Nice is nice.

Greetings from the Nice-Côte d’Azur airport!  Waiting out my flight to Switzerland tomorrow…fantastic!  Definitely excited for Switzerland and to go up into the Alps on Friday…it’s going to be a great experience.  HOWEVER.  Nice is the prettiest place I’ve ever been and I will miss it terribly.

When I decided to come to Nice, it was for a few reasons:

1. I wanted to go to a place to just relax. 

2. It’s close enough to take a bus from Barcelona, and an overnight bus where I’d save money on accommodations anyway. 

3. I can practice some more French!

So since this is really the big city in the south of France (aside from maybe Cannes and Marseille) I came here.  I figured it has the beach, but then it has some sights to see aside from the beach.  Perfect for two days.

Getting here and seeing BLUE ocean water for the first time ever was such a great thing to see.  I got in from the bus station at the airport, and walked along the ocean.  Nice is basically like a horseshoe with airport at one end of the horseshoe and then the town all around the rest of it, with the water in the area in the middle.  So I walked along the ocean, and had told myself that I’d do sightseeing the day I got there and then just go to the beach my second day.  But I couldn’t resist, and changed on the beach and went into the ocean.  It was so nice lying in the water and seeing yourself through the water instead of just seeing a sludgey greenish color.  Going home to the beach is going to SUCK now that I’ve been here.   Stayed in for about 10 minutes, just long enough to cool off and not get any more sunburn, and walked around to dry off. 

Blue water!

As a side note, the beaches here are basically nude beaches if people want them to be.  For women at least.  If they don’t want to wear their tops, they don’t’ wear them.  Welcome to Nice.

Went into the Russian Cathedral, which was pretty but ended up being a waste of 3 Euros…it was so tiny.  Oh well, live and learn.  Basically just let myself get lost in the town at this point.  What I don’t like about here is that you have to PAY to use public restrooms!  I remember that about the Paris train station now that I think about it.  But in the department store and in the public restroom on the street, you have to pay to pee.  It was like 35 cents.  Annoying.  If there’s one thing I miss most about Spain, it’s that there’s an El Corte Inglés on practically every corner and they make great public bathrooms for when you’re out and about and don’t know where else to pee.

Russian Cathedral

Streets in Nice...so Mediterranean looking!

Yachts...oh you fancy, huh?

View from the top of the Chateau/mountain...so pretty!

Also got to skype with the Kinney Center yesterday!  What a highlight that was!  I miss them so much and can’t wait to visit so many times this summer.  I really can’t go until September without being there. 

Anyway, like I intended, I spent today relaxing.  Laid out in the shade on the grass next to the beach.  Just put my feet in today…didn’t feel like getting totally wet especially since I don’t feel like being out in the sun too much and getting a burn.  I didn’t need sunblock until I got to the beach in Barcelona and even though I tried SO HARD to not get a burn, it happened.  But the smallest bottles of lotion in Nice are 8€ and I’m not paying that much for sunblock, mostly because I’m flying tomorrow and I’ll have to either throw out the sunblock or check my bag if it’s more than 3 ounces.  Neither is happening and I have better things to do with 8€ than a bottle of sunblock for two days.  I’ll get some when I get to Italy…I may need it more there.

Now I'm in the airport.  Gotta look for a good spot, then I'm gonna go to bed.  I'm definitely tired.  Going to Switzerland tomorrow!  Exploring Geneva once I land, then Friday morning I head to Lucerne for the "Golden Round Trip" (http://www.pilatus.ch/content-n6-sE.html) and then finishing my day in Zurich.  Only two days, and it's a jam packed two days.  But the purpose of Nice and Switzerland was just to go to a few cool places on the way to Germany, and cool they are/will be.

PEACE!