Beachlife

Today, Cristina and me went to the beach. After a couple of weeks with temperatures of around 25° C the water is now very comfortable for swimming. It still feels pretty amazing to live just one block away from here !



This beach is a pebble beach, as you can see in the picture. This is a little less comfortable than your average sandy beach, but then again, you're not full of sand everywhere when going home.

Another feature of the beach here is the exceptional colour of the water. Near shore it is really, very blue. Azure coast, aha. What could cause this colour? It's not only near shore; in waters further out, the trail of a boat has this colour, as we'd seen going to Corsica. A possible explanation is that it is phytoplankton blooming, as in this satellite picture of the Bay of Biscay:



However it seems those phytoplankton do not bloom all the time, and judging from the picture above, they do not particularly stick to the shores. Maybe it is silt from the bottom, as explains the NASA Oceanography site:

In coastal areas, runoff from rivers, resuspension of sand and silt from the bottom by tides, waves and storms and a number of other substances can change the color of the near-shore waters.

The sea here is very salty indeed, more so anyway than the Atlantic ocean at the coast of Maranhão, where Cristina comes from. I'll go for the silt explanation; if you know better please let me know !

And here are some more of today's pictures:

Right-wing extremists t-shirts

I stumbled upon this site, that sells incredible t-shirts. Some Americans seem to be actually proud of their ignorance ! That site's FAQ page is interesting as well, as they explain how they prefer to buy their shirts from Mexican suppliers rather than US ones ("we stand by our capitalist, union-busting apparel"). Here are some examples of fantastic shirt designs. I do *not* recommend anyone buying from businesses like this, though !

Font size buggy buttons

Yesterday, Anonymous said:

sympa ton blog, mais les caractères sont trop petits !!! c'est fatiguant à lire !

To accommodate readers who wish to view this blog in a different font size but do not like to change their browser's view settings, I've added these buttons to the top of the page.

          

However, they do not work correctly ! At least not on my office XP/Firefox. When clicking for a smaller font, at the first click it actually gets larger instead! This javascript was copied from http://dhtmlnirvana.com/content/dhtml/fontsize/fontsize1.html. As I'm lazy I think it's good enough; if you have a clean solution, please tell me;

Cristina fala da sua escola de francês

Meus amigos adoráveis da Alliança Francesa em Nice, França.

Uma japonesa, uma thailandesa, tres suecos e uma brasileira, Silvia, do Bélem do Para.


Eu, a minha professora, e minha amiga mexicana Lorena.


A hora do lanche !

Pictures from Corsica

It has been awhile, but here are some pictures of our trip to Corsica :

The ferry from Nice to Bastia


About to board


Cristina on the ferry


Cristina in the ferry


Shuffling cards in the ferry


Brass hall inside


Cristina playing cards


Beignets in Bastia


Bastia


Bastia


Bastia


Bastia


Bastia


Bastia


Bastia, view of the citadel


Bastia


Port of Bastia


Train from Bastia to Casamozza


Near Corte


Ajaccio at night


Near Ajaccio


Between Ajaccio and Corte


Between Ajaccio and Corte


Between Ajaccio and Corte


Train to Calvi


Train to Calvi


Port of Calvi


Jellyfish in Calvi


Citadel in Calvi


Ferry from Calvi to Nice

Nightlife

Saturday night me and Cristina went to La Havane, a restaurant turning dance club after dinner hours. Showing up at around 23:00 the bouncer first informed me in English that the place was full but we could wait a bit outside (tables and chairs provided on the sidewalk) but when I translated this to Cristina in Portuguese, a broad smile appeared on his face and after mumbling some Spanish, we were let in. This place is very nice, it has a live band and lots of people dancing, and an upstairs from where you can look down at the band and the dance floor. At this hour, the last patrons who were there for dinner were still finishing it. We met our neighbour (or rather, her cousin, or something like that) who is Baiano there as well. I find this the best place to go out I've seen so far; the ambience is more relaxed than in a place called Cubana at the promenade (although they also have live music, and a very good band at that) and definitely much nicer than the Antillian disco at the edge of the Old town, that's horrendously expensive and has a rather high-strung feel about it. And, the Havana is only a few minutes walk from our appartment !

Cannes 2006

Today we went to Cannes, where the film festival is taking place. The train from Nice takes about half an hour and passes mostly directly by the sea, which makes for a nice ride. In Cannes the streets were full of journalists and other people wearing badges - they can go in places where we couldn't. One marked difference to Nice was the weather, a quite cold wind blowing in your face. We did try to take some shots of the famous, paperazzi-style. Caught Charlie Sheen and Willem Dafoe, among others. See the pictures below. Do you see who's a celebrity, and who isn't ?