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On the evening of my trip to Menton I masochistically went for a walk around Nice, not for any real reason except, perhaps, to experiment with the camera.

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This was an 8 second exposure f6.7 after adjustment for white balance. The problem with 8 second exposures is that it's quite difficult to stand still for that long (how did early Victorian photographers manage with these 30 second exposures!). One tends to "sway". This is more noticeable with side-on pictures, for which I can't even seem to keep motionless for even three seconds.



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Six seconds, f5.6 18mm lens. The central hill.

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Three second exposure f5.6 40mm. Two oddities about this picture, which I only really put in here to display those oddities (it's a gross failure as a photograph). One is that in this picture I appear to be putting in my application for sainthood (that or I have just had a very good idea). The second is that you might be able to detect some hints of red on my face. This is where I caught the sun, except that, the longer the exposure and the darker the surroundings, the more pronounced the red becomes. I suspect that this is some kind of quirk of .jpg and that, if I were processing in RAW (something I may try when I retire, but for now life is too short), the anomaly would go away.

+++++++

The following day I spent a long time writing up the previous day trip to Menton (those thumbnails on the map took forever! Not a worthwhile experiment, I fear), a little while playing poker, and, generally speaking, just faffing about. This meant that I didn't get going until 3.30 in the afternoon. I'd planned to complete the second "half" of the sentier littoral between Nice and Villefranche, but I couldn't find it! And, although it's clearly indicated on the map on the coastal walk, Google Maps (perhaps out of date?) shows no evidence of it on the map or satellite, even though the first half of the walk is quite distinct.

So I resorted to plan B, a walk round Cap Ferrat. I had to wait quite a while for the bus, which meant that I didn't actually start the walk until 5.15pm. After the previous day I reckoned this would be little more than a stroll. In fact it's a bit further than that, and I wasn't to catch the bus back until gone 7pm.

I'm glad that I made the Cap Ferrat walk last September, before it became sanitized.

However, the most surreal moment of this tour came after seeing hardly anyone (most people make the walk in the morning, I guess) bar a couple of Japanese tourists who ostentatiously ducked into an alcove as I approached, presumably because they felt that the four-foot wide path would have entailed too much physical proximity to a westerner.

I then encountered a couple on two Brompton bikes. Yes, you read me correctly. Of course, when I say "on", I exaggerate. They were pushing them. I could have told them there and then that they might as well fold them up now, because they weren't going to be doing any more riding on THIS trip, no sir.

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Perhaps they had seen the route on Google Maps and had assumed that it would all be something like this:

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whereas in fact they would be more likely to come across steps, or a track like this (i.e., a bike rather more suited to off-road than a Brompton):

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That said, the most "worrying" bit of the whole walk was probably this section below:

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Compare that with THIS picture from last September.

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... which was one of several sections where failure to pay attention could lead to a rapid exit from this mortal earth.

It was nice taking this trip when it was so quiet. I really think that it's one of the most beautiful walks that I have experienced. It's certainly one of the few that can make me feel that, maybe, the world isn't so bad after all.

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However, it was a bit freaky to be told by my phone, as I sat down here, with no land between me and Corsica, that an open WiFi network was available. It was, of course, the restaurant at the end of the Cape, which you can't really see from the walk.

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General Montgomery Birks is ready and prepared to repel the Corsican invasion.

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But first, a bit of a rest.

By the time I got back to the bus stop at Port Jean, it was well on the way to dark. There was another pleasantly surreal moment when, as I waited for the number 81, a conversation began just out of my sight between a couple of English speakers. One of them appeared to want some money, and the other one appeared to be drunk. The owee had a slight Australian accent, while the ower was posh English. After about five minutes of this I felt like popping my head around the corner of the bus stop and saying (given my long experience of poker nippers and the like): "Forget it, mate, you aren't going to get a penny out of this man. Write it off." The ower was using all of the tricks, including disputing whether 12 days qualified as "a week overdue" or "two weeks overdue", changing his story from one minute to the next, saying that the world was too obsessed with money, saying that in his time a man's handshake was his bond, etc etc. But, when it came down to it, he was clearly skint and was not going to come up with the cash.

Eventually I caught sight of the pair, and the guy who owed the money had the badly swollen legs of what looked to me like alcohol-exacerbated diabetes. The younger Australian guy was on a rather throaty motor-bike.

What was sad about this was that it kind of shattered the myth of Cap Ferrat as an idle playground of the retired rich. Just like the myth that all of the gays in Soho are rich professionals with money to burn (whereas most are probably skint from the expensive lifestyle that comes with being a central London scene gay) it suddenly became clear that the pricey lifestyle that comes with living in a place like Port Jean had quite likely denuded many a retiree's wealth to the level of genteel poverty. But the image must be maintained! Oh dear.

When I got back to the flat I went to turn on my monitor to check my emails, but it wouldn't work. I was a bit worried that I might have left it on for too long one night (when it was face-down to the table). So I unplugged it and left it to cool down for a while. An hour later I plugged it back in and -- BANG!-- fireworks from the back. One dead monitor, no doubt about it. I'm not sure if it overheated or if it's a voltage thing. However, I'd used the monitor twice previously (in Nice and in Rome) without an adaptor and without a problem.

Oh well, I thought, that probably ends any online poker for the week. First I get shafted by Full Tilt and Party, and then my monitor gives up on me.

+++++

I slept horrifically last night, probably because I went to bed too early. But nearly every day this week I've found it hard to get going before midday -- by which time, of course, any chance of a "long" day trip is out of the window.

However, after finding the four (small) poker tables on the netbook too difficult to work with the previous evening, I decided to give "stacking" a go. This is where, instead of tiling the tables, you just lay them on top of each other and wait for the table where your action is required to pop to the front.

This is very different from tiling, and I don't think that I could work it on a large screen (too many other distractions). But for a Netbook it's superb. I was quickly up to seven tables, and the lack of "unnecessary" distraction meant that one could focus just on one's action NOW, rather than on what was happening on another table where I had just acted. The downside to this is that your play becomes even more player-independent. The upside is that you can crack through tables far more quickly. And the reduced mouse-movement is an added bonus.



I managed to get going by 12.10pm, so I determined to make it to Keisuke Matsushima for lunch.

As I noted in March, this restaurant doesn't go out of its way to advertise itself. Although it's on the Rue de France, it's away from the main restaurant thoroughfare, stuck between a shuttered old mobile phone shop and, er, a pharmacy I think.

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This was the menu that I chose:

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I picked the girolles with a soft-boiled egg, followed by the milles-feulles beef with what the restaurant called wasabi, but which I think of as tempura. The dessert was the one at the top of the list, a magnificent confection of sorbet, orange, a chocolate madeleine and other stuff.

With sparkling water and coffee the bill came to 54 euro before service. That's probably about what I would expect to pay for something of similar quality in London.

But is it a Michelin Star contender? I fear not. That this is considered one of the better restaurants in Nice is something of a comment on how British cooking has grown in stature in the past 20 years. I can think of a dozen restaurants in the City (never mind the West End) where I could get a meal this good for roughly the same price. Anima (v near where Mikey works) is one that springs immediately to mind. That's not to criticize Keisuke Matsushima. Credit where credit is due. It steps outside traditional French boundaries and offers a selection of dishes you would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in Nice. It was moderately busy (the restaurant is only about 36 covers) for a Thursday lunchtime, and I was the only tourist. I came away from the meal feeling that I had eaten something good, but not blow-my-mind outstanding.

That said, I might have chosen the wrong main course, as a couple of the other tables seemed to have been served some very tasty looking lamb.

+++++++++++

Date: 2010-10-14 04:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jellymillion.livejournal.com
Regarding long exposures, I think you did very well to get as little blur as you did. The Victorians had their own sneaky trick for this, one that a number of modern photographers are also believed to employ.

Date: 2010-10-14 05:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
When I said "stand still" I was of course referring to standing in front of the camera, rather than holding the camera. The long exposures used a tripod, but even then (as we have discussed before) I had to be careful when pressing the button. That remote button press thing you referred to previously, Mike, is a must-buy.

PJ

Date: 2010-10-14 05:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
I like the Victorian neck-brace technique, but I can't really see myself carrying that off in the middloe of Place Massena.

PJ

Corsica

Date: 2010-10-14 06:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] geoffchall.livejournal.com
Actually you should seriously consider a Corsican invasion, with you going there. The better part of the island is a little tricky if you hold to the principle of not hiring a car, but the stretch of coastline between Calvi and Ille Rousse has a train line that runs along it allowing for a lot of walking from different places. Public transport apart from that is shit, but the scenery repays it. It's also different to the Cote d'Azur. Can be bloody expensive to dine out - you can be forced to pay over €30 for a meal - but I think we've established that this is not a problem.

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-15 08:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
It's always entertaining for us single types to hear what family men think of as "bloody expensive to dine out" -- €30? You'd be hard-pressed to get a decent meal with a cheap glass of wine for that in my local Italian, which is by no means expensive by Birmingham standards. (On the other hand, it's pretty good by Birmingham standards. Not that it's all that good. It's just pretty good by Birmingham standards.)

I was very impressed that you managed to combine "Birks" with "Corsica" whilst avoiding certain vertically challenged reference points.

The supposed contrast between wasabi and tempura baffled me, until I realised that Birks is presumably talking about the dipping sauce traditionally served with the latter. This is, essentially, equal amounts of soy sauce and sherry emulsified with ginger ... not much like wasabi, even then. My chef friend is always banging on about how the French can't stand proper mustard, with proper mustard bite (and the same presumably goes for horseradish), which may explain the substitution.

"Exotic" restaurants in France (ie anything not a bistro and not haute cuisine, and certainly anything foreign) are always a cross-cultural joy. I've noticed that quite a few French "chinese" restaurants serve food that is more akin to vietnamese, which leads to the entertaining fact that, in Saintes, my local vietnamese restaurant served food that was recognisably more chinese than the food in the chinese restaurant down the street. Of course, "chinese food" is a slippery concept outside China anyway.

But this viet-chink thing. Is it a legacy of the Colonies, much as with that wonderful non-Indian indian dish, jalfrezi? Or is it some subtle put-down by the French, who presumably won't eat vietnamese food if it's advertised as vietnamese food?

Answers on the back of a carte du jour, s'il vous plait.

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-15 09:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
When I first went to Paris, in the 1970s, I was struck by the fact that there were no Indian or Chinese restaurants, but a number of Vietnamese restaurants (the last of these being unknown in the UK at the time). However, the Vietnamese restaurants, I now realize with hindisght, bore little relation to real Vietnam eateries. (Today, those places such as 'Pho' in London are an equally fanciful invention, adapted to match the fashions of the times.)

So, yes, it's entirely a colonial legacy. People from the colonies come to the old parent country, open a restaurant, and follow the fashion of whoever else opened a restaurant from the same country. Whence all the flock wallpaper, the Biryiani, the Chicken Tikka, and the like, of all the Indian restaurants in London in the 1960s? Probably inspired by Veeraswamy's in Regent Street, rather than the sub-continent.

As for the cost of meals, I suppose that I could say that one of the few benefits of being single and not having to pay child support is that you can afford better meals and better shirts, should you so desire. However, I suspect that most married blokes haven't thought about expensive shirts or expensive meals for so long that, even if the money became available, the money would not go on either of these things, and fifteen quid would still be the top price for a shirt, and GBP25 per head would be top price for a meal.

PJ

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-15 11:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] geoffchall.livejournal.com
I think blog-commenting should come with a sort of typestyle to indicate irony, so that people could realise what one is attempting to convey. Yes I am aware that €30 is not a particularly high price for a meal. Fact is, that prices for meals in Corsica have a premium attached to them just because it's Corsica. So the bog-standard pizza in Calvi will be around 25% more than it's equivalent in Nice and possibly 33% more than it's equivalent in Italy. There's a strand of really stunning restaurants and in the big towns, you'll be paying €40+. In the countryside, you're going to pay less and get meals which vary wildly in quality.

And you're right Pete, as a burned-out family man, I'd struggle to pay more than £30 for a meal - if I want something really nice, I'd want to share the experience, so whilst £100 for two makes sense to me, £35 for one is more than I want to pay. Odd logic, but I'm sure it's shared quite widely.

Oh and I'd say my shirt limit is probably £30ish - though I buy them so rarely for myself these days. Family buy me things like that now that buying me CDs and DVDs is a bit useless.

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-15 12:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
The reason that I didn't reply to your original post was that I had half an idea that your comment of 30 euro being expensive might have had an ironic twist to it. However, Pete's comment was not dissimilar to something which I thought of replying to JPRP on FB.

I take your point about not wanting to spend a lot on a meal when you are alone. Great meals are definitely better when shared and obviously that would be my preference. But, needs must. So I tend to have one "very good" meal a week rather than three. Certainly if it was a shared meal at 110 euro before service, I would have had more than twice the enjoyment from it. So it's not odd logic at all.

I really know very little about Corsica, but I've often watned to visit. Hirring a car when on your own seems a little bit extravagant. Pre-Tom Tom days it was also very difficult to be a lone driver in a strange country. That is now less of a problem.

Married middle-aged men have been known to go more than two decades without buying any clothes or, indeed, entering any shop that sells them.

PJ

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-16 11:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
You've been spending too long on the Internet, Geoff: using typestyles, smileys, and the like to convey any sort of subtlety is far inferior to the universal practice of expressing yourself clearly. In this case, your rider "but I think we've established that this is not a problem" suggests a complete absence of irony.

The point about paying more for a shared experience is well-taken. I'd actually go further than mere price: with rare exceptions (there's a particularly wonderful pizza/pasta place on Drottningsgatan in Stockholm), I'll pick somewhere cheap and scruffy if I'm eating on my own. This is probably even more self-defeating than a price judgement, but it makes sense to me because (no matter what the price) I don't want to be sitting in a five-star restaurant eating wonderful food and thinking "I wish X was here..."

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-16 12:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Yes, I tend to eat in cheap and scruffy places when I am on my own as well! But I really did want to try this place, just to see what it was like. And so, perforce, I did it alone. But I don't think that I would have had the courage to go there alone in the evening. Even at lunch I was the only sole diner (two business lunches, two "birthdays" of four people each, was my guess), but at least one doesn't feel out of place -- as far as the staff were concerned, I might just have been a rich businessman who fancied a nice lunch.

PJ

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-17 09:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
That Drottningsgatan pizza thing, btw ... In the absence of X, it helps if you feel at home, which I do in that particular case. It also helps if the waitress smiles at you when you come through the door. It probably helps if the owners fuss over you and suggest the special off today's menu. And of course you can't get any of that if you've never been there before (and probably tipped over the odds).

It's all a bit of a conundrum for single chaps, really.

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-17 08:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
One interesting side-light to this, btw, is that the last colonial power in India was France (1961, I believe). You'd have thought that with three centuries of Pondicherry behind them they could manage a decent Madras curry.

And, putting it (even more obscurely) in the reverse way, is it possible to get a decent Vindaloo in Portugal?

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-17 08:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
Oops, sorry. "Reverse" for the obvious reason that a vindaloo is a Portuguese curry in the first place, featuring as it does wine (generally vinegarised by the voyage) and garlic.

Re: Corsica

Date: 2010-10-17 08:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] real-aardvark.livejournal.com
Just to push beyond the breaking point, have you tried La Porte des Indes (http://www.bestloved.com/special_info/special_info_detail.php?id=482&type=bestlovedlife) in Marylebone? It doesn't look anything special (which puts it on a par with every other Indian restaurant in London outside Brick Lane and a rather nice South Indian whose precise location I forget); I just like the concept.

On flock wallpaper: there's probably an interesting story here. I'm guessing it started in the 19th century in India (post 1857, obviously), and featured either the creations of William Morris (if early enough) or the factories of Paisley (if late enough). Presumably, by the late 1950s or early 1960s, the bleeding-edge curry house entrepreneurs just assumed that, because Colonel Sahib liked this sort of stuff, the average plonker in a flat cap would be equally impressed.

Isn't cultural transmission a wonderful thing?

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