Trip to Nice!

So this past weekend we took a school trip to Nice, which is about an hour south of Aix right on the French Riviera. We had such a great time! We walked all over the town, looking in shops and checking out the views which were unbelievable. It’s all mountains overlooking the Mediterranean, and I took some awesome pictures (of course). We went to the beach but because it was miserable and rainy when we left Aix, none of us predicted the beautiful weather that showed up a few hours later in Nice, therefore none of us had our bathing suits. But we did the rolled up jeans thing and waded in, then of course a wave came and got our jeans wet anyway. The beach is all stones, not sand, so it kinda killed ur feet as you walked around, but it was really pretty. We had a lot of fun.

One of my favorite parts was when we went to the town’s famous ice cream place, Fennochios (no idea how to spell that) which is famous for having pretty much every ice cream flavor you could imagine. Seriously, they put Cold Stone to shame. They had flavors like pepper chocolate, mandarin chocolate, blackberry, white chocolate, fig, rhubarb, cookie, avocado, cactus, pear, apple cinnamon, and they even had flower flavors like rose, violet, lavender, poppy, and jasmine. And yes, they even had BEER flavored ice cream, although I’m pretty sure it would have tasted gross. I had (are you ready?) one scoop of jasmine, and one scoop of cactus. it actually was really good! The cactus was anyway, the jasmine was a little bit overpowering, which I should have guessed because the jasmine flower has a really strong smell. Any kind of flower-flavored ice cream though gives you the weirdest sensation..it’s like you’re smelling it in your mouth, it’s crazy! Elyse had pink grapefruit and poppy, which was really good too. We got crazy flavors cuz we’re in france and it’s time to be adventurous damn it. That’s my theory anyway.

Later that day we went to the Matisse museum, a famous modern/impressionist artist. It was ok I guess, but I definitely learned that I’m not all that into modern art. We then took a bus to the place we were staying, a town just outside of Nice called Cap d’Aie (which means Cape Garlic), in a surprisingly nice youth hostel there. The grounds were gorgeous, right on the mountainside. We took a really short (like literally 45 minutes) trip to Monte Carlo, where we saw the famous Monte Carlo casino, which was pretty ridiculous. Just looking at the jewelry in the stores around that area made me feel poor haha. You had to be dressed nicely, be 21, and have your passport to go in and gamble, so 20-year-old me dressed in jeans stayed outside. We walked around a little, saw a drunk guy get escorted by police which was pretty amusing, and then went back to the hostel. When we got back, the hostel put on a “discotheque” (basically a club) for us in the cafeteria of the place, with wine and dancing and everything. It was sooo much fun. Elyse and I split a bottle of rose wine, killed it in like 30 minutes, then finished the red wine that Liz and Stephanie had bought (which was pretty gross but I was at the point where I didn’t care). I would like to make it known that ELYSE GOT DRUNK FOR THE FIRST TIME. I was sooo excited lol. They played all American music and we danced all night..we had a really great time. Elyse was labeled as an “annoying drunk” by Stephanie, which I found amusing. She also displayed her bra on the shelf when she went to bed, and apparently I was making jokes about it being a limited time only display at a museum and people buying tickets to go see it. Don’t ask.

The next morning we had breakfast, attempted to recover from the night before, saw this greek ampitheatre that was on the property of the hostel which was pretty cool, and then headed off to another town called St. Paul de Vince, also on the Riviera. It’s this little medieval town with a wall built all around the city, completely restored. It was really cute to walk around and the views were amazing. Again, I have lots of pictures. We grabbed lunch at a sandwich shop and ate on the wall overlooking the mountains. Behind us in line were obnoxious Americans who didn’t even TRY to speak French, which has become one of my pet peeves over here. But anyway, we went to another modern art museum, however this one was a little cooler than the Matisse one. Some of the works like moved and stuff with magnetic fields and gears and all that, which was fun to watch. Still, we still got some that were like a square canvas just painted black with a yellow line down the side. Ok, now I can do that. How does that get in a museum?? Baffling. So after the museum and town-touring, we finally returned to Aix, sleeping the entire 2 hour bus ride home. We all had a fantastic time! Check out pics at http://photos.yahoo.com/aixtraordinary

Miss you all!
*Cristin