Monday in Nice

Posted on 2009/07/05 16:55:40 (July 2009).

[Monday 29th June]
Started the morning with a fantastic breakfast at our hotel in Monaco, sitting at a table overlooking the Mediterranean. After that we spent a bit more time lounging about in our room, enjoying the view, before somewhat reluctantly checking out and getting the train back to Nice.

For the next four nights we were going to be staying in a somewhat more modest "Apart Hotel" in Nice. The room was designed like a small studio apartment, with basic cooking facilities, as we'd thought it might be nice to have the option to take a break from eating out for one or two nights during our stay.

After dropping off our bags etc we headed over to Nice's old town for a bit of a wander around. I'd been really suffering in the heat the past couple of days and so we thought it was pretty much imperative that I bought a hat, or I'd almost certainly end up with sun stroke. We'd already looked in a couple of random-crap-for-tourists type shops which had had some pretty naff hats I'd turned my nose up at. So when we stumbled upon a proper hat shop I thought I absolutely had to just bite the bullet and buy a hat. I think I'm just not really a hat person, I probably tried on 10 or 15 different hats and none of them really seemed to suit me. I did eventually buy one - a sort of rafia Stetson Gillmore (see the pictures if that's hard to imagine). I still didn't think it really suited me, and was very self concious when wearing it, but needs must I suppose.

From there we wandered through the Cours Saleya (the location of Nice's famous flower market) which it seems on Mondays is more of an antiques market. From there we meandered through the windy alleyways of the old town, until we happened upon a little street cafe selling socca - the Nicoise speciality, a kind of pancake made with chickpea flour. So we had a couple of those with some beer as a very late lunch (i.e. about 5pm), which was quite nice.

We decided to have a go at cooking a meal at our apartment in the evening, so on the way back popped into a Spar to buy some things for dinner. It's much harder to buy food for a meal when you're starting with completely empty cupboards! Anyway we managed to scrape an odd sort of a meal together - a tomato salad to start with, followed by an artichoke with vinaigrette, and then some ratatouille with these strange little wheat grain things which Chie had picked up.

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