Nice is Nice! (part 2 of 2)

So last I left you I had just explored the port of Nice, and was waiting for Becky to arrive. (Part 1 is Updated with Photos! Go check it out, click on Part Nice is Nice part 1 on the right navigation bar!)

Becky's flight got in around 1pm, so by the time she got off the plane it was more like 2pm. I met her at the airport and she hit the ground running, us exploring Nice immediately. I took her through some of the side streets I had already explored to get her up to par so to speak, and then we made our way to parts I hadn't already seen.

Cafes:

Along the way, we stopped at multiple Cafes. Whether it be on a small side street, or the boardwalk of the beach, they are always a nice place to get a snack and just rest your feet for a while. We made several stops over our weekend, and each complimented the laid back culture of the French. People would have a coffee and sit for hours just talking and people watching, so we did as the French do and experienced that part of the culture.

For Saturday night we were not very adventurous, and opted for an Irish Pub. We figured we had experienced French culture enough at the Cafe's so we opted in for some more familiar food to us. Becky was happy to get some real food (the food situation can be tough in London, their not exactly known for their cuisine). Of course I've had good food my whole trip, but I'd consider this some good food for the soul, with a long day coming to a close and another right around the corner.

Sunday:



We headed out early to church at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception as I mentioned in my last post, then walked the port and up the side of the beach. From here we were able to walk up a hill/mountain which is home to the ruins of one of the original establishments of Nice, a Castle that sat on the hill above the port. It was a beautiful day, and the view from each level of the hill was incredible. I took way too many pictures of the same view, but they all varied slightly in what you could see, so I found it justified for me to be clicking away so much.

At the top of the hill was a park for children, a really fantastic looking jungle-gym that had the kid in me wanting to swing and slide. There was also a large waterfall that we had seen from the bottom. On the back side of the hill we found a cafe and then made our way down the stairs towards a series of churches.

Churches:



A funny thing about Nice churches, though they all have Sunday masses, immediately after mass they close up for the day. This would have been nice to know, considering we planned on doing most of our church visits on, you guessed it, Sunday. Half way down the hill was a cemetery with a beautiful chapel, from the outside of course. The doors were sealed up with no signs of getting in. Down to a small Chapel of the visitation, with a beautiful worn wooden door only to find it closed. Then to the Church of St. Augustine, a church I found again hitting close to home considering the connection between Villanova and the Augustinians. Another small chapel of St. Croix, closed for Sunday. We were striking out left and right. Down to the church of Jesus, all closed. The outsides of each church were all very different and unique in their own regard, and there was a lot of interesting info on plaques outside the churches, but it would have been nice to get in some of them.


Some words on Food:

I cannot complain at all about the food in Nice. I didn't have one thing that I didn't like. I found it interesting though that there was so much Italian influence on the cuisine. It makes sense when you think about how close it is to Italy, and read about the history of some Italians settling in Nice early on, but I was still surprised to find so much Italian. We had a fantastic dinner on Sunday night, mostly Italian food but with its own unique flare to it. The pizza was pretty authentic to Italian pizza I might add. Gelato was also good, we found a gelato shop with over 86 flavors, and that was also pretty authentic. Street vendors had the famous crepes, nutella and banana being my all time favorite. It's a snack I could eat at any time of the day, no matter how hungry or full I am.

Carnavale:



Much like Venice when we visited, Carnival or Carnavale was in full swing in Nice. In Nice Carnival takes place all of February, and so we happened to be here for the last weekend. This meant festivities were at their peak, and everyone was celebrating the end of the Carnival season so to speak. On saturday and sunday we were treated to parades of all sorts of crazy floats, decorations and costumes. Everyone dresses up in crazy outfits and walks around. It is very much geared towards kids, both day and night, and was refreshing to see the youthful spirit everyone had. Silly string and confetti fights broke out everywhere on the streets, and you couldn't help but join in when they did. What we found interesting was that there was a center piazza blocked off for the celebration, and the only way to get in was by having a ticket. We didn't know where to buy the tickets to begin with, and weren't really there for Carnival, so we enjoyed it from the side streets and main road that held the parade, and continued on our way.

The Finale:



Since it was the last weekend of Carnival, they had a finale in store for us. Earlier in the day while we were in the port, I noticed that there were several barges being loaded up. Upon further inspection (I took a picture of it, see the gallery) I noticed they were loading the barges with fireworks. Later that night when it was nice and dark, there was a fireworks show on the water. We sat down on the stone beach and enjoyed the long and complex fireworks show. It was a great way to end the weekend, one that allowed me to wind down from all of the hustle and bustle of being abroad, and get focused for what is going to be a whirlwind of a final month for me.

We both flew out early Monday afternoon, and I had a nice long wait in the airport between Becky's flight and mine to sit down and start writing my blog and collecting my thoughts. It was an amazing experience, one that I will not soon forget.

I hope you enjoy my pictures, I took over 600 this time, and posted just over 100 (lots of them are the same shot basically, just me changing settings/zoom/focus in each). Please post any questions/comments as always, they are greatly appreciated.



Link to Pictures, click here!

Nice is nice! (part 1 of 2)

(Part 1 updated with Photos!)

See what I did there? That play on words? You read that more than once I bet, didn't you? I apologize, I am in the airport waiting for my flight and I just couldn't help myself. This blog is being written in the airport and maybe a bit on the plane, and then when I get back to Rome and can upload photos and make it all pretty looking I will do that, so if there are no pictures on it you haven't seen the final version! So be sure to check back, unless after reading you are not interested in seeing all of the beautiful pictures I took, in that case you are missing out on half of the experience. (Updated: This is part 1 of a series, like I’ve done for past trips. Be sure to keep checking back tomorrow for additional parts! Internet is at a crawl tonight, so pictures will be up tomorrow as well, so this post and additional posts will be updated with embedded pictures/links to the entire album!)

Okay so, as I mentioned this was my Villanova pilgrimage trip. That means besides getting to visit another amazing city and experiencing the culture, I also had the goal to take some sort of religious or spiritual journey. I'd say I accomplished that.

Becky was nice enough to agree to make the trip with me, though convincing her to come to the cote d'azur wasn't too hard. So let's start from the beginning shall we?

Friday:



I arrived in Nice on Friday around noon. The flight from Rome was only fifty minutes, a hop skip and jump if I do say so myself. When we touched down I woke to see one of the more ironic views I have seen in my life. To my left, literally right off the tip of the wing, the most beautiful water I have seen. As the plane turned into the parking space, I caught site of palm trees on the ground, and in the background the snow covered alps. If I had my camera at hand I would have snapped a picture, but you can imagine the laugh I got out of it.

Becky wasn't supposed to get in until nine or so that night(more on that later) so I checked into the hotel and then headed out to explore. It was a beautiful sixty degrees and not a cloud in the sky.



I headed down the main street to a small winding street full of stores and cafes. Nice is not, at least in February, a touristy city. It has a genuine small town feel and look.



Church number 1:



I happen to come across my first church of the trip. It is right on the small street I am walking down. There was nothing particularly stand-out about it, but it was pretty nonetheless. A Few minutes of contemplation and exploring the church and I was on my way.
As I exited the church Becky called me in a panic. Her flight had been canceled.

Boycott easyjet:
I am making the vow right now to never fly easyjet. They are a "budget " airline with low fares but nickel and dime you on fees and taxes while providing minimal services besides getting you to and from where you are going. I have no problem with that, I pay a lower than normal fare and they fly me there. But when they fail to uphold their end of the promise, well then we have a problem. When six hours before a flight they cancel it wit nothing more than a "sorry!" email, well that to me is a problem. It didn't seem any other airline were having problems with flying to France, yet easyjet was blaming it on France and saying other airlines had similar problems. Luckily Becky acted quick and booked a flight through British airways, but the flight was not until Saturday morning.

Solo in Nice:

This twist in events left me alone in Nice. Still unsure for a while whether she would actually ever make it here, this is where the real pilgrimage began. I visited another church, the church of Jesus, and just sat there for a while, not much running through my head.

The Beach:



From here I made my way down to the beach. The beaches in Nice are all stone. Large stones to be exact. It is a pretty beautiful site and are surprisingly comfortable to sit on. I sat for a long time, my spiritual pilgrimage in full swing, as I contemplated all sorts of stuff. I realized that Monday(today) is march 1st. March 31 marks the end of my program in Rome. That fact took me a while to grasp. While I have done so much, I cannot even imagine what march 31st will be like.

I sat on the beach for a pretty good while, then headed to walk around more. I spent the night getting myself lost and then finding my way again, never once looking at at a map (I had one with me just in case). I called it an early night.

Saturday came and I went back to exploring. I stopped at a French pastry shop and got a chocolate croissant. French breads and pastries never cease to amaze me. They look good and taste even better. I then made my way to the port of Nice.

The port:



This may have been my favorite part of nice. For one, I love boats, and the port had plenty of them. From big yachts to twelve foot row boats, it had it all. The second feature I loved was the church of our lady of the immaculate conception.

Church of our lady of the Immaculate Conception:



This is one of the first churches in Nice and rightfully so is one of the first things sailors ans seamen would see when pulling into the port of Nice. It is located at Right near the water directly inside the port. The outside reminded me of the Pantheon, but was more colorful than it. The inside seemed smaller than it looked from the outside, but had a nice feel. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the size, but it kind of felt just right. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I felt at home because of the name. My parish at home, in New Jersey, is Immaculate Conception Church in Somerville. Yes, I know there are plenty of other churches of the Immaculate Conception, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit at home, even though I am thousands of miles away. We went to mass here on Sunday and I really liked the feel of the mass, even if it was in all French. The interior was very beautiful but unfortunately I feel as though they could use some money to do some restorations of the artwork and inner façade.



In the church was a small shrine to our lady of Lourdes. Though I tried hard to fit a trip to Lourdes into my journey to Nice (train takes ten hours a flight costs a large amount of money) this would be the closest I would get to Lourdes. The shrine had a statue of Mary, and was surrounded by plaques which contained dates, names and a message. By my translation from my limited knowledge of the French Language, these plaques were donated by people who had visited Lourdes or prayed to Our Lady of Lourdes and who had been healed. There was even a bottle of Lourdes water at the base of the statue. It was quite a powerful experience. I lit a candle for those in my life that are sick, praying that they will get better soon. We spent a few more minutes in the church and then headed out.


A word on boats:




As I mentioned before, the port held many boats. Too many for me to take in. I love boats, and to see the size of some of these yachts was incredible. Each was bigger than the next, and I can only imagine how amazing they look on the inside. To the other side of them though were the much smaller boats. The quaint twelve foot boats that have small 10 hp inboard motors, painted in all sorts of bright colors. No matter how spectacular the yachts are, there’s no better satisfaction than jumping in a small boat and just putt-putting around for an hour or so. It’s the simplicity of being of just being on the water sometimes that makes the biggest impact, not the fact that you have 3 bedrooms, air conditioning and a Jacuzzi on your boat.

Okay, that's all for this part, check back tomorrow for pictures and a continuation!

Paris! (Part 2 of more than I thought)

This is part two of what looks like will be a 3 part series on my trip to Rome. If you didn't read part 1 yet, click on the link below!

Link to Part 1

So to recap, I figured out the metro, and got to the metro stop near our hostel/hotel we would be staying at. I turned down the street to be greeted by Becky and her entourage standing outside the hostel. Becky’s entourage, let me introduce them. All of them are interior design majors at Syracuse University, studying abroad in London with Becky. They are: Maggie, Erin, Stacey, Becca, and Lindsay. And what an awesome group of girls to travel with.
So I quickly dropped my bags at the hotel and we were on our way to sightseeing.
I keep changing back between hostel and hotel when talking about where we were staying, so let me try and explain that now.

MIJE Fourcy:



We stayed in a hotel/hostel this weekend for Paris. It was called the Hotel Fourcy, yet was described as a hostel online and other sites. So lets try and figure out which it is, shall we? It was an older building in pretty much center city Paris, which was a great location. The rooms had private bathrooms, point for hotel. The toilettes though were not in the private bathroom, but in the hallway, point hostel. We did not pay for sheets, point hotel. We were given breakfast, point hostel (In Europe in general, breakfast is served at hostels and not in hotels). There were lots of young students there, point hostel. There were also lots of older people there, where normally hostels have only under 35 allowed, so point hotel. Late checkout, point hotel. I think that puts it in favor of Hotel, which is a good thing. It was priced more like a lower hotel than a hostel as well.

Notre Dame:



Our first tourist attraction, Notre Dame. I knew the cathedral was big, but I didn’t know what else to expect. It was a pretty impressive sight. The church is really impressive from the outside and even more impressive from the inside. Maybe I’m just spoiled though, but I didn’t get that same overwhelming feeling I got when going into St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s here. Maybe I’m just getting used to incredibly large churches. Nevertheless, it was an awesome church to see.

The Louvre:



If you want to talk about an overwhelming sensation, try walking into the Louvre. There’s a reason this was featured in that google superbowl ad (yep I saw it! Online of course). It’s obviously very well known for at least two things: its glass pyramid entranceway, and the Mona Lisa. Both are cool in their own regard, the first I found to be cooler than the latter, but I think the real spectacle is the sheer size of the building. We spent about 2 or 3 hours in the Louvre, and only got to see one wing of one floor of it completely through. That is probably about a tenth of the entire museum. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa, and I took my obligatory picture of it, but as most people are these days, I was underwhelmed by it. Maybe if they would let me get closer than 30 feet from it to really examine it, or took off that horrible glared glass case from around it I could appreciate it more, but I guess the experience is more about saying you saw it than anything. There were plenty of paintings that had more of an effect on me because I could get up close and see the detail and texture in the artists work.

Saint Chapelle:



Next on our list was Saint Chappelle, which is known to have some of the nicest and probably tallest stain glass windows. Bottom line is this had some awesome stain glass windows, but it was small and a bit underwhelming as well. They sell it really well in pictures, making out to be a gigantic hall filled with stain glass windows, when it’s really a relatively small place. Considering we got into the Louvre for free through some fast talking (European Union resident students get free entrance to all museums, we’re students but not EU residents, but we’re very convincing sometimes) I felt like the price of admission was a bit high for Saint Chapelle. Maybe it was because they are doing restorations on the windows, which means they have part of it covered up, which takes away from the experiences. The restorations are definitely helping though, the difference between the finished side and the unfinished side is like night and day. As much as I may complain, it really was a cool place to sit and look at the simple beauty of it all for a while.

Afterwards we got lunch, which was a sandwich in a French baguette with fries and a drink all for 5 euro. When I say French baguette, I mean an entire loaf basically. They don’t skimp on their sandwiches and bread, something I was happy to find in Paris.

(I feel like I’m forgetting a sight that we saw in-between here. To be honest, the weekend is a whirlwind of sightseeing, eating, walking, and having a good time. If I remember I’ll be sure to update. If anyone on the trip is reading this and remembers what I’m missing, please tell me? Okay thanks!)

Champs-Elysees & Arc de Triumph:



You might think we are nearing the end of our day but we were just getting started. Up the Champs-Elysees towards the Arc de Triumph. It was as much further walk than we originally anticipated. The arc looked so close! Yet it was so far away. We got there, and it was well worth the walk. This is one of those monuments you learn about every semester of French class you take, and it really is a cool monument, right in the center of it all, at the intersection of what seems to be all of the roads of Paris. We opted in to climb to the top, and the view from there was incredible. Right as we were about to go back down, the Eiffel tower lit up a golden orange. It was the first time we (or I at least) saw it lit up, and I couldn’t help but stand and stare for another 15 minutes at it and the streets surrounding us. Afterwards we walked around and found a local caffe to eat at. The French onion soup was awesome. I didn’t order it, but I stole some of Beckys and we both really enjoyed it.

River Tour:



We ended our night with a riverboat tour of Paris. The boat left at 9pm and took us on an hour ride up and down the Siene river. We got to see a lot of familiar sites from the river at night, and more that we didn’t know anything about. The highlight is definitely seeing the Eiffel tower from the river though. I can’t even tell you how many pictures I took of it from the river, always thinking that “now” I’ll have a better shot/it looks cooler from here, or maybe it’s just closer? It was a beautiful night, and was a perfect end to my first, yet very busy (jam-packed with fun?) day in Paris.

So it looks like this is going to be 3 parts. Wahoo! Tomorrow I’ll tackle our trip on Saturday and Sunday, along with some tangents I want to go off on for a while. See you then….

Also, Pictures are up from the trip. Not all (internet is crawling) but many. Check them out here: Paris Pictures

And if you haven't already... Say happy birthday to Becky in the Comments!!

Paris! (Part 1 of a few)

(This is part 1 of a multiple part series. To get to the other parts quickly and easily, click the links below)

Link to Part 2

Journey number two outside of Italy was, as has been alluded to, Paris. Oh Paris, Home of the Crepe, Eiffel Tower, and stuffy French people. But more on those topics later. Lets take this chronologically again shall we? I’m sure I’ll go off on tangents when I come across a topic I want to talk about. Clear your schedule for the immediate future, this is going to be a long one (I might break it up into different parts to give you a break from the reading, and my fingers a break from the typing, but this is bound to be my longest blog post to date, I’ve got a lot to say).

Friday:

This was a special trip because I met Becky (my wonderful girlfriend for those of you who do not know her) in Paris with a bunch of her friends to celebrate her 21st birthday, which happens to be today, so everyone wish Becky a Happy Birthday in the comments below. Okay, enough embarrassing Becky, I couldn’t help it.
So, as I was saying, the plan was to meet her and her friends in Paris for the weekend. Since they are all studying abroad in London, they had the opportunity to get to Paris on Thursday afternoon. So I decided to fly in as early as possible Friday morning. 7am flight from Rome FCO to Charles De Gaul airport. As it turns out, public transportation doesn’t run at 4:30 in the morning. So I bit the bullet and got a cab by myself to the airport. Since I got a cab, it took much less time than public transportation, So I got to the airport especially early. Lucky me. I think I may have been the first person through security that morning, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing except for the wait at the gate in the other end.

AirFrance:

I am now going to write a small testimony for Air France. Air France PR people, feel free to use this all over your website, so long as you link back to this wonderful blog. I decided to fly Air France from Rome to Paris instead of one of the normal budget airlines that us college students normally use. The main two being RyanAir (coincidence?) and EasyJet, but there are many more that fly specifically between different countries. Okay so reasons to fly AirFrance, well first off, it wasn’t that expensive. Actually it was comparable to the prices of EasyJet, which also flies into Charles De Gaul airport. RyanAir I ruled out because though it was much cheaper, it flies into an airport that is about two hours away from Paris itself. I was not looking to take a bus ride from the airport to the city that is shorter than my flight from Rome to Paris.
I cannot tell you how nice it was to fly AirFrance. I flew from one real airport to another, sat in a real gate, had the ability to check a bag if I wanted to, didn’t get hassled about my carry-on being too big, didn’t have to walk to and from my plane, had a nice comfortable seat with a generous amount of legroom, was given food and drink, and was not woken up by in-flight audio commercials. I could turn this into an entire blog post, but just know that everything listed there, the opposite is what RyanAir does. “Flying AirFrance was like flying First Class compared to RyanAir”-Ryan Mahoney (hint: AirFrance, use that line!). I need to stop getting distracted like that, this post will be long enough without it.

So the flight to Paris involved a lot of sleeping, which was nice, since I haven’t really ever been able to sleep at all on flights, must be a psychological thing or something. I landed in Paris around 9am, exited the plane and found my way towards the exit. Lucky for me public transportation was running in Paris at this point. Break for Metro tangent:

Paris Metro:

The Metro in Paris lives up to the stereotypes of French people: It tries to make itself out to being more sophisticated than any other European country, while really that complexity makes it fall on its face and look bad. Yes, the Paris metro is extensive and exhaustive in its amount of lines and stops that can get you basically anywhere. I cannot take that away from it. But many things about it just didn’t feel, right. First, I go to the ticket machine to buy a ticket. I had to take an RER (certain line in the metro) subway from the airport to get to the inner city. So I bought a Metro/RER ticket, for the standard metro ticket price. Problem is, you need a special RER ticket to go to and from airports. Why? Because they want to take my money, that’s why. So after failing multiple times at going through the gate with my regular ticket, I went back and figured out that I needed the other ticket. Oh well. This would not be the last problem with tickets though. One money saver tip is to buy a carnet or book of tickets, which is 10 tickets that can be used whenever. You pay 11.60 and get 10 tickets, where a single ride is 1.60. Quick math says you pay for 7.25 tickets and get 2.75 free. Cool I guess. So when we were using the metro in the city, there being 7 of us, we would buy a book of tickets and share and keep the extras toward the next ride, so it was more economical, see? Well it turns out when you want to ride the metro you should probably buy a couple extra tickets, because they are very temperamental. Everytime we got on the metro, someone’s ticket, which was just purchased, wouldn’t work. The machine would continuously reject it. So we would pass them one of the extras and that would work. We later tried passing back tickets that had just gone through the machine 1 minute before, and you know what? Yep, sometimes those worked even though they had already been used. The other quirky thing about the Paris metro, which I’m told is similar to D.C., is that you have to put your ticket through in order to exit the metro as well. See where this and our ticket fiasco might cause a problem? Yep you guessed it, tickets that had let us on the metro just 10 minutes before would not let us exit the metro. Really, I have no explanation for why this happened. I experimented with lots of different ways of putting the ticket in, walking through the turnstile, amount of time waiting for the other person to go through, where I stood etc…. and I really couldn’t figure it out. Maybe there’s a trick to it and we were just doing it wrong, a lot. I personally think its an evil scheme to confuse, frustrate tourists while gaining entertainment and profit from the locals. Apart from this, I found the signs to be confusing and not helpful. They tell you the direction of the train just like any other metro in the world, by telling you what the last stop in that direction is. Two problems with that. Many of the lines branch off into multiple directions towards the end of the line. The B RER train, which runs to and from the airports, has 4 “ends” to it. I know many of them have even more than this, but I used that line so I figured I would talk about what I know (or don’t know for that matter). The other problem is that many of the end stations have multiple names. It’ll be firstname-nextname-nameprobablyusedonasign. See how that can be confusing? The last name on the map is the one that is posted on signs. I’m sure it’s a more recognizable street or monument or direction to locals, but again, not so easy when you aren’t from around here.

Okay, this seems like a good spot for a break. Mostly because I have class now and want to post something before I head off for that. I’ll post part 2 as soon as I type it! Rest your eyes for a little bit, we've got a long way to go.

Trip number two...

In a few short hours, (and I really do mean short) I will be heading to the airport for my second trip outside of Italy.

This weekend I'll be in Paris, and I'll be meeting Becky there to celebrate her 21st birthday. I'm looking forward to seeing her for the first time since I got on a plane over a month ago, and also to visit France, the country with the foreign language I took classes in for so many years of my life.

I'm just about sure this trip will completely screw up all progress I have made with Italian. Just when I am getting in the groove of Italian, I'm going to be thrown into another language I somewhat understand (I'm going to have to shake the rust off, but I'm pretty confident I'll understand a lot of it).

I am going to keep this short tonight. I have a flight at 7am, which means Airport much earlier, and a taxi even earlier than that. Unfortunately public transportation doesn't run that early in the morning, so I'm stuck with a taxi, though that means a little extra sleep. I cannot promise any posts this weekend, but I will promise an extensive post on Monday, just like my post on Barcelona.

Is it bad I typed aeroport twice before changing it to airport?

Also, isn't there that little event called the Super Bowl going on this weekend? Yeah completely didn't realize that.