Calories on the French Riviera

After a friendship of almost nine years, it was high time for Sujji and I to tick one item off our bucket list: a girl trip together. Blessed with cheap flights by the Gods of Easyjet, we flew off to Nice, where I was humbled on three important pieces of information:

1. The Cote d'Azure does not have a sandy beach - at least not in Nice. It's all pebbles. And the water is freezing in spring.

2. Lavenders in Provence only pop out as from June-July. They don't hang around waiting for everyone eternally, and they certainly aren't there in spring time.

3. Provence is big.

Seeing that lavender fields and the beach were the two reasons I opted for Nice as our getaway destination, I should have been dramatically heartbroken and underwhelmed. In truth, this was one of the best trips I've done this year.

I ate like a hobbit.

We took a very early morning flight from London and, the moment we touched down on French soil, swapped our ungainly, sensible clothes for straw hats, spring dresses and sunglasses. We later discovered that it was still chilly...much to my dismay.

Nevertheless, this didn't deter us from camping out for a short moment on the riviera, on the pebbles, watching the ocean rush in and out in sparkling hues of azure, turquoise, and cerulean, against an equally blue sky.

We snoozed, read a little bit, took in the fresh air and the sun.

Of course, the inevitable happened and we grew desperate for coffee and - at least for one of us - food. It was time to conquer the French gastronomy landscape. So we opted for pizza, naturally.

We ambled past cute streets and the spacious place Masséna where we ogled the statue of the naked guy with horses on his head (he would later become our signpost and be dubbed 'Naked Guy'). We were clearly behaving like grown-up ladies.

So, pizza.

We figured that since Italy was so close, pizza counted as a local dish anyway. This said, for what we received on our platters, we may well have been given a previously un-tried, brand new dish; those were among the best pizzas I've ever had.

We had ambled to the flower market, and plonked ourselves on a table in the sun outside the appropriately named Café Le Flore. The weather was simply perfect, if a little nippy, and it was all very laid-back.

We set ourselves to ordering things recklessly - Sujji went for a ratatouille one, while I went for a four-cheese . We started with hot chocolate, and of course when it arrived, it was the thick, rich chocolate that Continental Europe blesses you with - not the type that's made with processed powders. An unconventional drink to accompany pizza... but we were ravenous.

So, pizza.

When they arrived...

They were huge discs of insanely thin crust, slathered with tomato paste and garnished in a haphazard manner - huge hearts of artichoke thrown here and there alongside chunks of courgettes on Sujji's pizza , slabs of warm, slightly nutty chèvre and blue cheese on mine.

Maybe it was the hunger but I was blown away. I think Le Flore is one of those cafés that's not especially stunning - it may even be a hit and miss affair - but on that particular day the pizzas, and more specifically the ingredients, captured the sunshine and joie de vivre of the Mediterranean with complete perfection.

Perhaps I'm so used to high food prices or imported processed food, or people trying to cut corners by substituting good quality ingredients with cheaper ones or smaller portions, that this took me by surprise.

The rest of the day was spent ambling around - neither of us felt the pressure to rush to places of interest and do things. To be fair, trying to get on a 6am flight was presumptuous and we fell asleep, only waking up at about 10pm with the realisation that we were horribly hungry, again.

Since we were in France, and since nothing else was open, we settled for the best crêpes we'd had in a while at a place called His Master's Voice, complete with grumpy French waiter. Mine was an extravaganza of chocolate coulis, crème Chantilly and gently spiced pears; Sujji's was a delicate paper-thin one drizzled with lavender honey.

They tasted divine.

Fuelled by sugar, we took a long walk down the seafront, all the way to the harbour area.

A fresh wind was blowing; the air was thick with the scent of night-flowers and in the distance, the sultry voice of a French woman jamming to a lone guitar by the beach mingled with the sound of the waves against the pebbles. It was perfect.