Day 16: Nice Rocks

Nice is nice and nice is Nice. Ok, we won't start that again, but seriously, Nice is beautiful.

We woke up to a classic Henriette breakfast of toasted bread and homemade jam of wild fruits. She decided to be our personal tourguide of the day. We walked around the old city of Nice as she was showing us all the gorgeous views and of course to learn more about the plants.

We walked around the little old city and tasted the traditional Nice "Socca," which was deeeeelicious. Then we found one of the many sandwich shops and picked the chicken sandwhich. It was the first chicken we had seen in a while, so we were incredibly excited to eat.

We took the sandwiches to go so we could eat them at the beach. As we were walking, we noticed a big tent set up called "Italie a Table." We walked through it and had samples of many different foods we have been missing since our departure of Italy just yesterday. And yes, we even tried the bread that was soaked in oil. I guess you don't know what you got till its gone.

We got to the beach, knowing it was made of rocks (since we were pre-warned--thanks mom) but Henriette described them more like "small pebbles." Wrong. They were ROCKS and they HURT. But, a beach is a beach...right? We layed in the sun and attempted to find comfortable positions on the rocky beach. Pavement "lawns," rock "beachs," does Europe not understand comfort?

We got used to laying on the rocks, but when we got up to go into the sea, we were in serious pain. We swam for a while in the gorgeous, yet extremely salty, water (which we mistakenly discovered).

After we layed out long enough to have rock imprints all over our bodies, we left the beach to check out the shopping in France. We soon discovered that we simply cannot afford anything here. Even the shops that look like dinky beach stores have designer clothing at ridiculous prices. So we made our way to McDonalds, yes, McDonalds, to indulge in a nice cold soda and ice coffee. Problem is, ice coffee in Europe does not exist, in fact the concept of it is completely unheard of. EVEN at McDonalds.

As we sipped on our Coke Light (Europe's version of Diet Coke) we discussed the stupidity of having different tasting sodas in different countries. In America, Coke tastes like Coke and Diet tastes like diet. In Europe, however, Coke, Coke Light, AND Coke Zero ALL taste like Coke. What is the point?? We decided we will use this topic of conversation as another pick up line. We are going to have SO many friends by the end of this trip. Jealous?

We did a little more exploring and headed back to Henriette's when we hoped it would be dinner time. I guess we forgot how late Henriette likes to eat. You think we would be used to the 9 o'clock dinners by now? Her nephew joined us for dinner. We were hoping he would take us out to show us the night life of Nice, but he had to go home since he has work early tomorrow morning.

We headed out on our own in attempt to find something to do. We walked around areas filled with people hoping to see where to go. The only thing we could see was restaurant after restaurant. So we stopped for some gelatto that we hadn't had in one whole day. Later, we saw younger people coming out and of course we had to follow anyone we thought would lead us somewhere. Of course, we found the most American bar in all of Nice. After an attempt at making a friend that we soon learned had just graduated high school, we decided it was time to leave. Soif Jeudi does not properly translate to Thirsty Thursday. As we were told "Saturday Night Fever" is where its at. I guess Nice is a few decades behind the times.

-J and C