Nice! (niece)

Despite having messed up in Barcelona, and promising to do more in Nice, it didn't really end up being much of a problem, simply because there is not much to do in Nice. One thing that kept me fairly entertained was constantly saying “niece” in a south park style fashion. By the time we left, I think Matt was ready to go just based on the annoyance of this alone. So the first day we decided to catch up on some much needed laundry, Matt hand washed a few things, but I just handed it all over to the front desk. After getting situated, we wandered around the city, including passing by this pretty cool fountain, where I'm now holding the “French: at a glance” book, ready to finally switch over from Spanish. More wandering and I found an H & M, which I have to go into whenever I see one, and they're all over Europe. I put on all the Euro crap I could and tried to look as pretentious and chic as possible. Shortly after a security guard told us pictures weren't allow, but we got away with this one. Having not done any legitimate sight seeing in Europe, we decided to check out the supposedly famous Chagall museum, which ended up for me being one of the more hilarious museums in terms of how little effort it really takes to have an entire museum built after you. I was literally crying when I saw this first photo. You should click on it to enlarge it. Yes, it is a man in a bathrobe whistling, with a house on his head, I kid you not. This shit gets in museums. There's hope for all the struggling artists of the world. There was also this equally poorly drawn photo with a lady with a house on her head, clearly part of some posh euro art movement. After being disappointed with the greatest museum that Nice had to offer, we headed off to a bit to eat, and Matt struggled through some French ordering, but we got our food all the same, and it was delicious. After having a bite to eat, we headed through Nice and found this little cafe center with this guy playing that seemed decent at the beginning, but really was quite mediocre. He was playing rhythm, lead, and bass all by himself, by using a looping machine. The funny part is his wife or girlfriend or whatever just tries to look cool the entire time by first holding his instruments for him while he's playing, and then just dancing and blowing bubbles. It was kinda sad. [stupid guy video]
and yes, I did get shat on.

After being thoroughly unimpressed with this man, we headed toward the beach front, and walked through the beautiful Nice riviera.

Our cultural entertainment continued to be the free street side performers, which there are plenty of, and some are even quite talented. These Beatles marionettes were quite good, make sure to watch the drum fills, as they are fairly accurate.

We also encountered these pretty crazy Jamacian roller bladers, and this guy totally reminds me of Eddie from Tekken.

The nice coast line is quite a view as well, although the Mediterranean will never quite give you those sandy So-Cal beaches.


Day two we took a day trip over to Bealeau Sur Mer or something, and decided to have a nice relaxed day chilling on the beach with this German guy were were staying with Corby.

We got to swim in the Mediterranean for the first time, which was saltier than I expected, and then spent a while tanning on the beach.

Afterwards we went for some tasty gellato


and then got back to our hostel with some time to spare before our train headed out. So we went up and down the streets looking for Wi-Fi, trying Starbucks, a random place where the password didn't work, and finally walked by McDonalds, and noticed they had Wi-Fi, of all places. We sat down with the computer, and Matt was able to talk to Kyle over G-mail chat, and we got a reservation with Kyle and John in Rome for the next day, totally last minute, managed to save us a good 40 euro. I left Nice with a little less disgusted for the fact that there's a good three McDonalds in every city and couldn't help being appreciative of our little American Embassy.