Back to France we go....

 June 4-5, 2013:

Now after our brief detour into Spain, we are headed back to France. We are on our way to Nice.

On the way to Nice, we stopped by a city called Arles, which has a huge Roman amphitheater which is the big attraction in this city. We actually had about an hour stop here, so after taking a look at the amphitheater, a group of us decided to just take in the city at a cute French cafe near the amphitheater. We had some really delicious paninis and just enjoyed the weather and atmosphere.

That has been the biggest downfall to this trip, is our "meals". Due to the fact we are on a scheduled tour, it's been extremely fast paced, moving from city to city, and often having to pick up meals from rest stops and such, until we reach our destinations. This sucks, because most of these rest stops have paninis (which have no mayo, mustard, anything, just bread and cheese and meat), or pasta. After a while, trust me you get tired of that.  LoL! Oh well, gotta make do with what you get I guess.

Anyways, after stopping by Arles, we also stopped by Grasse, to tour a perfumery: Fragonard. This was really cool, to see how "eau de toilette" was made. 

After the perfumery we got to Nice, and had a hike up to our hostel. FML! I was dying by the time we got to the top. The bus couldn't take us all the way up due to the narrow roads near the hostel. So we had to get off the bus at the bottom, and walk up three steep hills to our coach, and do that every time we headed into the city! Needless to say, we tried not to come back to the hostel once we were gone unless we had no intentions of going back out again.  

Our first night in Nice, everyone chilled out at the hostel and ate and drank together and just relaxed, mostly because we didn't want to leave the hostel and have to hike back up that hill. LoL!  We had a dinner at the hostel, which surprisingly was pretty good. It was a meal consisting of a quarter leg of chicken, mashed potatoes and some veggies.

The next day I did go see the city a bit with some others from the hostel, because our hostel was offering a free walking tour around what they call "Old Town" portion of Nice. So we head on the tour and our tour guide James was pretty entertaining as we went along, he made it amusing.

We saw the Societie Generale which is a bank that is famous because of a bank heist that occurred here years ago: think "Oceans Eleven" or "Bank Job"..... The criminals robbed the bank on Bastille day when nobody was working at the bank and did so by cutting out the bottom of the vault from the underground sewer system. One of the crews girlfriend ended up turning them in and when he was on trial, he ended up tricking the judge and jumping out the window of the courtroom, and getting away on a motorcycle that was waiting for him and was never seen again!  Talk about a pro, he had this thing down to a science.

After the excitement of that story, we walked over to the Plaza Massena, which is a huge outdoor square with a statue of Apollo in the center.  This plaza also has these 7 statues of men sitting on top of pedestals looking at each other and the concept behind it is to signify the 7 continents and the communication between them in today's society. The colors of the statues change at night as a symbol of this.

The Statues in Plaza Massena

Apollo statue in the center of the plaza

We then continued our tour through the alleys and past all the cute cafes which I have always imagined all of Europe to be like. When I think of Europe I think of people spending their days outside in cafes, sipping on coffee, or wine, just people watching and chatting! I love the life, they are soooo much more laid back and take their time enjoying each day rather than rushing through it all. 

The picture on the left above is Henri Matisse's house. The house is situated behind an awesome fruit and vegetable fresh market as well. These seem to be very popular in Europe. 

After we finished up here we headed over to Castle Hill which is a hill which is setup high above the city and beaches. So it has beautiful views of the entire city and beach area, and is a great spot for hanging out, or for having a picnic! To greet us at the top of the hill was a beautiful waterfall.

We then headed back down the hill to the beach, the beach in Nice is very different from most beaches because the "sand" is not sand at all, it's actually flat rocks and stones. Which makes me wonder how or why people would want to lay on that, because I'm sure it's not comfortable at all, but there were plenty of folks out sunbathing. The beaches in Europe are also popular for topless sunbathing....saw young and old people alike doing this! 

This summed up my day in Nice, headed to Monaco/Monte Carlo in the evening! I'm excited to say I've been to Côte d'Azur....it's beautiful being right by the ocean!