the french riviera

my final trip of my year abroad. did i really just say that? i can't believe it.
pour mon voyage final je suis allée à nice, monaco, et cannes. la sud de la france!
alors, nice:

my host parents had made it clear to me that i would need to venture through the south of france before i make my final departure. so i made a point to make sure that happened.

to my future children, a couple words to consider:
"oh, let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of france. let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance" - ingrid michaelson's 'you and i'. this song was sort of the theme of our trip.

we started with a five-hour train ride, zoe, chloe and i. after sleeping for much of it since train rides arent always particularly exciting, we realized how beautiful it was outside for the last hour or so. la plage. ohhhh the beach. and seeing the water. so blue and clear! i couldn't wait to actually touch it.

we finally arrived in nice and bid adieu to chloe since she was going to get on another short train ride to spend the weekend with her uncle.
a few short minutes later we arrived at our hostel where we dropped off our bags before starting our real explorations.

we wandered around vieux nice for awhile checking out the marchés and lots of cute restaurants in big squares and small passage ways (though we wouldn't be eating out till the second night). i really like how windey a enclosed vieux nice is. i wish we had more areas in cities like this in the states.

we even found a church and decided to check it out since it seemed like the thing to do. we didn't feel like going out of our way to find churches after seeing so many this year, but if we had one in front of us, why not take a peak inside?

we took a break to try some socca, something chloe had told us is a specialty in nice. basically its like a hardy crepe. i looked it up and found out socca are actually chick-pea crepes. they werent super exciting, but they were really good. plus it was a good snack to hold us over until dinner.

finally we headed toward the water. we spent awhile simply sitting on a beach enjoying our surroundings: the beautiful blue sea in front of us, bikers and rollerbladers passing by, and the realization that we were finally in nice!

as the sun started to set we wished it was actually over the water, but figured you can only hope for so much.

finally we were hungry enough to go off in search of some dinner. to save money we decided to just get sandwiches the first night so we grabbed some and then made our way back to the beach, this time actually sitting on the rocks to eat them.

we managed to almost finish our food before a tunesian guy came up to us and tried talking to us. only problem was his french was terrible, i dont think he spoke english, and we couldnt really understand what he was trying to say. something about his family being in tunesia and wanting to watch the sunset like we were his sisters? i dunno. i felt a little bad for the poor guy since we just couldnt understand him at all. it was actually kind of perfect timing though because i was able to say we had been planning on leaving as soon as we finished eating, and after one more bite, we stood up and made our exit.
we wandered along the promenade des anglais admiring hotels we would never be able to afford in our lives with views straight out to the sea. we even found a creepy face... not really sure what that was about.

on our way back to our hostel i made us take the long way (aka turning randomly for no reason if a street seemed to look even a little bit more interesting). but along the way, we found this spray painting dude and managed to show up with perfect timing to watch from start to finish. look how cool it is!

and that was day one. successful i would say.

for our one full day in nice, we went to say hi to the sea on the way up to parc du chateau. what a beautiful day!

basically the parc du chateau is where a castle used to be? there were at least ruins of an old church.

the rest is a park. theres a playground. grass to sit on. a snackbar area. its actually really nice. and we hung out up there for an hour or two. the part i liked best though was the views.

if you explored enough you could essentially get a 360 view of the entire city. looove it.

oh and the fact that it was hot out! after the last trip where i had been cold for the majority of the time even with a scarf and jacket, it felt nice to finally be in shorts and a tank top and getting some sun! i was even good and wore sunscreen.
we ate our lunch in the grass and enjoyed the cool breeze that came through.

with a text from chloe we headed back to the train station to meet her since she would be rejoining us for the afternoon. what would we be doing? going to the beach of course! even getting a little swimming in :) ok.. mostly standing in the water.. but still. swimsuits were on, and we got in the water. it was so clear. and blue. and a tiny bit cold, but mostly just refreshing!
[pictures to come]
we got to lay on the rocks and enjoy the sun. a real vacation. giving up touring for a few hours to do nothing but relax? not something i've done on many of my trips. and i didn't even get burnt to a crisp! so proud of myself haha.

after our time by the water, we wandered through vieux nice to find a place chloe knew that had good socca, farcies, and cébette for a snack.

and then it was time to return chloe to the train station before heading back to the hostel for a bit to shower and whatever else before dinner.

for dinner, zoe and i found a restaurant that had a cheap menu and served typical nicoise food.. although every place claimed to serve typical nicoise food. anyways.
i ordered the salade nicoise, steak frite, and a tarte citron.
the salad:

it was good, but not my favorite. i also learned i really dont like anchovies. ew. the waiter saw that i had left mine on my plate and joked about it. i told him that at least i had tried it! he told me not hard enough. haha. the waiters at this place were amusing.

after dinner we walked along the promenade des anglais in the opposite direction as the night before, this time towards the harbor. we got closer to the pirate ship (ok probably not a pirate ship, but thats what we decided to call it), that we had seen from up on the hill earlier in the day.

to wrap up our night we stopped to watch some breakdancers that happened to be dancing in a square that was on our way back to the hostel. i mean, who wouldn't stop to watch the rest of the show if they realized they saw some guys dancing to 'single ladies' by beyonce? thought so.