Nice is Nice!

Hello everyone, I'm back...finally, right! I apologize for not keeping up on here but these past few weeks have been jam packed with school, field studies, meetings, and another weekend trip. Today, I only have class and nothing else, so time to get this updated! Let's rewind a bit to the first trip Jordan and I took together....Nice, France (pronounced like Niece) which is in the Southeast corner of France.

We first flew from Copenhagen to Milan, Italy *(where we saw the Alps from the plane!) due to cheap flight costs. After grabbing a nice Italian lunch of pizza and a panini we were on the train to Nice, about a 5 hour ride away.



So, we arrived in Nice the night before Easter Sunday around 8:30pm...and what a way to start. As we pulled out the info to find our way to the hotel, both of us notice that the reservation was for April 22nd rather than March. Hoping that it was just a typo, we went to the hotel anyways and of course, they were booked and it wasn't a typo. The lady there luckily found us a room at another hotel but not before shaking her hands at us and telling us that it was a festival weekend and that we needed to book ahead! Oops, we thought we had!

Then, we made our way to the hotel she found us a room at and after we went inside and set down our heavy luggage to say we're here for a room, the man told us he was booked. Confused, we dropped the name of the lady who just told us to go there and then he was like 'ooohh...you're in room 6' and handed us a key. Whew, crisis averted!

After all of this it was about 11pm and we were starving, so we grabbed a kebab (kinda like a gyro and THE fast food served around here) and some gelato before stolling arond the main square area that night. It was great, no jacket necessary!




The next morning, we got a pretty early start on the day and walked out of our hotel to this area, where the fountains weren't on the night before...maybe you recognize the tower in the middle?


From there we happened upon a market that had amazing looking produce! Including...


...Red peppers that were bigger than our heads! Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but they were giant by Red Pepper standards.


Not realizing that the market was right by the beach, we walked through a random archway to find this...


...and this! Sooo gorgeous, I think my new favorite color is mediterranean blue!


This led to the first picture of us on the beach, in which I find Jordan's face hilarious and then deciding to get some fruit from the market and eat it on the beach for lunch.


Check out the healthiness! That Granny Smith apple was the best I'd ever had! As you can see from the following pictures :)


Shots # 1 and 2, and believe me, there were more!



We had such nice weather...that cloud in the distance did eventually turn into a rain cloud but it didn't last long.


Nothing like a little break from school! Although we were wearing fleeces and jeans for the whole time, when we were on the beach it was warm! Jordan even started to get a sunburn after we were there for about an hour. And, as luck would have it we saw four grandmas who were sun-bathing topless....yikes!



After lunch we decided to climb the citadel...which is the top left part of this picture where all the trees are. In Medieval days, the citadel was where battles would be led to protect a city. Nice's has since been converted into a large park for kids and adults to play in.

But not before more gelato...dessert is always necessary!


This is about half way up the stairs leading up to the park...it seemed so long on the way up but on the way down it went so fast!


I wish I could make postcards out of my photos! This is my current background.


The paths around the park were covered in these great designs basically like pebble mosaics.


And here are some ancient ruins of a church that once stood here...citadels usually contained a chruch, naval residences for the sailors, and areas of uneven land for defensive purposes.


Here is a shot of the park including a couple of jugglers in the foreground.


Who would have known that a whole other side of Nice existed on the other side of the citadel!


There was a restaurant at the top and behind it there was this gorgeous waterfall!


After hiking around the citadel, we took a break to play some cards...which became a habit throughout our travels. I think this was when my horrible losing streak began. Between Rummy 500, 5 Crowns (a new game Jordan taught me), and Golf I kept losing...and wanting to play a different game :)

Anywho, that night we went out for a nice dinner of Jordan (and his mom Jamie's) favorite seaside dish--pasta and seafood! We had spaghetti with mussels, squid, prawns, etc. drenched in a delicious sauce! Afterward, we walked around the main square area again and got some shots of these statues that were on high poles that kept changing colors.



The next day started with us walking to the train station to get our tickets for a train that night to head to Florence, Italy. On the way we stumbled upon a McDonald's and wouldn't you know it Pulp Fiction was right...they do call a quarterpounder a Royal with Cheese in France because they're on the metric system!

For breakfast we decided to get coffee and a crepe to split and decided on our first rule of thumb (besides making sure you have your hotel booked for the right date) when traveling abroad--use fingers when ordering. Rather than one crepe we received two crepes and had more food than we really wanted, but couldn't exactly take one back. Small instances like this happened to us a few times throughout our travels, hence the rule of thumb.


Here's the plaza in the daytime, you can actually tell what the statue's look like:



So, I mostly took this picture for little Jordyn, but there was a merry-go-round right next to the beach!


Nothing says vacation like palm trees!

This is a piece of artwork in a park along the beach. The plaque was gone saying what it was, therefore we came up with our own ideas including a slide, a giant check-mark and a skateboarding jump.

And, back to the beach for a bit. I could have sat all day watching the waves crash into the shore. The funny thing about this beach was that it was all rocks by the water except for one little area of sand that looked like it had been brought in by trucks. Know what I'm saying about the Mediterranean blue?!



Before catching our train we sat in the plaza area by our hotel and watched a bunch of kids who were skateboarding, roller-blading, and biking and all doing tricks. It was great, from this kid all the way down to a little 5-ish year old kid were out there. Also, in the plaza there was this group of people who were doing this sort of karate/dance type of thing and you can check out the video at the end of this post, I think they're group was called ASCAB or ASCAP if you'd like to check them out more.

After watching the skateboarders we filled our time by hanging out in the hotel lobby playing cards until our train left. We had a sleeper car...this was great because not only was it transportation to Florence but we also didn't have to get a hotel that night. I love this picture! We picked up Subway on our way to the train station (I know, real French right?) and this is how hungry we were, haha. Check out the bib...I had a little trouble hitting my mouth sometimes, therefore Jordan thought this was a great idea.

And with a full belly, Jordan was down for the count! You can see what our bunks looked like. We thought we had the car to ourselves for a awhile but then about an hour after we got on another couple joined us and the lady was not the least bit friendly to us. She thought they had the top bunks and put up a big stink about it to the conductor and just didn't like us from then on even though we were extremely polite to her. So the rest of the night was pretty quiet from then on, until 7am when we arrived in Florence!

I hope this works; this is the group I was telling you about, ASCAB:



Forence is coming soon!