July 10, 2006

• Using My 2GBs of Pictures: Nice & Monaco

  Nice was second on our little whirlwind tour of Europe.  My first time with the Frenchies, and they weren't too bad.  But I got the sense that Nice, like most beach towns, was a bit more laid back than its inland neighbors.  Their croissants were amazing.  I think I ate like 5 in two days and never got sick of them.  At the bakery where we got our croissants, CC was approached by this old guy who said to her, "Your eyes... zey are like... a bat."  She thought it was his way of complimenting her eyes.  I thought it was his way of saying she looked like a bat.  On the first night, we went to eat a Lonely Planet recommended seafood bouillabaisse special at a restaurant at the bottom of a youth hostel.  The place was run by these two little old ladies, and it was dark, there were tourists pamphlets scattered all about, a couple of flies overhead and a roach, but our hosts were cute and charming.  Then the bouillabaise came out.  On an enormous plate sat a bunch of perhaps three different kinds of whole fish and mounds of potatoes.  Just fish.  No mussels or shrimp or clams.  The lightly flavored garlic and wine broth came separately in a different pan.  As I surveyed the food and the surroundings, the frog-eating sisters from The Triplets of Belleville came barging into my mind.  Have any of you seen it?  It's a full-length French cartoon about a boy who's obsessed with cycling and his mother who goes out to find him after he's been kidnapped by a sinister gang.  Anyway, the mother runs into these old ladies who are triplets and used to be a singing trio, but now all they do is eat frogs they harvest from throwing dynamite into a local pond.  Yep.  It's a strange and interesting movie.  Critically acclaimed.  But in the movie, these whimsical old ladies are poor but content, comfortable in their bizarre habits and simple lives.  When I watched the film a few years ago, I couldn't imagine the real life people that inspired these characters, but sitting in that dinky little restaurant that night, contemplating this mound of fish staring back at me... yep, I understood who the frog sisters were.  The food was good btw, authentic like the kind of thing you'd make at home if you were out of frogs for the day.

  
  

   

  I named this place Rib Park for the uhh... ribs.  A ferris wheel in the middle of town!  Romantic...

  
  

  Check out the clown car in the foreground.  We drove one of these on our trip, but not in Nice.

  
  

  The beach.  Not that big, which seemed to be the case for other European beaches, too.

  
  

  Some fobby girl stuck her head in my picture at the last minute.

  
  

  Very rocky.  But at least the stones were smooth.

  
  

  Downtown during some kind of market day.

  

  Another part of the old town.  There were a lot of antiques on sale, but not many buyers.

  
  

  City center.  The main municipal building is just to the right of the picture out of frame.

  
  

  An alley with clothes drying overhead.

  
  

  Nice is a very tolerant city.  Note the big traffic light for the cars, the crossing sign for the pedestrians, and the little traffic light for the midgets in their midget cars.

  
  

  Another large square.  We had all-you-can-eat fries and mussels here and bought a Provencal tablecloth and napkins.

  
  

  This was one of the largest vending machines I've ever seen and I've lived in Japan.  Damn thing just took our money though...

  
  

  And then there was Monaco.  Monaco was an hour and a half bus ride away, so why not?

  
  

  We tried to go into the casino to have a look around, but it cost 10 euros just to go in, so we just peed in their bathroom and came out.  So ghetto.

  
  

  That's Evian water they use for the fountain.  (It could be!)

  
  

  Kinda like a tacky European Vegas, but no Circus Circus for the average Joes.

  
  

  We felt like peasants.
  

  
  

  At least they let us walk around and take pictures.

  
  

  The yacht harbor.  Mine is the fourth from the right.  No, you can't see it too well in this picture.

  
  

  Nice will always have their sunset.  Saying goodbye on the way to the airport...

  
  

  • 2:41 pm
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