It was impossible to capture the whole thing, but it's pretty big. I'm not even standing on the last row here
You can probably guess that this is the arc... It looks cloudy here, but it was clear most of the time
In total, the bus drive from Grenoble to Nice is 7 hours, so it was nice to stop at Orange on the way. I think it's also worth mentioning one of our stops at a Shell gas station on the way because to me, it was a luxury convenience compared to the U.S. ones!! It was extremely clean inside with just about everything you'd ever want to buy while on the road! They had everything a normal gas station would have, but also with sandwiches, teapots, nice pocket knives, etc. Also their bathrooms were surprisingly nice with some sort of forest theme and there were showers too. The only problem was that everything seemed to be a little more expensive. I should probably focus on actual trip now instead of romanticizing gas stations, they probably aren't interesting no matter how hard I try!
We finally arrived in Nice that evening and instead of going out to eat, we decided to just picnic on the beach! So everybody just bought some bread, cheese, wine, chips, etc. to share amongts ourselves and it was a great time. We were in bed by midnight after exploring the city some more after dinner. The next morning, after a great buffet style breakfast, we went on a tour on the edge of Nice. It was a tour of some nice garden areas and then of Musée Matisse, located in a small chateau. We had free time to explore for a few hours, which I spent on the beach eating a specialty sandwich of Nice called Pan-Bagnat. Our second tour was of the old part of the city, and I'll just sum it up by saying it was really cool! After the tour we hiked up a big hill by the old quarter of the city to see an amazing view of the city as well as a large artificial waterfall. After returning to the city, we ate icecream at a huge outdoor icecream shop where there were at least 50 flavors. I chose well and ate pistacchio and cactus icecream. I don't know how to describe the cactus flavor, but it was very good and refreshing. I decided to avoid the more exotic flavors, like beer or thyme, this time, but probably for good reason. I absolutely loved Nice because of it's beautiful buildings which I think are representative of Mediterranean architecture and unique from any of the other cities I've seen so far. The beach is also incredible because of the ocean's several vibrant, contrasting shades of blue. The beach itself is also unique because it is covered with large, smooth rocks which may be hard on bare feet, but I still loved it! Unfortunately the water was still too cold to really go swimming.
During the first tour. Here's some of the city outskirts. The hill just to the left of my hill is where the waterfall is and where I took my other city picture. Pretty much all of Nice is to the right, but you can't see it here.
The Beach!!! The water gets to be a very deep blue the deeper it gets. It's harder to see in this picture
Me being weird, but here I'm also eating an amazing sandwich which I think makes it acceptable! Like I mentioned before, the Pan-bagnat is a specialty of the area. It consists of fresh vegetables, tuna, anchovies, and plenty of olive oil.
The view of Nice from that hill. It's hard to capture it all; I had to leave out the ocean in this picture, but it's just to the left
This is in one of the famous plazas in the old part of town. This isn't the best picture, but I chose it because you can see all the contrasting colors of the buildings. Behind me is a long road which is filled with outdoor markets by day and outdoor areas for restaurants by night. Apparently the area around Nice is famous for its flowers, which are sold year round here in the markets.
We left Sunday morning to go back to Grenoble, but not before driving along the mediterranean coast to get to the very small, traditional town of Eze which is located right in between Nice and Monaco. The first thing we did there was take a tour of a perfumerie, but I don't have much to say about that other than it smelled like perfume...
Afterwards we went on our own to explore the town which is situated on the peak of a steep hillside facing the ocean. It was the kind of village with tiny winding streets where even a bike would prove to be impractical. Many buildings were covered with ivy while the streets were often adorned with flowers, bushes, and sometimes even exotic cactuses (I still haven't figured that out yet). Apparently Eze is also the home of a really fancy 5 star hotel because I could see its luxurious gardens just under the town as well as one of its restaurants with food prices started at 85 euro.
Here's the ocean with a part of that 5 star hotel I mentioned. It's called Chèvre d'or, which is why there's a golden goat standing there
Here's my friend Teddy next to a pretty cool building. Most of the streets in the town are this small.
As you can see the town is on a steep hillside which leads to the ocean, which you can't quite see. This is as close as I could get to the luxury hotel gardens. That elephant statue there is nearly the size of an actual elephant, I was just high up.
Just outside of the town are two donkeys and their owner is really nice. We ended up hanging out here for a little while before leaving.
After our 3 hour visit in Eze, it was finally time to go back to Grenoble to spend the final week of my study abroad. There is a lot to do since I'll leave to travel Europe for nearly 3 months this Saturday, of which I've decided to go to Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Madrid next week. That's the extent of my planning for now, I don't even know what's those three that I listed! But I guess that will just make things more interesting, won't it?
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