Nice, France – July 26

Apollo and Chris waiting for the tour

Blazing sun - 30 degrees, feels like 34– same as yesterday, but ‘moister’ - 75% humidity

Breakfast in the hotel for me today consisted

in-ground misters in a park

of tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, cheese, water, cappuccino. On vacation I never get enough veg, so a breakfast of salad looked good to me. I also had a pan au chocolate. This was an afterthought for me, sometimes what looks like it’ll be delicious ends up being not worth bothering...this was NOT one of those times, it really was delicious, it’ll be on my menu tomorrow and the next day!

walking tour group

The morning’s activity would be a walking tour of Nice – a free walking tour. We discovered these free walking tours last year in Europe and were hooked. The group can be a bit big (today was not and was only around 25, that’s a great size) and at the end you pay what you want. As usual, today’s tour was

oool doorway

great – thanks in large part to the guide. We walked around the old part of Nice, the seaside and climbed the

significant climb (the Fitbit said it was 28 floors) to the lookout where there is a waterfall. The waterfall is artificial, but it is very cool nonetheless. On the tour we met a woman from Calgary who is also a teacher! The tour lasted from 11 to about 1:15. Before we were ready to move on, we quenched ourselves with a couple of Kronenbourgs, while overlooking the waterfalls and Nice city scape. This is the kind of touring where I think I’ll need a WC, but never, EVER do. Not good, I’m pretty much sweating out any fluid inside me.

I'm starting to cool off

After the tour it was time for lunch. I had pissaladière, which is a regional food I’ve been wanting to try. It is like a pizza topped with caramelised onions, black olives, and anchovy paste used instead of tomato sauce. It was delicious. Mine was topped with arugula for a bit more veg! Of course as we are in southern France, I had to wash it down with some cold rosé. Chris had carbonera pasta and that was delicious too, in fact…there was actually too much ham – is there such a thing?

even cooler

beer and a view

By now we were about done with the heat and dampness, so we headed back to the hotel – as our room doesn’t have a fridge, we haven’t stocked up on

lunch

beer or wine that we wanted cold, so each time we want a room beverage we hit a piggly-wiggly. This is not a bad thing in my mind, as I’m happy to be in as many grocery stores as possible – the AC is always fantastic and I always like checking out local foods. We stocked up on a few other things…more cheese chips, this time they were “Fromage du Jura”…I’ve never heard of this, but apparently it’s a region in eastern France…these were good, but not as good as yesterday’s. It’s surprising how realistic the flavor is to cheese, not artificial cheese-cheesie, cheese flavour, but ‘real’ cheese flavour…the French know their cheese, I guess! We also found some mini saucissons (tiny dried sausages) – again…delicious.

We found some pétanque (French bocce) on TV to watch – it was fascinating. We have seen this a few times in parks in the past, but never on TV. I thought this was just a game old French men played, but apparently I was wrong. The teams we watched were one male and one female.

mini-saucissions

A nap turned into a lazy late afternoon/early evening and the rest of the day was spent this way, with yet another trip to yet another grocery store for dinner…bread, cheese and wine that we ate on our room’s balcony…not too bad.

dinner