Nice is Nice (continued).

Wow, I am super behind on this whole blog thing. It's truly unfortunate it takes an eon to upload photos.

On Saturday of that weekend we went to Monaco, as it's only a 15 minute or so train ride from Nice, even if it is a separate entity.

I just realized I forgot to mention the random two guys appearing in our photos. They're Irfran and Marwan, who are two doctoral students in Grenoble (in technical engineering or something) who were also here there vacation. We met them randomly our first day in Nice (they asked if we knew how to get to the beach, we were on our way there, we walked together et voilà friendship) and ended up spending almost all of our vacation with them. It was really nice to have new people to hang with, and, as Marwan's english was terrible, we were able to speak a lot of French as well.


A view of Monaco from the steps going up to Prince Albert II's palace.


By accident, we ended up outside the Palais just as they were changing the Palais guard... apparently this is a very big deal/crowd attraction, hence the mob. In the background, check out a glimpse of Royal living, my friends.


Beaching in Monaco. Let's be honest, we really did little sight seeing the whole weekend. Mostly just beach.


Taking a dip. Note: Melissa's face. Priceless. And true.


Small children on the beaches of Monaco. Notice the gravel here. Instead of the caillous (larger smooth stones) of Nice's beach, here the whole beach was gravel... which, although you'd think it would be weird, was awesome. I actually think I prefer gravel to sand (if I dont want to build castles or whatnot). Aside from the powder that gets on your feet from walking, the gravel is nice because you can just brush it off and it doesn't get stuck in your swimsuit. Furthermore, it's much nicer than the caillous of Nice as swimming is much easier. Notice: very pretty, clear water also.

Back in Nice again:


For our last night in Nice, we ditched the boys and took ourselves out to a really nice dinner, leaving no amenity out: wine, dessert, café etc. Voilà a photo of Care on the terrasse with our food/wine. She got Pasta à la carbonara, which was delicious. It was a really great experience as the server was super super nice. You could tell he was pleased (and relieved) that we were all fluent in French (there were a lot of non-French speaking anglophones around us).


My "Fruits de la mer" pasta. Enormous and delicious. Notices the mussels surrounding and the big crevette on top. So delicious. It was really amusing because there was so much left, when the other server came to take it away he was like are you sure you don't want me to reheat it etc etc (He was super conversational, very fun).


Me and my crême brulée


A shot of Vieux Nice. On our last day, we decided we should take an hour out of our beach time to actually see some of the important things in Nice.


Marché aux Fleurs. Pity we didn't discover this sooner. How I love open air markets.


Lavender for sale at the market in all of its various forms. Made me think of you, Mom.

All in all, a very good vacation. Now I just have to put up the photos from this weekend. :-P

Note: The irony of the fact that I took a vacation from what essentially is already a vacation has not escaped me. Very bizarre (and awesome).