Nice weekend in Nice

So I'm back from Nice. It was an amazing weekend. First of all, I got to spend it with one of my favorite people ever, and second of all we were on the French Riviera.

Nice is georgous. Right on the Mediterranean and situated among some slight mountains, it's the picture perfect idea of Southern France. We started out the weekend meeting at the train station which was about 50 yards from our hotel. Great location§ It was about a 10 minute walk to the beach front and lots of restaurants and stuff. Thursday night we went and walked around on the beach, grabbed a great meal at a café on the water, and observed the (slightly pathetic and not anything like 4th of July) fireworks over the water for Bastille Day.

Friday we got up mid-morning and walked around Nice again, absorbing the setting and the scenery. We got some fruit for breakfast and ate on the boardwalk which parallels the pebbly beach. We decided we wanted to spend the day in Monaco, so we went to the train station and bought some ridiculously cheap train tickets for the 30 minute ride down the coast to the Pricipality of Monaco. It was paradise. It is so pristine and perfect, like a setting directly out of a movie. Fabulous. I know I'll be back there - probably for my honeymoon, if it's an option :)

We walked around and saw the entire tax-free tiny country. The whole city is in terraced layers, so it's kind of hard to get around. We managed, and had an amazing day. We found the Casino at Monte Carlo and the beautiful gardens that lead up to it. We found a wallet someone had left at a bus stop, so we took it to the nearby police station to turn it in. Good karma for us, that's for sure. The police officer was very nice. He was so glad I spoke French and thanked me (on behalf of the wallet owner) for turning in the wallet. It had this guy's whole life in it - credit cards, time cards for work, 115€, you know, the usual. After that nice visit to the Monaco police, we walked around some more and finally went into the casino.

This casino is like no other casino you'll ever see. It was like walking into the A Deck dining room from the movie 'Titanic' with gaming tables and old fashioned slot machines where the dining tables would have been. It's a classy place, no doubt. Since it was about 4:30 in the afternoon, it wasn't too busy, but we managed to waste a little money - not too much - and play a few slots. Joe won 50€ - he bought dinner that night ;) We also saw a true high roller. Joe said he looked like the Monopoly guy, carrying around a wad of 500€ bills - wow!

After the day in Monaco we headed back to Nice to get ready for a night out. We read about a seafood place in my Frommer's guide book, so we thought we'd check it out. Turns out we ended up drinking about 3 bottles of wine at the hotel and didn't leave for dinner until after 10pm. We couldn't find the place we were looking for, so we instead went to a little café and had some really good pizzas - and of course more wine.

Saturday we slept in a bit, the wine did us in the night before :) When we got up I called Arielle to see about going to Cannes for the day, but her phone was off, so unfortunately that didn't happen. We decided instead to go back to Monaco since we had agreed the previous day it is possibly the most incredible place either of us have ever been or will ever be. We had lunch on the harbor and saw the International Rotary and their crazy fancy cars in some sort of tribute exposition of old and new race cars, prominently Ferraris. It was pretty much awesome. We had some delicious specialty ice cream sundaes - with fruit, sorbet, pistachio, etc. They were great.

Saturday night we were back in Nice, and decided again to try to find the seafood place. With another failed attempt, we continued to drink wine and shared a Marguerita Pizza at some random café. We bought more wine after dinner and went down to the beach. We sat for a while, drinking wine and throwing stones into the waves, just observing the dark Mediterranean and the reddish orange half moon that was hanging in the sky shining on the water.

This morning it was straight to the train station and back to our prospective cities. It was an awesome weekend - definitely a good decision to go. We watched a lot of German TV because it was MTV and sometimes was in English - it was pretty hilarious.

I think that's all I have to report, pictures might be up today, but otherwise check back tomorrow! I hope you all had as amazing of a weekend as I did!