When we got down to breakfast, the dining room was not only empty, but the lights weren't even on! Eventually someone figured out that we had arrived and flipped the light switch for us. There wasn't much on offer for us that morning. Just a croissant each, bowl of cornflakes, and some orange juice and coffee.
As we sat there, a cockroach paid a visit to our table, which was pretty gross. At one point, the hotel cat also tried to steal a croissant, and the staff shooed the cat away but didn't replace the croissant, which was seemed pretty unhygienic. Nice health and safety... I hope it was our cheapest hotel on the trip so far.
Kaylee, from Canada, wanted to tag along with Nicole and I for the day, which was great because we like her a lot. She's so friendly and a lot of fun. She was quite keen to feel the Mediterranean ocean, so we headed for the beach, which is made up of small pebbles and no sand (excepts in some places where they have put sand). The water wasn't as cold as we were expecting it to be. It was too cold to swim, certainly, but not colder than Cape Town. Jen told us that the sea was 16 degrees that day.
Along the promenade, there was shop called Rollerworld that hires out rollerblades since the activity has never gone out of style in Nice. There are also unmanned stations where you can put in money and get to rent a bike, which would never work in South Africa. That requires a lot of trust and honesty! There is no way Nicole would be trying any of that, even though her cough seemed to be clearing up. Also, it wasn't a great day for outdoor activities. In a city that gets 300 days of sunshine a year, we very unluckily got to enjoy a rare day of rain.
We climbed the 100 stairs up to Les Chateaux, an elevated park with panoramic views of the city and coastline. Some enthusiastic Frenchies were getting their daily exercise by running up and down those stairs. We took the steps at a much more reasonable pace. At the top, the cafe was not yet open, which was unfortunate because I was thirsty. There were also some French guys there busy practicing Tai Chi.
We leisurely strolled around, taking some photos, then headed back down to see if I could find the World War II memorial that I remembered being just around the corner. Jen hadn't mentioned it to us, so I hoped that it was where I expected it to be. It was, and I showed Kaylee my dramatic photo trick where you take a picture of the memorial then take a second photo with someone in it so that you can see how enormous the memorial is!
By that time, some sailboats had begun decorating the coastline, but we headed back to town. On the way, we bumped into one of the Australian girls who had suggested that we visit a Fashion House just around the corner. Even just walking up to it, I got the distinct impression that we would find nothing affordable there, and it really was quite expensive.
The sales lady was busy with another customer when we arrived, and I expected her to be rude to us since we clearly didn't have the kind of money that her usual clientele must flash, but she was actually super friendly and helpful. Among the stunning things she had for sale, I found a clutch bag with a handle that looks like four rings that you can put your fingers through. It's seriously the coolest clutch that I have ever seen, so I had to cough up the small fortune it was worth. I may be South African, but theft wasn't an option. I also got Nicole a necklace there for her birthday.
In the old part of town, they'd set up some lovely markets selling food, soap, spice, flowers, books, and all sorts of interesting things. One lady convinced us to try her savoury chickpea pancake, which was surprisingly delicious. Nicole picked up a cold pizza for us to share for lunch for only about R50 (not too bad by South African standards, but a real bargain here). We also paid a visit to a French post office, where nothing made sense, but we managed to get some stamps. It's so weird, you print your own.
On our way to the popular shopping street, we passed through a Christmas market. The French really go all out with their markets, beautifully decorating their little Wendy houses on the inside. We spent some time eyeing out the jewelry. I couldn't buy anything at the market because I didn't have any cash on me, but Nicole got a lovely pair of earrings for herself to remember France by.
Kaylee was looking for a dress to wear to her graduation, so we went to a bunch of clothing stores to help her pick something out. On the way, I did quite a bit of shopping since the stores (unlike the markets) would accept my credit card. I'm not gonna lie, I shopped a LOT, since there are so many great bargains about at this time of year. A favourite item that I picked up was a pair of gloves that you don't need to remove in order to use your touch screen.
All the French sales attendants are super helpful. As you are trying things on, they bring you other similar things that they think you might like. They also give you advice on how best to wear an article of clothing. They take the items you like from you so that you don't have to carry them through the store as you shop around. It makes you feel so special and I'm sure it convinces you to spend more. Very clever.
At one of the malls, we were able to get free wifi. It seems that connecting to the internet is more important to me than dress shopping because I told Nicole and Kaylee to go on without me so that I could use the time to upload the Paris blog and photos from Luzern. That's all I managed to get done before they came back to get me. They still hadn't found Kaylee a dress, but we promised to help her look in Italy or Prague.
Eventually, after a busy day of sightseeing and shopping, we made our way back to the hotel. Nicole and I simply collapsed into bed at that point and napped until dinner time. We were so tired that we actually managed to sleep through the noise of the locals in traffic hooting at each other. Luckily, I'd remembered to set my alarm else we probably wouldn't have woken up until the next day.
We'd just assumed that dinner would be at the hotel, so I didn't dress up or even brush my hair before heading downstairs. It turned out, luckily, that our suspect hotel would not be serving us our meal. Instead, we made our way through the rain to a quaint restaurant where we were served my favourite included meal of the tour so far.
We were served a quiche with olives in it to start, which was just delicious. This was followed by chicken schnitzel, pomme frittes, and ratatouille. Dinner ended with caramel and chocolate mousse cake. Strangely, the Aussies didn't like the dinner at all. And the French lady didn't seem to enjoy serving it to them. She was quite stern and almost threw plates of food at people that she couldn't reach to serve.
After dinner, everyone wanted to head back to Wayne's bar, but all I wanted to do was get to bed, which I did after a quick bath. Before bed, Nicole and I packed our suitcases with all our shopping and weighed them. Luckily, we were both still below our allowable weight, so we could both sleep easy that night. Well, besides the uncomfortable beds and being woken at 3am by the noisy Aussies as they got back from their night out (Nicole woke up in a panic worried that everyone was leaving and we had overslept). Besides that, we got a decent night's rest. Nothing like a bit of shopping to wear you out!
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