.vaille que vaille. : Au sud de France (Part III)

Nice, France
29 octobre - 31 octobre

The beautiful city of Nice was the final stop of our week-long adventure. Granted one of the more tourist muddled sites of the French Riviera, (no, but really, I heard more English spoken on the streets than I heard French) it was memorable nonetheless. The weather was perfect even in the month of November, high 60's to mid 70's each day, and the Côte d'Azur reminded me of long lost Californian summers buried somewhere deep in my earliest memory. The orange and auburn tanned locals would lay out on the pebbly Mediterranean shore and pass the day away... retired, wrinkly, and without a care. The food (Now you knew I would get to this sooner or later) was a world of flavor, simply because it was a fusion of French and Italian. How do you beat that? And to top it off, we hit up Fenocchio, a gelato shop with 96 flavors that opened back in 1864! With flavors from Jasmine and Rhubarbe, to Cactus and Tomato Basil, it was like we had reached ice cream heaven! Our housing, however, was far from heaven. Granted it wasn't too far. . .perhaps it was a pergatory. If you believe in that sort of thing. Anyway, it wasn't too bad. We had free coffee and internet.. But it was at a place called "Hotel Meyerbeer" about 5 minutes walking distance from the beachfront for the dirt cheap price of 16 Euro a night. That's right, for just 20 US dollars, I got the privilege of sharing a small janky room with 7 other strangers, a greasy kitchenette, and a drippy bathroom with 2 buckets and a clogged sink! Ah, the life of a poor traveler...

Unfortunately, such a life has a tendency to take a big smelly dump on you when you least expect it. When we had finally gotten to the Marseille train station Saturday afternoon, we took a 8.90 Euro shuttle to the airport to catch our connecting flight with RyanAir, but Heather & I had ignorantly only brought a copy of our passport (strange that we made the same mistake), so we were denied boarding without refund & were abandoned by our third friend who had brought her actual passport. Stranded at the Marseille airport at 8 pm on a Saturday night, we had no other choice than to take the shuttle back to the train station (which, we had to pay again, by the way, because we weren't attractive enough to flirt our way through a free ride for our obviously gay bus-driver.) and purchase a last seat on the last train to Paris.

Total cost of stupidity: 167.80 Euro
Total tears shed: 5 - 6
Total consoling hugs shared: 2
Total regrets: 0

Here's a taste of Nice:

View from Castle Hill

Morning walk

Last day's brunch at Le Pain Quotidien! (Actually didn't even know it was LPQ until i saw the cup...)

Smoked salmon with asparagus & hash browns.
Their bread came with 2 types of jam, acacia honey, nutella, and white chocolate spread!

This pup was just chillin' in the middle of the restaurant, and all the waiters had to step over him :)

Classic Niçoise lunch. I have dreams about this place to this day...

Je vous présente...SOCCA!!!! Fried chickpea pancakes, a Niçoise specialty, and oh so delicious.

This looks like greasy county fair food, but it sounds classier. "Beignets de courgettes." Otherwise, fried zucchini. Perfectly warm interior, and a crunchy exterior.