Nice!

The weekend of February 20th I went to Nice with a bunch of girls from my program. It was probably the best weekend I've had so far here in France. We were in a hostel (that provided towels!) and that had four bunk beds. There were some girls at another hostel too, so I think all together we were a group of about 14. We left Montpellier on Friday morning and arrived in the afternoon in Nice. It was a pretty long train ride, but I slept most of the way.

Our first stop was the Roman Orthodox Cathedral in Nice. It was kind of just stuck in the middle of the city, we walked up a road and all the sudden out of the trees there was this beautiful cathedral. A few of us paid 3E to go inside and it was totally worth it. The inside was covered in gold and paintings and lots of color. Also, the ceiling was SO high, all the way to the top of one of the globes. It was one of the cooler things I've seen while here.

Our only real plan after that was to experience Carnival on Saturday night, which we'd heard was insane, so we just wandered around for awhile on Friday and ended up finding a Ferris wheel, and the beach! We also found a little mini cotton candy/popcorn/etc. stand that reminded me of the state fair in Minnesota. Lily and I each got a gaufre (waffle) with nutella and whipped cream and it was DELICIOUS. We enjoyed them while riding the ferris wheel and gawking at the sea. We walked down to the beach after (which was a rock beach, maybe not ideal, but still... a beach!) and just enjoyed the ocean breeze for awhile. It was a beautiful day.

We headed back to the hostel to meet up with our friends who took a later train and got ready for dinner. We ended up finding a cute little Italian place and since we were all starving we just went in and ordered. I got a pizza and it was pretty delicious, I think everyone was pretty satisfied with their meal. We were ready to go out and find the night life. We ended up sitting in some bar where there was some live music, but we didn't stay out too late knowing that Saturday night would probably keep us out pretty late.
Saturday a few people woke up early to go to the contemporary art museum, but I stayed back with two of my friends and got lunch near our hostel. We walked around the town for a little and did some shopping, which is always a good idea in France. I think we all found something we liked and then headed to Monoprix to grab some wine and champagne for the night. We met up with the rest of the girls at the hostel and got ready for the night. I made the mistake of wearing my friends shoes without socks, and realized about 8 blocks into the walk that the shoes were just slightly too big, and I was very quickly forming very painful blisters. Not fun. Oh well though.

The parade that night started around 9 pm, so we got there early enough so that we could have prime standing spots. I guess we chose correctly, because we were RIGHT in the front next to all of the chaos. We all bought masks and were ready for some crazy Nice Carnival. I thought I was ready for the parade, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I thought that having gone to the Eveleth street parade on the 4th of July back home would have prepared me for the silly string, confetti, and crazy floats.... however, this parade make Eveleth look like an ant parade. There were thousands of people, the floats were ALL huge, insane, and slightly frightening, and there was more silly string and confetti than I have ever seen in my entire life. No, seriously, SO MUCH SILLY STRING! We were constantly picking it out of each others hair and masks, until we eventually just gave up. The floats were so intricate, and most of them had moving props or people. There were also a lot of people walking in costumes between the floats. It was truly one of the craziest parades of my life, I'm so glad I had the opportunity to experience it.
This guy in particular reminded me a lot of the Eveleth parade. I have a picture of his thong, too.
After the parade we stayed out for awhile, but most of us were pretty exhausted and eventually headed back to the hostel to call it a night.

The next day we woke up and headed to the Musée Matisse. It ended up being a pretty long, and consistently up hill voyage, but it was a beautiful day again, and the view of the city getting smaller as we got closer to the museum was so worth it. We finally got to the top of the very large hill after about an hour, and we found the museum. It was in this very cute old house that overlooked a garden. There were also orange trees outside, and that made me happy in itself, because orange trees only grow in warm weather. The museum was pretty cool, a lot of interesting art and sculptures, but nothing that I would put on a "must see" list. We headed back towards town and made our way to Vieux Nice to eat lunch. The old part of town was adorable, tons of little shops in very narrow streets... exactly what I expected. The entire town is beautiful though, I love the fact that all the houses are the same shade of color with vibrant shutters. Who even uses shutters anymore? I'm not sure, but I love them. We ate some ravioli at a restaurant and then unfortunately had to book it back to the train station to head home.

It was a very successful weekend, and I would recommend that everyone make it to Nice--specifically Carnival, if they're ever in France.