After about 10 days in the beautiful city of Paris, we moved on to our 2nd stop of our journey – Nice, France.   The 2nd largest city in the Cotes-de-Azur region and on the Mediterranean coast, Nice is an idyllic spot to enjoy a taste of France as well as the beautiful views of the Mediterranean (though the beaches are filled with pebbles instead of sand).

We stayed in Old Town Nice, a few steps away from the famous Cours Saleya, which is a pedestrian area lined by restaurants, gelato and candy shops, and has daily open air markets where vendors sell fresh fruit, flowers, cheese, breads, and homemade jams and snacks.  I felt like I was walking the streets from the Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast” everyday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We occasionally  enjoyed lunches of fresh baguettes, fresh cheese, and olive oil (with cheap French wine, of course!).  And the gelato….I think the best gelato I’ve ever had was in Nice! Salted Caramel…mmmm, so tasty, but adds 2 lbs immediately after consumption. Worth it?  I think so… 🙂

And the beach….while it isn’t a great beach for laying out (due to the pebbles), it’s quite a scenic view to say the least!

The restaurants are also to die for!  In addition to gelato, the pasta in France seemed to be better than Italy!  The best one we went to was called La Favola.  At one end of Cours Saleya, this place had a casual atmosphere, with fancy dishes!  The pasta and pizza here were amazing! So, for anyone going to Nice, this place is a must!

Other than La Favola, La Cure Gourmande, and the little coffee shop next door were some of our favorites in Old Town Nice.  La Cure Gourmande is a little biscuit/chocolate/caramel shop that has possibly the best caramels I’ve ever had, plus really good biscuits of all sorts of flavors that go really well with espressos and coffee, which you can conveniently find next door.

Lastly, there are quite a few wine shops that sell really cheap French wine and champagne (though they taste like expensive American wine/champagne).  We enjoyed some champagne on the roof at our apartment for Adam’s birthday!

Good times 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to jump out of order here (since I’m WAY behind anyway) because of a very odd experience in Phuket (where we are now for the rest of November)…

On our second day in Phuket, Adam went to jujitsu class in the morning, leaving me in our apartment to sleep in and chill.  I Skyped with Padu and Kevin since we finally have good working internet, and about 30 minutes into our call, I hear people outside the door, and all of a sudden the door opens!!!

The cleaning people didn’t bother to knock, just busted right into the apartment with no warning.  They see me sitting on the couch with my laptop, with a look of shock on my face, and continue to walk right in holding towels saying “we clean?”.  I figured since they were here already, might as well let them.. It was then that they heard Padu and Kevin on the computer, and must have thought it was magic!

I never imagined video chat would cause  people living in the 21st century to be so intrigued, but I guess this is Thailand, and technology isn’t as commonly available as I thought.

So…back to the call…  Not that I invited them over to check out Skype on my computer or anything…they just came right up behind me staring at the screen….not realizing that Padu and Kevin can also see them (and were laughing at their expressions) and were waving at them.  One of the maids asked if I was talking to my sister, to which I responded “yes”, and they just kept staring….. and saying “Hi!”, and waving to Padu and Kevin, who were waving back at them. Lol.

The next 30 minutes were incredibly awkward (although funny), as the 2 maids were cleaning the apartment, while continuously looking over my shoulder at the laptop screen (not realizing that I can see them looking over my shoulder from the Skype camera, and Padu and Kevin could also see them and were laughing at them the whole time).  Padu and I turned to Skype messaging while on the video chat because talking became a little too weird knowing that these two women were listening and staring.

Kevin was so amused, that he snapped these pics, capturing the awkwardness for your enjoyment 🙂

 

Not sure what on earth they were doing that took them like an hour to clean the room, but I have a sinking feeling that they were pretty distracted by the magic wormhole in my computer screen connecting me to the other side of the world, therefore making them work half as fast.

Since that day…they’ve started knocking on the door.  🙂