A Little Eccentric

Nice in Nice, part deux

More on our exciting trip:
Thursday morning we got up and were greeted by beautiful weather! The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the sea was as bright as could be. We took the bus into the Port area. There, we visited the Museum Terra Armata. It focused on the evolution of man and had prehistoric human and animal bones from a 400,000 year old site found in Nice. We always visit all kinds of museums and places. One good way to do it is pick up a ton of brochures in hotels and things and just do whatever looks interesting the night before. You end up seeing a lot of cool and not so touristy things.
After that, we strolled along the port and looked at all the rich people’s yachts and got into another discussion about capitalism versus socialism (Both of us are becoming hard-core capitalists after living the socialist system).
The weather was so nice, we walked down to the beach and played in the water and I did some sketches for awhile. I was about as happy as I could be sitting in the warm Mediterranean sun, hearing the waves crash and drawing in my sketch book. We then went up Castle Hill. It is a giant hill at the end of Old Nice that overlooks everything. It used to have a fortress on top, hence the name. It was so cool to see all of Nice from up high on a cloudless, sunny day. We made it to the top, looked at the view and a waterfall that was built there and then made our way down to the cemeteries at the bottom of the hill. There was a Christian and Jewish one. They were pretty typical except at the entrance to the Jewish cemeteries there were two memorials. One contained ashes from gas chambers during the Holocaust and the other actually had “savon a la graisse humaine fabrique par les Allemands..” or soap made out of Jewish prisoners by the Germans. I read that they did that but I had never seen a memorial with any such thing. Crazy.
I was all depressed by seeing all the dead people, but it was also interesting. But to lighten the mood, we saw this statue. We both found it humorous.
After that, we visited the famous Russian church, went back to Old Nice, visited the Palais Lascais (an old palace with lots of artifacts), more churches, cathedrals and shops. By then, we had been everywhere and were very tired and hungry. We actually went to the same restaurant we went to the first night because it was the only place open. We got different food and enjoyed it very much.
We came in and left Nice on a high note. After dinner we went back to the hostel, got our bags and got to our train. After once again being yelled at for tickets for the wrong month, they actually stuck us in our own compartment.
We got back to Tours in the morning, got ourselves some crepes, and relaxed. This vacation went almost perfectly. We saw everything we wanted and then some. I got to really experience Nice and the South of France. Already, I’ve seen so many things and there is still more to come.
Then we finished off our wonderful French vacation by coming back to the dorms and watching the American classic, "Ferris Buehler's Day Off" and drinking hot chocolate.

posted by Molly Jo @ 3:18 AM