Le Week-end from Nice

We arrived in Nice on Saturday morning, getting to our villa (pictured here) around 11am.



The website from which we booked the place mentioned that Vieux-Nice (literally, Old Nice), the commercial center of the city, was within walking distance. Now, I certainly am the type to walk pretty much everywhere when I'm in a new city, so we strapped on our sandals and headed down the mountain. A half hour later, we got to the port, which is about a 10-minute walk from Vieux-Nice. Thanks, EuropeanVacationRentals.com, or whatever it was. That's walking distance, but it's a stretch.

Hungry, we stopped for lunch, wondering how long it would be before we actually found our destination, and being jetlagged and tired, I decided to try a pizza. I felt like a retarded tourist, that is until I learned that Nice is actually quite famous for its pizzas. Interestingly enough, the town was a part of Italy until 1860 (or actually the province of Savoy, as Italy was not unified at the time, but the people were Italian, anyway). In fact, both ravioli and gnocchi, wonderfully tasty filled pastas, both were created in Nice.

After devouring my delicious pizza (a welcome change from airplane food, though honestly that even wasn't terrible), I had myself an espresso as well and we moved on.

Walking along the rocky beachfront of Vieux-Nice (pictured here),



we stumbled upon a gigantic monument (pictured below) at the foot of what is called Castle Hill, which, appropriately, housed the former castle in Nice. The memorial commemorates the fallen soldiers of World War I. As a side note, the main stretch of Vieux-Nice is now called the Quai des États Unis (Boulevard of the United States), which is in honor of our help in World War II. Apparently, the invasion of southern France followed closely after the invasion at Normandy. Speaking of beachfronts, most of them on the Riviera are rocks; sand beaches are relatively rare, and often private where they do exist. Cannes (the site of the famous film festival), for example, has a sand beach, but they have to go to pretty ridiculous extents to keep it that way (more on that when I get to Cannes).



Anyhow, after a stroll down the Quai des États Unis, we found ourselves immersed in the daily market in Vieux-Nice, which was just closing up for the morning.

Feeling a bit disoriented, Lindsey and I sat down to grab a bottle of wine while her parents trekked back up the mountain to the villa. Afterward, we walked around a bit more, eventually doing the same.

As we made our way back up the mountain, we were happy to find a nice French grocery store open just at the end of our street. Having our own place to stay was key for the entire trip, as we ended up cooking dinner at home (it's nice to have a place you can call home when you're in a completely foreign place) four out of the seven nights. Exhausted from two days of traveling both across the ocean and across the city, we slept for a nice round 11 hours before doing pretty much the same thing on Sunday.

It's always disorienting being in a new place. Astounded and overwhelmed, we wandered wide-eyed for those first couple days, enjoying the ridiculous juxtaposition of the beach rising right into the mountains, and the city somehow being built in between.

As we looked out our window (see below), it was a refreshing feeling to be there, but worn out after two long days, we didn't know what to expect. Hopefully you'll enjoy what followed as the week goes on. Au revoir until tomorrow.