Saturday 29 June 2013

Day 10: A Nice day in Nice FEAT. MONACO

Even though muffins/croissants/pain au chocolats are a tasty breakfast, they're not exactly filling, but it's difficult to find anything else in France if you eat out. But, not in Nice! During our morning walk we discovered numerous cafés that did 'English breakfasts', which meant: omelettes. So indulged in a relatively scrumptious 'English breakfast' in the morning. :)
  Walked over to Nice beach, by when we already had to walk back to the hostel to join the 10.30 walking tour. There were a group of people waiting, but no one had turned up to pick us up at 10.40. Me and CC decided we know where the Old Town is (=CC knows), we'll just walk there ourselves. CC in his normal friendly fashion generally invited everyone else waiting along, and we were joined by Amanda, a Canadian solo-traveller. She had travelled Europe already LOTS so she was able to give us tips about where to go and so on, twas cool.
ADORABLE is not even close to what I want to say. BABY DOGS IN SHOP
Mediterranean!!
We got into the old town and coincidentally bumped into the walking tour – turned out they had come to our hostel at about 10.25 but weren't informed of all the people actually wanting to come on the tour... So we followed this group around for the next one-and-a-half-hoursish.

Went to an awesome market where I bought nectarines and those beloved dried fruits we nearly bought in Carcassonne (dried pears OM NOM), and tried olive-spread and sundried tomatoes etc...
Didn't get any natural sea sponges tho
Not dodgesville, just sundried tomatoes
Another tour guide holding up a baguette so people would recognise him, AWESOME
Then we went up the nearby hill and saw yet some more awesome views of Nice. I was especially thrilled about all the aeroplanes flying really low down over the beach!!

Nice Nice
The beach was a tiny bit of a disappointment I guess, since it wasn't sandy, and there were loads of renovations and roadworks and whatnot in the way. Also after the tour the weather wasn't too amazing.

Amanda had decided to join us in the afternoon to go to Monaco – her spontaneousness was awesome. First we had lunch together, me and Amanda both had a Salade Niçoise (we are in Nice after all), which was tuna, egg and salad, very scrumptious and only four euros!!
OM NOM
Then, off to MONACO. Well, it was amazing. Even though I got seriously claustrophobic around the huge people-masses around the Casino, and even though the waiter at the café was a TWAT (Firstly, after we'd ordered he came back and informed us there is only one gaufre left, so Amanda had to sacrifice her gaufre for a crepe so I could get a gaufre. No apologies or anything. Secondly, he mixed up the orders twice. I didn't mind this, but the fact he was clearly seriously pissed off with us, as if it were our problem he mixed them up! When we left, he gave us one euro too little change. I went back to inform him. He rolled his eyes and took ages finding LITERALLY the tiniest change he could find from his change-tin, then sarcastically handing them to me with a “merci beaucoup”, I HATED him.). But in any case, Monaco was AWESOMEEEE.
With Amanda and her amazing white dress :)
We went to see the Casino – unfortunately CC wasn't allowed in, “not weez zat T-shirt”, said the man in the suit at the door. We walked past a rich man having three men pack his car with posh pink bags, a car with loads of bling bling on it, many many glamorous people...

Too cool for the casino

Grand Prix!
Lol
Then went to the other side of the bay, where the older part of the town was, with yet another sightseeing place, with AMAZING views. Amanda turned out to be as keen about photos as us (/me), so many amazing pictures were taken on canons!

Over the other side of the hill

Well, an interesting group photo

All the French food

Taken by cool French guy in suit who took an interest to Amanda ;)



Then headed back to the station, helping a lost American couple on the way, and I bought postcards and stamps which I realised too late could only be sent from Monaco... Oh well.
Also contemplated cool hat
Dinner was at a cool burger place near the hostel in Nice. Not-too-hungry-CC + relatively-hungry me = perfect amount of hunger to devour one awesome burger with chips (CC) and coleslaw (me). Om nom!

C'est tout pour l'instant.
Emmzyyy
xxx

5 comments:

  1. So cool.... random instafriends!!! I hope you took that dog. And the Mediterannean; sooooo awesome! :) Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know, I love random hostel friends :) xxxxxxxxxxxx

      Delete
  2. It's so difficult not to be able to hit "like" for the pics!

    ReplyDelete
  3. In some of these pix CC reminds me of (Uncle) Trev...

    ReplyDelete