Myself and my wife took off on Friday for a little trip to Nice in France. It is a birthday present to my wife but also to myself. So we packed up the kids up to nanny and granddad and flew off on our own for a few days to the South of France. Nice has always been on my list although my sister got caught in a stampede there during the last World Cup when a flair was mistaken for terrorist gunfire in the cities old town and she cowered down in a cellar all upset until the all clear was given. We have been to Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and a few other cities in France so Nice was next on the list. The sweetener for me is that I get to visit Monaco today which is another place on my bucket list. So there will be a few photos of Russian yachts on this blog tomorrow.
Nice is a wonderful city on the sea. The plane has to do a big U turn to come is as the runway is on the beach and you think you are landing in the sea.
When you land , the city is around 10 minutes by tram to the city centre which is great. The city is on the sea so a walk down the promenade was done to start off the visit but it was fairly windy I tell you. I would say it is unreal in summer. The city like many other French cities has an old town with narrow higgeldy piggeldy streets and nice little food and chocolate shops along the way. We spent alot of time in the old town yesterday and ended up having lunch and dinner there as well.
We are staying in a lovely little hotel called the Grimalde just off the main restaurant street. The restaurants are lovely here so we are eating well. We decided not to include breakfast in the hotel as going to the little French cafes in the morning is part of the experience. If you ask for a coffee in Nice you get an espresso so I am getting used to them at this stage. Many people complain about French food but I have always find it very tasty. The service is always a bit slow in France but that is there way. They don't rush anything and I quite like the long sit down over a number of courses.
My wife complained her starter was a bit carroty. What you reckon?? I couldn't stop laughing but she said it was nice.
We ended up in an Irish pub after it surprise surprise. Now this was a mistake as we didn't know it was an Irish bar when we walked in. We are like zombies that way. We will always find our way to an Irish pub in a foreign city. There was a French lad singing. He was excellent but we decided not to drink too much as we were heading to Monaco and I wanted to be fresh.
Look what I passed in the old town. Wonder did this place splash out 7K on the gold NFT of Waka.
There was an interesting thing happened in the old town. There was a French guy who was small enough and he was with his wife/ girlfriend who was Asian in origin. But they left a government building and were surrounded by the French army. 5 big burly guys in a figure 5 keeping their distance from the couple but yet walking beside them. At first I thought they were on patrol but then I relaised they were protecting the couple. I have no photos of this unfortunately. If anyone French on here has an idea who they were??. I know the main guys like Macron and it wasn't him. I'm thinking now that maybe it was the Asian woman who was VIP.
After a bit of shopping we had a pretty jam packed day.
Anyway I highly recommend Nice for a few days. Off to Monaco in a bit ao it should be fun.