Japanese Garden, Monaco

We started off the day on a hunt for a Nexus 7 (which seems to be out of stock everywhere, so I've now preordered one from FNAC. I hope it turns up.) and ended up in a Monegasque shopping centre. It's a bit of a surreal experience; sort of like they've heard of shopping centres, but haven't quite grasped the concept - Cartier is not a shopping centre type shop. I think these chandeliers might illustrate the problems:

We then went on to the Japanese Garden. Did you know there's a Japanese Garden in Monaco? I didn't. It's right near the beach, a couple of minutes away from Le Meridien hotel, in case you're looking for it, and it's rather lovely.

Near the gardens is this awesome statue that I may well adopt as my online face if I can get a better picture of it:

And there is also this gorgeous fountain, which is echoed by a similar (though short and round) fountain at Fontveille port, where we ended the afternoon in a nice Italian bar overlooking the sea. The pictured fountain is just above the beach near the Meridien.

Good Morning Internet!

Merry Christmas and all that - I hope you had a good time and Santa brought you all the toys you wanted!

Sorry it's been a while since I last wrote here, despite my newfound good intentions - December is manic for the jewellery part of my life, as people suddenly realise Christmas is coming. But things are more or less back to normal on that front, not least because I'm still on holiday and so the shop is closed.

We're down in Beausoleil for New Year's Eve, and it's gloriously sunny. I desperately need to find a way to move here full-time - any (legal) suggestions welcome! In the meantime, I feel like sharing, so have some photos: yesterday on the beach in Nice during the day, and at sunset, and sunrise in Monaco this morning.


Nice beach yesterday:

Sunset over Nice last night:

Sunrise this morning: