Nice is Nice! - July 23, 2010

Thursday July 22, 2010 - Today we celebrated Chris' birthday by having another beach/relaxing day 😀 My favourite kind of day.

Friday July 23, 2010

Senne's Summary: Went to Nice. Saw the market, the Palais, the Cathedral and had a delicious lunch.

Today we decided to go to Nice. We caught the train (all the cruise ship passengers were standing in a GIANT line because they didn’t really understand the system). Stu was correct, once you figure out how to use the trains it’s really quick. Unfortunately for the cruise ship passengers, they were in a line that was about an hour and a half long. Steve skipped the line and went to the little blue machine and had our tickets within a couple of minutes (Thanks Stu).

We rode the two stations to Nice-Ville and then headed down towards the waterfront. Steve downloaded another map onto the ITouch, so this time we knew where we were going (well Steve did anyway).

The first place we hit was the Cours Saleya, which is a fair-sized market. They had everything from art to flowers to food. My three favourite smelling stands were the flower stand (big gorgeous bouquets for 12 Euros), the olive stand (you’ve never smelled anything quite like it!), and the spice stand. We wandered around in here a bit, but didn’t buy anything (we’re getting kind of good at that!).

Oh I forgot to mention that we stopped in a watch store on the way down. They had some really nice watches, but Steve decided he’s not likely to wear a fancy watch on this trip very often and didn’t buy one (such restraint!).

Next we walked over to the waterfront. The beach had fairly big rocks on it, but the water looked beautiful! Lots of different shades of blue. We sat and looked at the water for a bit, Steve dipped his toes, and then we went on to see the Palais Lascaris.

On the way to the Palais we saw a bakery that had meringues that were bigger than my hand! They looked yummy, but I used restraint and didn’t get one (we’ll see if I still have restraint the second time we go to Nice 😉)

On a skinny street we found the "palais" that they are restoring to its original beauty. It was originally the palace of the Lascaris-Vintimille family and dates back to the middle of the 17th century.

I’m not really sure what constitutes 'Baroque’ Style… but this was in the baroque style and was quite stunning.

After this we decided to get some lunch. We found a nice restaurant on a square and ate a terrific fixed price menu. The starter was amazing. It was an eggplant and an onion tart. It doesn’t sound appetizing, but the eggplant tart was to die for!

Steve’s dessert was also very yummy… a lemon meringue pie… the meringue had some crystally candy tasting delicious little bits in it… made my chocolate cake seem blah.

As we were eating lunch we noticed a Cathedral at the end of the square so decided to duck in there after we ate.

 When we walked in, I actually stopped dead… it was really beautiful. So beautiful it actually made me cry. It was also in the Baroque Style 😀 This is also dating from the 17th century and absolutely stunning to look at.

After the cathedral we decided to head back home. When we arrived at the train station we stopped to see if we could buy our next tickets on to Riomaggiore on the 31st. The guy working at the station claimed he had never even heard of Riomaggiore, so more research on how to get there is necessary before getting the tickets, I think. It seems we may need to change trains 4 times 😕

We headed back home, took a refreshing dip in the ocean, and then got some groceries at the “big” grocery store. Big = smaller than Oxford Foods on Cook Street (which I don’t recommend shopping at because those people are NOT nice to me! Oxford Foods I mean.)

We finished with a nice night playing cards and watching a movie while admiring the view out our window. I think we’ll probably go back to Nice next week, it looked like there was a lot to see