Juan le Pins

The entire purpose of the trip was to visit Maya and her family.

Todd and I arrived at Nice airport earlier than we expected, we had told Maya not to come and meet us but we knew Maya well enough to know that she would ignore us and come to the airport anyway.  It had been a rougher flight than we expected.  The flight time was over 7 hours long and when we got on the plane, something felt amiss.  We soon realised that the plane we were on really wasn't a long haul plane, but rather it was a small short haul plane that had been pressed into this longer route.  I'm sure that from a mechanical stand point, there is no problems with this approach, but the interior of the plane was severely lacking.  The seats were uncomfortable and there was almost no entertainment.  Looking at the maps and the flight path being taken, it became clear to us that this was meant to have been a much shorter flight, but the embargo on Qatar by the rest of the Arab states was forcing it to fly a significantly longer route.  Since we were early, hungry, and also waiting for our friend Phil who was also coming, we decided to get some lunch first.  As we sat eating our quiche (we were now in France after all), we saw two small platinum blonde children run past.  The kids had clearly arrived.  Maya soon followed as we jumped out to surprise her.  Catching up with old friends you haven't seen for years will always be one of the best parts of traveling.  We all sat down and chatted for a while before Phil then arrived and we repeated the whole process again.  The four of us had grown up together at boarding school and yet somehow remained friends for all these years.  It had been many years since we had all been together in one place.  Probably over ten years in fact.

I went over to pick up the hire car and then followed Maya as she drove us to our hotel.  We had decided to stay around Juan le Pins as it seemed like it was both close to things to do, as well as being close to where Maya and her family lived.  After we settled, we went for a walk down the beach.

It was perfect.  There aren't many times you can truly say that, but this was one of them.

The sun had started to set, so we ordered a bottle of rose and caught up on all the crazy and mundane things that had been happening to each of us recently.  The kids on the other hand ran around on the beach...

The last time we were all together, I'm fairly sure we were huddled up freezing in some dingy cafe in Canberra.  Over ten years had past and we were now all sitting on the beach on the Cote d'Azur. watching the sunset over the Mediterranean Sea.  You really never know what direction life will take you no matter how much you try and plan it.