French cuisine, despair and hope

How could I have anything bad to say about French cousine? Me, the tastebudless Finn, here, in Sophia Antipolis. For lunch on the training day on Tuesday we went to the local restaurant, which was serving Thai food. I had two rolls of something with lettuce and mint. I was assured that the rolls contained rotten fish and I have to think that it wasn't a language issue. The rolls were absolutely delicious and I have to now ask my Thailand-visiting friends. Have you come into contact with rotten-fish-rolls? They might be called Nem or not.

In the evenings I'm not eating at restaurants, but instead I cook in my hotel room. Well, if you can call nuking cooking. Here's an example of misleading marketing, if I ever so one. The potatoes were a sad sight:


I was feeling miserable on Monday as I arrived. Here's my first impression of Sophia Antipolis, standing in wet shoes and jeans, having dragged a wet suitcase up an endless seeming hill, without the slightest clue as to where I'm supposed to go or how far it is, finding an obscure map indicating that the street I'm on is circular and that if I continue up the hill, I'll soon be coming down the hill back to where I started from and it's not the street my hotel is on:


Luckily the next morning made more than up for it, look at the perfect blue sky:


What if tourist leaflets only used the sunny pictures and the reality was more like my first impression? Would we put up with it? No, that's why travel agency broschures always tell the truth and show also rainy and cloudy pictures...HEY, wait a minute!...that can't be right. Marketing is based on the X-tian principle of turning the other cheek. If the first cheek doesn't look good in the sales picture, that is...