Nice Journal - Spring 2011 - 13

Monday, 4th April. Six in the morning is still over an hour before dawn here at this time of year so I came into the lounge and read for an hour before rejoining Lisa in bed for two more hours.

Self Portrait

At nine, I went out to buy bread and some Ibuprofen for Lisa. On my return, I made coffee and rejoined Lisa in bed once more for a pleasant hour or so's lie-in. I made some more coffee while Lisa prepared a mozzarella and tomato salad (complete with basil pesto which she made using a tea cup and a mustard jar as an improvised mortar and pestle!) for breakfast. Breakfast was delicious! The produce here is so fresh and so bursting with flavour that even the simplest of dishes taste extravagantly good!

After breakfast, I loaded the dishwasher, showered and shaved and got dressed to go shopping with Lisa to the Monoprix. We managed to get everything on our list, including a cold-bag to carry our food for tomorrow's 7.5 hour train journey to Lille.

For lunch we had our third helping of fish soup and all its bits. This was as wonderfully tasty as ever. After lunch we did most of our packing for tomorrow (during which the bookmark we'd bought for Perry in Lincoln came to light in the bottom of Lisa's bag) and then Lisa cut up a bunch of vegetables and a chicken which she seasoned and put in a pot with a can of tomatoes and other good stuff.

We let the whole lot bubble for about forty minutes then Lisa removed the vegetables from the pot and added two cut-up potatoes. After another forty minutes she returned the vegetables to the pot and brought everything back to the boil before turning off the gas and leaving the pot to sit on the stove for another hour or so. While all this was going on we variously read, wrote and played a game of Scrabble. Lisa also called Perry as had been arranged yesterday.

Last Night Dinner - Chicken Casserole

When we were ready to eat, Lisa served out the chicken casserole and I opened another bottle of the excellent white Graves that we'd enjoyed so much earlier in the week. As it's our last meal in Nice this visit, we took some photos. The dish was wonderfully tasty and we ate a surprising amount of what had seemed plenty for four! The wine did not disappoint the second time around either. I mentioned during the meal that we have very often ended a visit here with a chicken dish on the last night.

We cleared away and ran the dishwasher but we did not want the day to end so it was not until very late that we finally settled down for our last night at around three o'clock. What was left of the night was undisturbed but did not feature much in the way of sleep either.