Life: As I see it, while I live it

Monday, September 29, 2008

Look! Ships in a church!

Am I the only one who finds it a BIT weird that there are ships hanging all over this church?

It would make sense though since Marseilles has always been a port city and got rich rather seriously because of the sea and trade.

Ofcourse - it also brought to them the plague epidemic and killed 50k people.

Inside Notre Dame

I don't know why they have so many Notre Dames.
There is one in Paris. One in Cannes
And one here!

Count of Monte Cristo

Remember our hero from the story?
That's the place he was imprisoned in. (Well, in the book anyway)

Visit is tomorrow.

Marseille Port

This was originally a fishing port )and I guess still is because this is the first port where I could get the smell of fish (as made infamous by apna mumbai)

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Off To Marseilles

This is not the TGV which is showing because even though it starts from Nice, it is 10 minutes late. I don't know why!

Atleast it has nicely reclining seats

Ice cream capital of the world?

If there was one place in the world that could qualify as the ice cream capital - nice would be it!

The way people display names of the restaurants, Nice seems to have a tradition of displaying the fact that the place has ice cream!

Everywhere you will find "glaces" written which means ice cream in french (I think!)

What you see here is the last course of my first seriously big meal.

It consisted of a huge cheese tomato sandwich, about 5 kilos of fries (they are standard!) And ofcourse, this rather nice ice cream.

Oh and for those wondering, Nice is pronounced "niece" and not "nice"

The Nice beach

Its awesome! And true to its name, the famous beach is indeed pretty topless ;)

The place to eat

When wandering around in old Nice, make sure you grab a bite or a coffee at Alexander's. Very nice place and extremely friendly and polite staff.

Flower market

The chaos. The smells and the energy.

Very nice way to begin your day!

Cannes film festival

Yup!

The offical throne of the "red carpet"
This is where the famous film festival takes place.

Around it are hand prints from some famous stars.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

On top of Cannes

Here at the Fort (too lazy to look back and read the name!) You get a pretty awesome view of Cannes city and the boat stuffed harbor.

Despite the insane hustle bustle right below in the city, it is so quiet here I can actually hear myself breathe! (And no, that's not because of the climb!)

I'm staying here a while.

The man in the iron mask.

I'm now on St. Marguerite island.
What u see in the distance is Cannes.

This island is 15 minutes away by ferry

This is where the man in the iron mask was imprisoned for 11 years.

Friday, September 26, 2008

F1!

The monaco F1 tunnel!!

See what all u can do when you don't have MNS to worry about?

Copy cats!

Richest neighborhood in the world and they can't come up with their own way of beating the sea waves?

Straight copy from marine drive!

I wonder though if we'll find some peanut wrappers in the midst of all that rock!

Wow! Fishes!

Huuuuge aquarium. One of several.
Easily the best thing to see in monaco.

And I don't even like fishes but the sheer size of the aquariums will hold you spell bound.

Its like you can see sea life from the comfort of your sofa!

Or - you could say this is Big Boss for the fishes :)

The famous Monaco harbor

Quite possibly worth a billion dollars if you add up all thse boats!

Le Casno

Possibly the most famous monument in monaco!

I'm awesome!

See those tiny houses?

I trecked up from there!

Fragonard

One of the prem"ere perfumeries in the world.

Or so the brochure says.

The smell is making me sick!

Eze village

Walking up to eze village
View along the way!

This is lovely. Not to mentioned inclined as hell.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Surviving A Bomb Scare

An interesting thing happened at work today.

We had a rather panicked security person walk upto me and say, sir, we have some police cars and a bomb squad that has come to our office complex. Do we evacuate?

Hell yes. And we promptly evacuated all our employees (which were strangely few for 11:30 AM on a Monday morning!)

Anyhow, what was more surreal (than actually being part of a bomb scare evacuation) was the fact that when we got to the ground floor - I felt like I was at a tourist location and people were having a picnic!

You know the feeling - backslapping jokes, lots of funny stories being exchanged, snacks and candies being passed around and, in some cases, those who had not met in a while decided being thrown out of their office due to a life threatening explosive was an awesome reason to catch up with people they had not met for a while.

So here's a big fuck you to all those who plant bombs - as you can clearly see, we don't give a damn. Yes, it's really sad that many people do die, and we are angry about it but we are not scared - and as long as that stands, irrespective of how many people you kill, you lose.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Perqs of being an OIympian

Just when India is getting rather ecstatic about how many medals have been won, I have just unearthed the single biggest reason why world+dog (excuse the expression) wants to be an Olympian.

Give this a read. You will soon see why there is a whole other kinda marathon going on!

And yes, the medals are irrelevant.