After Italy, our next stop was the South of France. The first place we visited was Nice! After a very busy Italy, we were looking forward to a more laid-back South of France. Here we come, fine wine and escargot!!
On the train trip, we changed trains from an Italian train to a French train. We really liked the Italian trains because they were cheap and frequent. Granted since they were cheap the trains weren't exactly the swankiest. When we switched trains at Monte Carlo to go to Nice, we were amazed at how nice and snazzy the trains were! Later we discovered that it wasn't a sweet deal where the trains were cheap and still new and classy...French train travel is expensive!
Here is a view from the train on the way to Nice! This is some little town between Monte Carlo and Nice.
Our first French meal! The cuisine in the South of France (especially Nice) is very influenced by Italian cooking, hence...pizzas and pastas everywhere! This was Cliff's pizza, one with lots toppings: ham, cheese, green pepper, red pepper, mushroom, chorizo, and a fried egg. It was SO good!! It was definitely comparable to the best pizzas we had in Italy.
Stefan was a little, well, actually, very sick of pizza by the time we left Italy...so even though pizza was all over the menus in the south of France, he was not going to be eating pizza for the first French meal! He ended up with a nice big salad! It wasn't a mind-blowing salad, but very good, and worthy of a spot here! It was greens, mushrooms, red peppers, cheese (of some kind!), olives (yack! Cliff got to eat those), tomatoes, croutons, and grilled chicken, with a vinaigrette.
One of the main streets in downtown Nice. Notice the tram tracks and how they have beautifully manicured grass in between them! It was so nicely done that it looked like the tram was driving through a golf course! It's a very simple but easy way to get more green into the city and we think a lot more cities should be doing this!
The main square in Nice, Place Massena. This is the main fountain there.
Another shot of Place Massena.
Here is a random street off of Place Massena (you can see it in the middle). Notice the random horse and carriage!
Check out this random merry-go-round plopped right in the middle of a parkette in downtown Nice! We found that in France it wasn't uncommon to find merry-go-rounds in unexpected places. It seemed a little odd but it was very cute, and help liven up the city.
A street in the old town.
A shot of the waterfront, looking westward. There's a very wide pedestrian walkway (which is not exactly pretty and could use some major TLC), and to the left of the walkway is the beach. The beach in Nice is a stone beach...so no sand!
Here is the edge of the city that's right on the waterfront. The beachfront is a few kilometres long and it's all done up nicely with bars, hotels, and cafes.
Looking the other way, you can see just how far the beachfront reaches.
Also, on the beachfront, volleyball courts! Oh, and Stefan. :P
The end of the beachfront. Around the corner from these buildings is the old port. At the end there you can see a little lookout point. On the hill there was something fancy...we can't remember now! Maybe some castle or something (can you tell we never went up the hill?).
Here is the view westward of the beachfront from the lookout point we noted in the previous photo.
Okay, so after having traveled almost two months, we finally broke down and ate non-local cuisine!! We were pretty good the whole trip with eating only food from the country we were visiting. However, in Nice, there was an English bar/pub called Wayne's and their burger menus were too enticing to resist!
Cliff got a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg. Trust him when he says it looks a lot tastier in the picture than it was in real life. It wasn't bad per se, just...there. Not to mention it was €8!! With no fries! What a rip!
Stefan still wanted a break from Italian food, and was so excited to see a veggie burger on the menu! Now, like most of you, when we see "veggie burger" on a menu we expect a vegetarian burger patty with your regular burger toppings. However, sadly, when it came...it was basically a friggin' omelette between two buns! Not being a fan of egg, this egg and vegetable mish-mash was definitely not what Stefan was craving. But it still looked really good and tasted alright.
Another thing in Nice that carried over from Italy: gelato! There is a shop there called Fennochio which carries 96 different flavours of gelato! Crazy! We didn't happen to get a picture of the whole shebang, but here are some very unusual flavours: thyme, rosemary, tomato and basil, black olive, tourte de blette (which is a local specialty--a type of vegetable tart), and avocado. We didn't try any of these...we opted for the more traditional chocolatey flavours!
Here's a very cute church that was in the middle of a square in the old town (a shopping/eating area). The design is very cool!
Here's the back of the opera house in Nice. We didn't expect Nice to have such a nice-looking opera house, much less an opera house at all! One night we were walking by after a performance and you could totally see the girls changing through the windows on the second floor! Scandalous!!
In the big main street going down the centre of town there's a fairly long park with fountains and flowers, and featured this very cool sculpture. What is it? Don't ask us.
Here is a photo of a tram in Nice. As you can see it's very snazzy. A lot of the cities we visited on this trip had very new trams (they seemed like they were all made by the same company). However, one thing that was very different about the trams in Nice was their automated stop announcement soundbites. Whoever was in charge of those was definitely high on something! They were either male or female voices, and sometimes they would sound like robots, sometimes like they were under water, or in outer space, and sometimes there would even be xylophone interludes! No joke!! It was all the stranger that it seemed like we were the only people on the trams that seemed to find it so ridiculous. It was funny to see how all the locals didn't react to the hilarity at all! Granted, after a few days there we sort of got used to it...but it was still funny!
A look at Place Massena and the tracks that run through it. Follow this road to find lots and lots of shopping!
Here's a photo of a large, open area with greenery and fountains behind it. This is a continuation of the park that goes down the main road through the centre of the city. It's really great to see such a wide open space in a modern-day city, and that it's obviously been kept from olden times and hasn't been taken over by greedy corporations and urbanization!
This is another section of that same park, more of a garden/floral area.
Looking through a cool archway into the old town. The metallic gold ceiling was pretty cool, and the three different types of stones that make up the wall were pretty interesting too!
To conclude this post, here is a... Canada Grey apple?! What the?! Has anyone heard of this apple? We had never heard of them until we saw them here in Nice. Obviously we had to buy some. Sad to say, they weren't that good. Let's hope the French don't equate this apple with the quality of our country :P
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