Last Weekend in October

Happy Monday everyone!
Last weekend we spent in Nice at our friends place, and had a super fun weekend!

Our friends view in Nice!

Friday night we went to Hussard in Olde Town Nice which was very nice. We went with another couple and ordered the appetizer platter to share. Then for my main course I ordered the lamb confit with mashed potatoes.  OMG, it was so good.  The platter had a great mix of burratta cheese, parma ham and foie gras with fig jelly on toast points.  And my lamb was melt in your mouth delicious!  Despite the shit service, we will definitely be going back.  I would rate it a 4 out of 5 stars, and with improved service this could easily be a 5.

After dinner, we ventured over to Akathan Pub just down the street.  Had a couple more glasses of wine while enjoying the live music, then called it a night.

Saturday I spent perusing the antique shops near the Nice Port.  Found this amazing little gem, for just 20€.

Vintage Guerlain parfume bottle!

Saturday night our friends hosted dinner, before going to see James Bond at the cinema.  Great dinner and great movie!  Funny enough my favorite part was sneeking wine into the theatre.

Sunday we got up early to head to Biot's flea market.  What a BUST....it was full of complete junk so we were in and out of there pretty quickly. The weather had turned cold very quickly around 11, so we decided to venture to the Leger museum.  On the way our driver insisted we stop in the forest to go mushroom hunting.  Wow, so happy we stopped....found these amazing Chanterelle mushrooms to go on our steaks for dinner!

Hand picked Chanterelle Mushrooms!

We finally checked out the Fernand Leger museum, which was pretty cool and at just 5€ totally worth it.

Our friends outside the Leger Museum in Biot

Winter has finally arrived in South of France...time to pull out the winter jackets.  Brrrrrrr....dinner tonight with friends visiting from Miami.  YAY!!

Weekend of Oct 20 & 21

Another weekend has come and gone....flown by once again. I can hardly believe that it will be November next week.  Where did October go?

Anyways, here's a run down of our fairly uneventful weekend:

Friday Night - Stayed in to watch some tele. After a late night at a friends dinner party on Thursday we finally recovered and just wanted to lay low.

Saturday - 10am we were off on a hike. Our plan was to take the Garavan trail up to Castellar, enjoy lunch in the village of Castellar and then hike back down.  On the way up the GPS got a bit funny, and we ended up on the 52(cinquante deux) trail, which was a 70% incline where we huffed and puffed our way to the top.  At the top we realized the mistake and found our way back to the originally planned trail to Castellar.  We had packed a picnic lunch and sat and ate and took in the view.  Here are some pics....

Check out that climb...phew

Here is where we realized that we took the wrong trail

Sparky and Lucia hanging out

The view was worth the climb

Near our lunch spot

View from one ridge to Castellar

Some flowers along the way

Saturday evening we took the train to Nice to visit our friends Antoine & Marina.  We were just cracking open the 2nd bottle of wine and their 3 year old had just been put to bed when he called for "Maman" because he had gotten sick.  Poor baby was up all night sick, and there went our evening of drinks and catching up.

Sunday we took the train back into Monaco, and went straight to church. After church was a lovely luncheon where we collected donations for a shelter in Nice. Was home by 3pm and lounged around the rest of the day.

Leadership

Just finished Steve Jobs biography, and I can't help but process his leadership ability, skills, and styles.

In the short 10 years of my professional career, I have come across every style of
Leader.

First was Wayne Willegas at celebrity cruises, he was the VP of marketing for the majority  of my time there. He was a warm, welcoming guy with an open mind for ideas and even though I was young he was always encouraging of my ideas and my efforts.

Next I moved onto an advertising agency run by two Jewish women in Miami. These women had owned and operated the agency for over 20 years and the one and only client for that 20 years was Sandals resorts. I came into my management role here, and found a very hostile environment. Every time I was in front of them, it felt like I was in front of a firing squad. They would fire away questions, and I would scramble to answer having to learn to be quick on my toes. These women micro managed every aspect of the business, and would one day scrutinize certain things only the next day to completely overlook them and find them irrelevant. They were hard to please, and easily distracted. However, there was a redeeming factor of feeling like you were family. They would ask about personal things, and actually listen and offer advice. It was a strange place to work, very stressful...but it taught me so many invaluable things. Despite the rigor, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Finally I find myself in Monaco with the most laid back of bosses. There are months at a time that no one in the office sees him or even knows where he is. There is a complete lack of communication, and the general direction of the company is unclear. However, it's his way of making you figure things out for yourself. No hand holding, no judgments once you do actually see him. Just, an ease about him that we will figure it out in due time. Yes, this creates all sorts of red flags for me....for example how do we pay our overhead when we haven't had revenue in nearly 6 months? Among other questions.

But what has all of this taught me? What is the lesson to be learned here? What is the best leadership style? How do I want to format my own leadership style?

I wish I had the answers to all these questions. As I hit 30 next year, I want to be on the right path and moving towards a bright future...but at this time I seem to only know that what works for me doesn't necessarily work for anyone else. And with each employee that I manage, my leadership style seems to adjust in small ways in order to facilitate a good working environment.

4 Days In Bavaria (Munich)

So we're back from Munich. It was a whirlwind....well kind of.

We saw so many amazing places, and the history and the gorgeous architecture...it's just such an amazing place that we were actually sad to leave.  Here's a quick recap (I will do another post with more details):

Day 1, Thursday:
Just a quick 1.5 hour flight from Nice into Munich.  We hopped on the s-Bahn and checked into our hotel. Dropped our bags and were at Oktoberfest by 9:45am.  We waited outside the Kafer tent until they opened their doors at 11am, and scrambled to find a seat.  Luckily we sat near 3, young, super fun and english speaking Germans.  We drank, and drank and ate some pork and drank and drank until around 4pm.  Walked back to the hotel in the rain since my drunk hubby dropped our umbrella.   Took a nap, and were off to a delicious dinner by 8:30pm.  SUCH AN AMAZING day!!

Day 2, Friday:
We were out the door by 10:30am, which was impressive for the amount of drinking that happend the day before.  We skipped the 28€ per person breakfast that the hotel offered, and opted for a cute neighborhood cafe, and paid a mere 7€ for the two of us.  We explored a church, walked to Residenz...an amazing former palace for the royal family in the city.  Then we saw more churches, ate a traditional meatball and sausage lunch.  Then we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon steam and sauna session.  Nap, then off to a Michelin Star dinner.  OMG, I am totally not a fan of blood sausage...but I ate it and loved it at Le Barestovino.  More details to come....another unbelievable day!

Day 3, Saturday:
Headed outside the city limits, about 45 minute train ride + 1 hour hike to the Andechs Monastery.  Not only did we enjoy the gorgeous scenery hiking to the Monastery, but once we were there the stunning old buidlings and the view from the top of the hill was simply gorgeous.  Here we dined and drank some beer for abour 3 hours...all while chatting with some locals who barely spoke English.  Hiked and then trained and were back to the hotel in time for a nap, shower and then off to dinner.  We had no idea what we were in store for dinner....wow, was it super cool.  We ate amazing food, and ordered a gorgeous South African wine. It was just around 11pm and we were getting ready to ask for the bill when they cranked up the music, pushed the tables to the sides and everyone started dancing, drinking, smoking and partying. We joined in the fun, until my feet started hurting and were back to the hotel around 1am.

Day 4, Sunday:
Now we had all sorts of plans for this day, but the weather was a bit overcast and the bed was so warm & cozy that we just nested here most of the day.  Finally around 3pm, the maids called to clean the room so we ousted ourselves out of bed and headed to the art museums.  We were given shitty directions, so we had to find our way to the House dez Kunst (house of art).  Basically we were torn between visiting the Pinkotechka modern art museum and this House dez Kunst.  Boy were we disappointed with our decision to visit House dez Kunst. It was the shortest exhibit I think I've ever visited, but I guess it was cool to see some of the art that Hitler collected.  The only redeeming factor was that there was an amazing coffee shop attached to the museum where we sat for a bit and chatted.  And we ended our trip with some sushi at Annas Bistro at a nearby hotel.  It was the perfect end to the perfect trip....NOT(see day 5).

Day 5, Monday:
Wake up at 430am, take the train to the airport for our 6:45am flight....only to get to the check in counter at 6:25 and miss the check in cut off time and have to completely rebook our flight home.  Ugh, not only was it 1000€, but there wasn't a flight until 3pm.  Meaning we spent a lovely 8 hours at the airport.  Yes, we probably could have ventured back into Munich, but it was just too much effort so we slovenly hung around the airport passing time and talking shit.  We didn't make it back to Monaco until 6pm...making this day a complete waste.  Kind of a shitty way to end the trip, but we must focus on the 4 days of awesomeness and forget about this horrible day :)

Dying to go back to Munich, however our list of EU places to hit up is about 10 pages long...so our next adventure will be Scandinavia next the summer.  Well that atleast what we decided during our 8 hour stay in the Munich airport...we shall see! I promise to post a more in-depth review of our trip with pictures and names and costs and transport infos...pinky swear! Maybe in like a week or so.

PS. My parents arrive today, I'm dying here at work because I'm so excited to see them and have a few days off to visit with them.  We will be venturing to Alba, Italy and around Monaco making sure to hit all the good restaurants while the parents are footing the bill!!