They arrived today, so 5 days from ordering to receiving, including 2 weekend days and a bank holiday. Pretty impressive, and the quality is great too.

After sourcing some elbow protection, and digging out all the other body armour we own, we headed off in search of a
quiet spot with a mellow hill to take our first Freebord rides. The result: wobbly success, with just one graze between us. We now have to learn sliding turns, which is where the real danger comes into play.

If you can’t see the movies, you may need to get QuickTime.