Bonjour et Au Revoir Nice

At the University of East Anglia, they have given us about a month off from classes for the Easter Break. Whereas at home I would have gotten a week off somewhere in March, here we have time for an actual vacation. So Alisha and I are taking advantage.

Our view while climbing the Colline du Château

Our first stop was to visit Nice, France. It's been kind of a fantasy of mine to see France and test out my French skills, which are really comme si comme ça. That is to say, they aren't that good, but not completely horrible either. I am recording what I have written on my phone back when I was at the airport waiting for our flight back to London. It is now a week after we have returned from all our vacationing, and I am just now getting around to posting about my adventures.

Look! France has Bose too!

So we begin in Nice. For one thing, the weather was fantastic. I actually got a small sunburn on my face on the second day because we stayed out all day. The food was excellent too. Twice we stopped for gelato and sorbet at this place Fennocchio. I tried lavender, chocolate, vanilla, lemon, and mango. The mango was my absolute favorite, the flavor practically punched me in the face. And anyone who knows me will tell you that I love mango. It was a love that began in Florida with a trip to the restaurant Bahama Breeze and a secret menu smoothie. But I digress. I think my favorite place was our last meal. We got pizza at Attimi's, where I ate an entire pizza by myself. I know pizza isn't particularly French, but it was still very good. Oh, but I'm forgetting about the bakeries! Mama Baker had some great baguettes and the Cours Seleya markets did too. Then there were the macarons I bought from LAC Chocolatier.

Margherita pizza about 1/3 of the way through (because I never remember to take photos of my food while it’s still fully on my plate).

Margherita pizza 3/3 of the way through.

The last macaron (again, because I don’t remember to take photos BEFORE I’ve begun eating).

Bottom line, all the food was good.

We found a lot to do too. Since we were spending six days there, we needed a lot of activities on our list. On our first full day, it rained, so we visited the Musée Marc Chagall. Then we got some lunch, where the waiter recommended that during our stay we visit the Eze Village. We took him up on his suggestion later in our trip and saw the sights. It had a lovely view overlooking the ocean, but there wasn't a whole lot to do. We only spent a couple hours walking around before we took a bus back to Nice.

View from Eze Village

Eze Village

Just some cool cars parked in front of the perfume shop. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures

I think my favorite day was the second full day that we spent. Living in England means we don't get to see a lot of sunlight, so we made the most of it. We bought a baguette from Mama Baker and some fig jam from the grocery store, then we hiked up the Colline du Château (a.k.a. Castle Hill), which was basically just 1,000 stairs of varying heights and distances, and ate our breakfast sitting on a bench looking out over the city. When we were done, we hiked back down and walked along the Promenade des Anglais, or at least I think that's what it was called. I think I saw a sign somewhere that said that. According to Alisha's phone, we walked a total of 12 miles that day.

And that about covers our time in Nice. I'm going to miss the warmth and sunlight. I chickened out and didn't try my French a whole lot, but I did manage to get some directions out of someone when we were first looking for our hostel. I understood the words La maison rouge, and derrière, so I knew we had to go down the street behind the red building. But I had a completely failed attempt when, during our time in Eze Village, a woman asked me when the bus would be arriving. I accidentally said le bus est perdu, which means that the bus got lost, instead of saying that it was late because of road construction. She stared at me, so I just said "soon" and she seemed to understand that.

Our next stop is Bath, England.