Côtes ridic

Before we went to Nice we decided to go through Cannes. This was a mistake, there was no film festival on yet we couldn't find a park and it looked like a European version of Malibu in California. If you haven't been to Malibu, well Courtney Love did a song about it, nuff said. After getting out of Cannes through the traffic lights every 100m we arrived in Nice, checked into our hotel and they gave us the choice of rooms with a key to both to inspect. One was on the second floor and the other on the fifth floor was basically a trapezoid room with the only window being to the roof slope. I opened the window/sun light/trapdoor and was immediately surrounded by 50 degree heat from clay roof tiles being baking in the 30 degree weather all day, so we opted for the 2nd level room.

We went for a walk down the main avenue where there's trams running up and a lot of the fancy labelled shops, also there's a lot of cafes and bars which is quite perfect for us. We had a rose de Provence about halfway and then headed down to the beach. After walking around for a while we realised that it was too hot to do anything other than cain some wines right on the beach. These were more than we expected to pay and were similar to the prices of our local Sydney pubs, lah didah. P.S. with the dollar the way it is Europe is the new south east Asia.

The bar we were at was right on the beach and had a DJ playing some chill beats so we stayed there for quite a while. This bar was completely amazing, so close to the water and good music! Nice is apparently one of the first human settlements and you can tell. They realised they have come the the point of advancement in society where they think having wine by the sea just needs to be done. There was also a bucks party going on with some dudes speaking English but with all different accents which was pretty hilarious to watch after they ordered their fourth bottle of Tattinger champagne as most of the fourth and fifth bottle was ending up on the ground. Afterwards we just grabbed a burger for dinner at a local greasery which had the Olympics action on the big screen.

Heidi enjoying the beach side beats

The next day we went for a swim on the pebbled beach. I will say this: Australia has better beaches, but there doesn't seem to be anyone selling watermelon and rose on them close to the water? This is a big tick for the French beaches. Anyway we went to another one of the beach bars and had some watermelon and rose for lunch. I went for another swim as the same old dumb azure coloured water was literally 15 meters from where we were sitting.

Not this water again

We walked back home and did some blogging then went shopping for a while. After these strenuous activities we figured we'd earned some more rose by the beach. Also in case you're wondering why we were caining so much rose, the rose from Provence (which is nearby the Côtes de Azur) is something else. It doesn't taste like Ribena juice like most of the ones I've tried in Australia. They taste similar to a white but with slight berry flavours and are super awesome when it's hot. So we journeyed back to Plage Beau Rivage in search of lounge beats and another bottle of rose de Provence. Life was super hard watching the sun dip down into the water. The bucks party was also back there caining Tattinger again.

For dinner we went in search of some moules as we figured the seafood would be good here. Unfortunately we went to the tourist trap section one street back from the beach near the old town. The mussels were great but it cost more than it should have.

Last day in Nice we went for a drive to see the Principality of Monaco. It was a pretty good drive and was well signed and easy to navigate to the tourist information spot. We got there and walked around the main casino which had about every recent luxury car brand you could name and a few vintage ones parked nearby. It was a Sunday so it didn't seem like there was too much open in the way of shops. We were after a coffee and a petite dejuner but we could only see restaurants with names like "Billionaires" bar attached to the local Fairmont hotel there didn't seem to be anything in the way of a small cafe.

We gave up on this area and reparked near the Palace. Unfortunately we just missed the changing of the guards so we gave up on that and got some sandwiches from a cheap cafe. We walked around to the Palace past the marina with the ridiculous boats and had a look around but it seemed pretty boring besides the statue of a massive baby breakdancing and we were over the bourgeouis by this stage as we weren't a part of any of it.

Massive break dancing baby doing a freeze.

Pretty cool they decided to build this on the side of a cliff in Monaco.

It was nice of them to build some statues of us
with our guts in proportion to our heads for this trip

We decided to go home past Eze as the first time we went past we couldn't get a park. It's this tiny village on the top of a mountain between Monaco and Nice. Unfortunately it was just as packed out as when we went past in the morning. We cut our losses and parked the car in the hotel carpark space which you have to fold the rear view mirrors in to get into. I should have said we had a 4WD because you get an easier parking space that way.

We went back to another beach bar which luckily had watermelon and rose to console ourselves with as our favourite bar with the beats was packed out by this time. I tried to go for another swim but when I went to rent a towel the lady said it was 5 euro for the towel and 6 euro for a swim since I was only at the lounge bar and hadn't paid for a lie low. I was tempted to tell her I was going to just take her dumb towel and go for a swim 50m down the beach where its free but decided against it and went back to drinking the rose with Heidi and go for a swim later. For dinner we went back to the burger joint with the massive TV for Olympics watching.

Watermelon and rose by the sea, just need some fried chicken for perfection.

In summary Nice should be renamed to Extremely Nice or whatever the Frenchy equivalent would be. It wasn't the cheapest place but definitely was one of the loveliest especially the beach area and I would go back there in a second.

In fact I left my doppleganger there I loved it so much.