With friends stationed in Nice for July, two days off from work and a Bastille day to celebrate, I took my first (mid)weekend trip on this French part of my year abroad.
After a rudely early walk to the station I boarded a coach for a sleepy yet speedy drive to Nice - the Flixbus was an hour late both ways which I'm hoping was a one (*two) off since I'll be relying on it next week to get me to the airport and the time margins are a tad too tight for comfort - cross your doigts for me please!
Rolling into Nice along the palm-tree lined seafront sent me into full holiday mode and when brunch swiftly followed, my French Riviera dreams were realised. This was just the start of a wonderful, culinary few days - Nice's foodie scene really stole my heart!
We then set out to explore, wandering past the giant jazz festival set up, through yet another palm tree flanked archway and into the old town.
I then found a hill to climb which seemed like such a great plan despite the sun being at its highest point in the sky. Many steps and even more slugs of water later and I arrived to the summit only to realise there were in fact many summits, all with incredible views. Panoramas admired and photos taken, I started the descent with only one thing on my mind - the sea!
Beth and I then headed to the beach and barely five minutes later a tourist approached asking if we'd like their giant lilo as they were leaving. Smart on their part as who in their right mind would say no ? And so it was that they successfully passed on responsibly of the biggest lilo I've ever seen! Too much of a liability in the windy sea, we weighted it down with rocks and had a 5 star beach bed for the rest of the evening. The regrets only creeped in later that night when we were left rolling, lying and squeezing the air out of it for a solid 20 minutes, blue-lipped from a chilly dip.
With work and language courses the next day for my friends, I remained very much in the holiday zone and spent the day at the beach, only to be scared into leaving for lunch by a spooky encounter with a jellyfish the colour of the previous night's sunset. Beautiful as he was, his floating a few cm below me in the fairly unpredictable waves was not appreciated.
I practically flew out of the sea, as much as one can fly across a steep shingle shore, and headed back into the old town in search of Nice specialties. It was a great success and perhaps my best French lunch thus far - Tarte aux blettes, flambéd apricot pastry & pistachio ragostino!
After a quick visit to the Russian Orthodox Church - gotta put those long zoom lessons to use somehow - I boarded the bus home and felt like I'd been away for at least a week.
Big shoutout to Francesca and Beth for hosting me - see you in Wien ;)