The calm after the storm

We had a massive, but very brief storm on Monday - for about half an hour, it absolutely chucked it down. (Video and pictures at Nice Matin, if you're interested.)

You couldn't see across the road from our flat, the rain was so heavy - and the wind was blowing the rain right at our windows. Which, this being early morning in the summer on the Cote d'Azur, were open.

Much swearing, slamming of windows and mopping of puddles followed. Not how I generally like to start my day, being more of the traditional "Don't talk to me until I've  had at least THISMUCH coffee" type.

The rain stopped and started for an hour or so after that initial burst of fury, and then by about 9:30, the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was as if nothing had ever happened.

There was a nice cool breeze on Monday, at least, which had largely died off yesterday - but the storm did clear the haze from the air, leaving bright blue skies and sea:

And this morning is starting out well, with a beautiful sunrise:

(Yes, I know, for a not-at-all-morning-person, I do see a fair amount of sunrises. Insomnia is a many-splendoured thing.)

What are your plans for the day? And what's the weather like where you are?

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In which St Jean Cap Ferrat incurs the wrath of the gods

There's been a *huge* thunder and lightning storm here, it's been rather pretty. St Jean Cap Ferrat clearly hasn't been keeping up with its ritual virgin sacrifices: it got hit by lightning 3 times in the space of half an hour, twice slamming into poor inoffensive trees and exploding them into flames. Monaco looks like it's being hammered now.

The pretty bit is gone from here now, no more thunder rattles the windows and only occasional flashes light up the sky; even the driving rain has died off, leaving just the whistling gusts of wind. One of the exploded trees is still burning slightly.

I like storms, when I can stay inside in the warm and watch them.

ETA: It's sunny now, and hot. There follows a probably very boring video of lightning - though it doesn't have the trees exploding, since I wasn't awake enough to grab my camera at that point...

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Weekend round-up

Weekends are, it appears, unlikely to get blog updates. I'm sure this tears at your hearts with the pain of a thousand dying stars, but I expect you'll learn to cope somehow.

There, that didn't take long, did it?

Friday, I may or may not have written here- I think that might have been my day of stating the fucking obvious, where I told you how buses work. See what happens when you start to run out of inspiration? (In my defence, the sheer number of totally bewildered tourists I see daily leads me to suspect that either it's not as easy as it looks, or we get all the stupid people. I doubt it's the latter, though I'm open to persuasion.)

We went for drinks with friends in the evening on the terrace, ate dinner and watched the sun set and that was Friday.

Saturday, it rained. It's been raining a lot this week - at all is a lot, if you ask me. It's August for crying out loud. I wrote a couple of thousand words on my new story, having woken up early again, and then we went to Antibes, because Nice is depressing in the rain. Antibes is better, though trying to find a bus stop in the rain where there are lots of busy roads all intersecting each other is not recommended. If you have an umbrella, it might be bearable, I suppose... The rain got heavier, and trying to get from the bus station to our house was just nasty. I boycotted the rest of the day.

Sunday was much better. We had breakfast at a cafe on the seafront, went to Cap d'Ail and Eze and walked along the beach, ate sushi in sun in Place Garibaldi, and had dinner out on the now-dry terrace.

Yesterday was a public holiday in Monaco, for some religious thing. So we took advantage of the continuing sunshine and went to Menton. Despite my standing objection to Menton, it's nice enough in the sun. I'm slowly warming to the place, though I still wouldn't want to live there. Photos will follow, at some point, as usual.

Today is sunny, I have orders to fill, food shopping to do, and that's about it. I think I shall spend the afternoon lying in the sun on the terrace. Maybe I'll brave the beach and go swimming, even. How strenuous...

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Toulon

Ignoring politics for now - it's sort of taken over my life this week, for obvious reasons - we've been doing some exploring over the weekend. On Saturday we went to Toulon - the weather forecast was ok, so we decided to go for it.

The weather forecast lied, obviously. But Toulon is a pretty town on the Mediterranean coast, between here and Marseille (I didn't know this before I went there) - it's much more a place you would live than for tourists to visit, which made me like it instantly! There is a Zoo and cable cars, so we're going to go back in the summer when the weather's guaranteed to be good!

Below, as usual, are pictures - note the colour of the sky in the last few pics. It rained shortly after taking those photos. Heavily.

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In which I hit the big time as a professional photgrapher

Or, well, not. But still! My photo in a real newspaper! (For certain definitions of newspaper.) With my name next to it, and everything! Nice Matin has printed a photo of mine about the recent storms we had, on page 69 out of 70. I'm so proud.

(If you click on the picture, you should be given the option to see a bigger version. Maybe.)

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I have had better ideas

Note to self: going for a run in the rain sounds like a perfectly sensible thing to do - otherwise no one would ever get anything done in the UK, after all - but it isn't. Really. Not. My sweater was soaked within 5 minutes, my feet and shoes were soaked within ten. After 20 minutes of wiping driving rain out of my eyes, I decided to give up and go home. Of course, there were no buses, so I had to walk.

By the time I got back, the rain had nearly stopped, naturally. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

The storm yesterday was worse than I thought - I walked past 2 boat motor thingys and tons of pieces of broken boat.

This restaurant is not as waterproof as they had probably hoped - they were sweeping out litres of water when I walked past. I think we might wait for them to dry out before considering going there for dinner...

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More storm pictures

Just because I can. We were the first story on the news, too - clearly all of France wants to know about our huge waves! Here we've done better than the rest of the coast though - we've just had boats washed up, they've had carparks flooded, and the promenade des Anglais is closed. Always fun at rush hour.

Anyway, photos...

Pigeons, ignoring the rain and drinking on the balcony next door:

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Storm pics

It's a bit windy here. It's messing with the waves...

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New Years Day

Did I show you the pictures from New Years Day here? It was stormy and the waves were *huge*! (It is, in hindsight, perhaps not the best idea to walk alongside the beach or the port, when the waves are splashing so high they flood the street. Just in case any of you are in that position in the future.)

Anyway, some pics of some waves, just to prove that it's not all sunshine all the time here. (Though it is nice today.) The sky was definitely not happy at New Year.

Today, it looks more like:

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