Nice: The Perfect Last Weekend

As a tourist in France, the two typical “must see’s” are Paris and the French Riviera.  Having already visited Paris with my family, I skipped out on the Paris trip.  That left Nice.  I had to go on the trip this weekend to see if the city lives up to its famed beauty and great beaches.

We loved our charming room!

It was fortunate that I even got to go to Nice!  I thought I had signed up, and I was getting pretty excited for the trip.  Somehow, though, my name was not on the list.  The hotel/hostel was full and absolutely couldn’t accept one more person. The girl who sits next to me in class, however, willingly gave me her spot since she plans to return to Nice with a friend in two weeks. I’m so lucky.

Nice was the perfect way to spend my last weekend in France.  It was a seven-hour bus ride from Chambéry, which turned out to pass quickly.  The bus was comfortable, and I was able to sleep for most of the way, even though we were on the road from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

The local market was full of interesting
finds, including these locally-produced
spices

We arrived in Nice just as the sun was setting behind a mountain over the Mediterranean Sea.  It was then that I knew that the weekend was going to be one to remember.  We pulled up to the hotel/hostel and got our keys.  I shared a room with three other girls on this trip, and when we opened our door, all four of us smiled.  The room was adorable!  It was a rounded room with powder-blue walls and dark wood trim.  The ceiling was white with flower moldings and lace curtains covered our three large windows.  We had a rounded balcony (the only one in the entire building) and two bunk beds with purple mattresses.  We even got a bathroom to ourselves, which is why I can’t decide if this place is a hostel or a hotel.

Though we had been eating French junk food the entire bus ride, we still were hungry for dinner.  After exploring, we found a cute little bistro and sat down for dinner.  It was the first time I had gnocci (a type of pasta), and I can assure all of you that it will not be the last.  If you have never had it – get some next time it is available to you.  You won’t regret it!

The beach was covered in these
smooth rocks - but they were cozy!

The next morning (Saturday) we got up early enough to take advantage of the entire day.  We started by sitting outside at a small bakery for coffee and pastries for breakfast, then, it was off to the beach by way of the market!  The beach was unlike any other that I have seen!  Instead of sand, it was covered in hundreds of thousands of gray palm-sized rocks, each perfectly smoothed by time, water, and beach-goers.  The rocks stretched all the way to the water, without a sand barrier.  I was fascinated, as a child is fascinated with finding buried treasure, with all the different types, colors, shapes, and sizes of rocks at the water’s edge.  You all should’ve seen me when I discovered sea glass!  I went on a treasure hunt for it, and am bringing a rainbow-colored fist-full of it home.  Because of the rocks, the sound of the crashing waves was slightly different.  Before the water crashed on the shore, you could hear, if you listened real carefully, the sound of the stones rolling over each other barely under the water’s surface.  It was almost whimsical. 

The water was clear and blue

We laid on our towels on the beach for hours, soaking up the sun.  Around lunch time, we went back to the market to scope out something to eat.  We found a cute little restaurant where we could order a whole array of crêpes.  Yum!  Mine was filled with ham, cheese, mushrooms, and onions, then topped with an egg sunny-side-up.  It was so delicious, and I couldn’t help but smile at the French-ness of our weekend.  The café was right on the market, so we looked around at jewelry and local art for a while before returning to the beach.

After coming in to the city during the sunset, we were determined to get sunset photos.  So, as it started to get dark, we walked to a high point that over looked the beach and watched the sun set over the sea and the mountains together.  The moon sparkled on the water like glitter, while the fishermen casted off of the rocks below our over-look.

We walked to a high place to watch
the sun set over the beach

That night, we decided to try to discover Nice’s night life; so we wandered around the buzzing district right off the beach, which was full of people in town for the city’s annual jazz festival.  There were bars and restaurants everywhere, and we decided on street food for supper (I had what may be the most delicious pizza of my life to this point:  goat cheese!).  After not really deciding on a place, we chose, instead, to sit on the beach with us four girls and two of our guy friends.  We drank wine, skipped rocks, and talked while the beach was full of other young people like us.  It was the best thing we could’ve done to really experience the night life, in my opinion.

And just like that, Saturday was over.

The sun was bright and intense Sunday morning, and even at 8:00 am, we could feel our room heating up.  We decided, anyway, to return to the beach for a few hours.  Though it was scary hot, and we could feel ourselves burning, the beach was still as beautiful and almost surreal as the day before.  We stopped by a grocery store on the way so we wouldn’t have to leave the beach for lunch, and a beach picnic was a nice addition to our Nice weekend.

Happy after our successful "vacation"

Our two guy friends found us at the beach (a miracle in the thousands of people!) and together we wandered around “Old Nice” to see what we could find.  We had French coffee and listened to a local jazz ensemble (complete with a banjo, which I thought was pretty cool).  The rest of the day was spent discovering Nice, lounging, and eating.  We caught the bus at 9:30 pm for the trip back to Chambéry, and although we returned to the city at 5:00 am, we still got enough sleep to make it to class on time.

We have been living the lives of French students for the past six weeks, but the weekend in Nice was great.  It was the first time I truly felt like I was on vacation; like I was here to visit France, not to experience and assimilate.  It was a chance to grow closer to a couple girls on this trip, and a chance to relax before the trip home.  Though I don’t think I will ever try to return to Nice, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect way to spend my last weekend in France than on her stony beaches.

Tri-National Weekend

Hello everyone!  I know I haven’t posted in a long time…but you’re about to see why.  We’ve been so busy here in Chambéry for the past week and a half!  The busy streak all started with a fabulous Tri-National Weekend, as I’ll call it.  The rest of the American students and I looked forward to it for weeks, and it lived up to our expectations.

Friday, July 1^st

Nation 1: France

Almost every night in the month of July here in Chambéry, there is an event in the local castle.  It is a pure testament to the French citizens’ love for the richness of their culture.  All these events are free to the public.  Friday was the first one: an orchestra concert in the castle’s courtyard!  What could be more perfectly European?  A small group of us arrived at the castle nearly two hours early to get a seat (good thing, too!).  We sat on folding chairs in the courtyard and listened to a lovely, moving hour and a half of Italian orchestral pieces played by a small chamber orchestra and a soprano. The sun set behind the castle walls and the stage lights changed color as they reflected off of the soprano’s beautifully elegant maroon taffeta dress.  Nothing could have been more perfect than our musical voyage through Italy, especially since the next day was our physical trip to Chambéry’s Italian sister city!

Saturday, July 2^nd

Nation 2: Italy

Enjoying my Italian pasta

Taking a bus to Turin, Italy, was an exciting ride.  We left early (7:00 am, if I remember correctly), and all of the students buzzed with excitement over Italian pasta, pizza, and gelato.  Food seems to be the source of many of our excitements this summer.  About half way through the trip, we stopped at an Auto-Grill truck stop!  I remembered these from my family’s tour through Europe a few years ago, and I was pretty excited to see one again.  At that bus stop, I finally realized that Starbucks uses Italian for many of their drinks…though I still unsuccessfully ordered coffee from a machine.  (The first time around, I pushed the “Latte” button.  Seems right…right?  Turns out, logically, that “Latte” is the Italian word for steamed milk.  Whoops!  It was an easy fix, though – I just ordered an espresso shot to mix in, and it was a delicious breakfast drink.)

Wandering around allowed
us to find things like this!

Once in Turin, we went our separate ways.  The day was full of wandering around, discovering the city.  The main goal of my small group for the day was to eat a bowl of real Italian pasta, a mission which we accomplished handily and for only 4 euros each!  Along the way, though, we discovered many beautifully ornate cathedrals, fountains, and statues.  We took photos all day, and one of my guy friends even found a suit at the Saturday open-air market!  It was a beautifully chill Italian excursion.  The excited buzz on the way home was already aimed on the next day: our bike ride through a French vineyard!

Sunday, July 3^rd

Nation 1: France

At the beginning of this program, each student received a pamphlet of excursions that would be available to us for our six-week stay.  One of them immediately stuck out to me, and I smiled every time I thought, “Bike Ride through a Vineyard.”  It sounded so quaint!  We would take a bus to a vineyard, hop on bikes, leisurely ride between rows of grapes, listening to a French tour or wine-making explanation, and end with a tasting.

We biked right on the road

It is amazing what a difference one preposition can make.  When I was thinking “Bike Ride through a Vineyard,” the excursion was actually “Bike Ride to a Vineyard.”  We met outside of our apartment building with a picnic, all excited to learn about and taste local wines.  Guillaume, our animateur, explained the excursion to us.  We would walk to the vélostation, rent 28 bikes, ride an hour up the mountain to a lake, eat our picnics, and ride the rest of the way up the mountain to the vineyards.  It wouldn’t be hard.  It wouldn’t be easy. It would be “sporty,” he said.  I was excited, nonetheless.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I was definitely glad that I wore loose clothing.  We rented our bikes (which didn’t come with helmets), and started in on the ride.  As it turns out, Guillaume’s definition of “sporty” and mine aren’t the same.  On the way there, I had one mini-asthma attack and had to get off of my bike to push a few times.  I was glad that I wasn’t the only one struggling, because we were together at the back of the pack to encourage each other.  Determined (and glad to have the challenge of some strenuous physical activity), I did make it to the lake and finally to the vineyard. 

The views from the mountain were breathtaking!  Small farm houses surrounded by pristinely-straight rows of grapes dotted the mountainside.  We began our tour of the vineyard by watching an intriguing video about this particular vineyard’s history.  They are the only one in France who exports grape plants, and in order to combat quickly-evolving fungi here, they have developed a machine that (essentially) staples two different vine varieties together.  We learned about different cork materials and grape-harvesting methods through the years.  My favorite information, though:  When it hails here, just like in Iowa, the hail can do significant damage to the grape vines.  How do they combat hail?  Vineyard workers go to the top of a nearby mountain and shoot fireworks into the sky to melt the hail!  It works, because here in the mountains, hail forms a lot lower than it does over flat land.  When I heard that, I couldn’t believe it – what a good idea!

Views like this were definitely worth
the 16 kilometer uphill ride

We had a fancy French wine-tasting (the French word is so much better:  “ Dégustation” pronounced “day-goose-tahss-eeohn,” being really light on the “n” at the end, so that it only really reverberates in your nose without escaping your mouth).  I tried not to swallow too much wine so that I could bike in a straight line to get home.  We had to go down a mountain, after all!  But all was well.  Two of my friends fell, but neither one was seriously injured (one didn’t even break skin), and all of us slept well that night.  I looked up the distances, and we biked 16km up the mountain, and 16km back down (about 20 miles total!)  We needed our sleep, since the next day was the 4^th of July!

Monday, July 4^th

Nation 3: America!

Bob and I enjoyed our ice cream!

Though we are in France, we Americans still tried to have a fully USA day.  We tried to fill it with American things: a beer pong tournament, cheese burgers and fries, an American TV show, and Budweiser from a local bar.  My friend from ISU was even going to stop by to visit me!  Though not all of those things happened, the day still turned out to be great.  I started out the day with a Coca Cola for breakfast; the most American thing I had in my pantry.  My friend (Bob) rolled in to town on a train right after I got out of class, so we grabbed pastries and pizza for lunch and lounged around, speaking of his travels and my experiences here so far.  We went for ice cream (mine was ISU colors), made cheese burgers with yellow cheese (hard to find in France!), and delivered Bob to meet his host for the night on the way to the bar.  Though to Budweiser place was closed, we finished out the night by playing beer pong in the park.

American dinner for America's
birthday:  Cheeseburger and
Fries!

My former neighbor, Germain, was back for the day to visit us; so I had to say a second good bye to him in the park.  That was the only low part of my day.  Happy birthday, America!

Our Tri-National weekend was complete with French, Italian, and American experiences.  It was so great to see Bob and bond with my American buddies.  As corny as it sounds, we didn’t need fireworks when we were all together.