Nice in nice

Well,, this is really dElayed as i left Nice like four days ago, and i considered giving this a miss completely, but i coldly resist having a post called Nice in Nice. W

Yeah, Hallmark card Co. You know you want me.

Anyways, Nice is pretty, but not the amazingnes that I've been told.for a start, the beaches, like all of Europe, are stone and pebble. If you lived in europe and were after a close-ish beach holiday, i can see why it would be good...they get heaps of sun, its really warm, the water is beautiful, but coming from Australia where we have AMAZING beaches, it was a teeny, tiny bit of a let down.

Anyways, we arrived at night, so dropped our bagsat the hotel then walked to dinner.

We'rewalking everywhere in France...makes me feel a tiny bit better about the amount of ftty foods I've been eating.

I had some amazing squid (Nice is famous for seafood) and cannelloni.

Lemme tell you, even though it's an itialian dish, there is cannelloni EVERYWHERE! and it's good, too...

So we ate and it was brilliant.

Now, my mental memory clock is missing a few cogs, hand and numbers, so im not even going to bother qith putting any of this in tome order.

We went to these amazing food markets, which were so cool and smelt amazing. They were artisan markets and farmers markets....yummy.

I Shoukd probably explain a little something to you about french mentality about what they do.

France, the word artisan basically translates as craftsman. Food is a craft, most certainly. For example, to become a pastry chef, you have to complete a four year diploma. FOUR YEARS! You only do medicine in five.

There are a thousand caves, and, more importantly, food stores.

There's the boulangerie (bakery), patisserie (duh), fromargerie, boucherie, charcuterie....fruits de mer, farmers markets....wow. Coffe shoppssell only coffee, same goes for olive oil, or occasionallyicecream.

So at the farmersmarlket, there was so much fresh produce...a man who sold only mushrooms (weirdest thongs ever, some of those mushroom!), crystalized fruitsand flowers...

I cant describe here how amazing the food markets are...ask me for photos later.

So, as i said earlier, the beaches of nice are pebbled in grey. In some small spots, however (the beaches are divided up, owned by the hotels) they had imported sand! From Australia!

No kidding.

We also went to Monaco which is in fact. A different country about a 20minute trine trip from Nice. It was beautiful, but very touristy - the national industry is tourism, the main attraction gambling. Its all huge, bueautiful leisure boats and marinas in casinos.

It was pretty, but a complete tourist trap. Despite almost all of the countries annual income being from gambling,, its illegal for it's citizens to use any of the casinos there. Guess the king (the old one married one of my fav actresses grace Kelly) doesn't want people spending their money gambling instead pfnon taxes.

We also had some brilliant seafood there... Fairly cheap 'jumbo shrimp' turned out to be amazing crayfish, there were beautiful mussels, fresh fish, squid, octopus....

For a Quasimodo ego, I sur love seafood.

Anyway, soon we headed off to Provence - a town called Aix en Provence (which imm on the train, leaving). So that'll be a new post.

Au revoir