Expanding The Crew or The Making Of Menton

After our first rather stressful day getting the Eldership docked into the mountainside overlooking the Mediterranean coast, I woke up to catch the early morning light bathing over our surroundings

Fellow Blogger and frequent commentator on the blog, RMG, noted that while we often complain about the lack of staff on the Eldership, we rarely do anything to remedy that. Took the words to heart. So we set out back to Nice Cote d'Azur Airport to see if we could find some young victim...I mean recruit to bring aboard the vessel.

Low and Behold we found a young person who had no one who seemed to be looking after her. Wife immediately went and put on her best recruiting pitch.

"You know you will be able to wear this red tunic and everything"

(Look up red tunic enlisted people survival rates in Star Trek)

Wife then plied her with all the best we had to offer

We found out her name is 1 of 4 secondary adjunct to 2 of 3

Wife continued telling 1 of 4 all the opportunities she would have being in an Eldership

We even treated her to her own rolls of yarn!

Hmm What is this about the red tunic clad people...they never return from away missions!

What have I gotten myself into?

(Photo credit to Wife)

In the meantime, we had our first touring day, a visit to the nearby city of Menton in France.

Menton is called Nice without all the price and attitude. It has a nice old town and is of a size that is very approachable. Going there on a Monday in October, the city was very quiet.

City Scene Overview

The Basilica of Saint Michel is one of the major sites

The old market still in use

Other scenes in town

Eating Mediterranean Style

There are still lots of nice days in October. We had both of our first meals out of doors

The way to enjoy a meal

With as much as we are going to be eating over the next month, I will intersperse the gastronomy with the regular posts. I'm also only going to talk about the dishes I think are worthy of notice.

For our first meal we went to a sea food place in Vermentiglia Italy right close to where we're staying.

We had a good grilled fish, fried shrimp and squid, and lobster pasta

But the best dish in my opinion was a salad with warm baccalao (salt cod) salad. The balance of the residual salt in the fish with bitterness of the greens and acid of lemon was spot on.

In Menton the next day we ended up eating Italian again even though we were in France. 

Our first course and our desserts were the high points. We were not impressed with our mains

I had a seafood salad. The seafood was very tender and the citrus, bitter greens combination again was very bright

Wife and Granddaughter 2.1 had crepes with ham and salmon respectively in them. Unlike the filled crepes you get Stateside they were not swimming in sauce. I thought the salmon one was the best.

One dessert was a bitter chocolate cake, while the other two were a mint chocolate chip ice cream with mint liquor over it, while the third was a lemon sorbet with vodka over it. The cake was excellent but the sorbet with vodka (which we were skeptical about) was the real star. Will have to try to do that at home.