July 9, 2012
Our first day in Nice, and it was nice. Ok that was a bad play on words, but I'm in Nice! Where else can I say that? Anyway, our nice Airbnb host set up breakfast for us to eat, bread, jam, nutella, OJ, and coffee. It took us til 12:30 to finally get out of the house. The bus stop was also just a few meters away so it was convenient... or so we thought. Our bus was over 30 mins late, and on top of that, it took about 40 mins to get to the city center!
We do a lot of walking around. The weather here is looking like the weather I started with in Barcelona, it was kinda nice but I just got use to the colder weather (like in the 20-25 celsius). It was closing in on 30 degrees here! We walked to some palace with these seated figures on posts everywhere.  There is also some jazz festival happening until July 12 in the middle of it. We have awesome timing. But it was a little hot to stand out in an open square to watch them, so we kept walking.
We wandered into old Nice, where it looked like the traditional European city again. Narrow alleys, outside restaurant seating, and tons and tons of souvenir shops. We stumbled into some sort of market that was closing up, but we managed to get a peak at what they were selling. Apparently every Monday there is an antique market here! The stuff looked pretty cool, but I couldn't find anything worth getting.
Right next to us (quite literally to our right since we were heading South) was the beach. It's time to get our tan on! Too bad it was a rock beach. Instead of grains of sand, you get rocks somewhere between pebbles and boulders. Needless to say it was pretty hard to walk on. We went to stand in the water to cool off for a bit and then we set up camp. The view wasn't as nice here compared to Barcelona, if you know what I mean. I think almost everyone is a tourist here. Well, nothing else to do but get our tan on! By now Rach and I have probably talked about everything. Think about it, 19 days 24/7 together. I haven't even ever spent that much time with a girl I was dating! So at this point of the trip, we just seem to randomly ask a question then talk as much about it as we can. Today's subject: Do you consider any of your girl/ guy friends good looking? Well according to Rachel, she has many good looking guy friends. Me too! None of that helps me at all. Well she says she also has good looking girl friends... I guess she just doesn't want to help me out here. If you're wondering why I'm getting into so much detail, it's because I'm currently writing this out at the Barcelona airport, where I have to wait 9 hrs for my flight to Geneva. I'll get to that later.

Anyway, we continue walking around the old city until it was dinner time. Rach saw a lineup, and for some reason she is drawn to them, so we ended up going there for dinner. The daily suggestion was poulet et frites, chicken and fries, so we both ordered one plus a local version of the crepe but made with chickpeas called a Socca. Holy crap they give each of us half a chicken. On this trip, Rach and I have devoured 2.5 whole chickens. The lady and what I assumed to be her daughter that we sat beside both started giggling at first sight of our food, then her daughter began staring at my food while I ate it. I felt uncomfortable. Rach saw her staring too. But other than that they were very Nice people. They brought us water! I think we spent a good hr eating the food, and then we proceeded to go souvenir shopping. Mind you it was about 9pm now and the city was still bumpin. We got a lot of stuff... ok I got a lot of stuff, but I was still missing my grandpa's present. I was getting quite frustrated. My mom said buy him coffee... well apparently in Nice they don't sell coffee.

At 10 we look for the night bus to go back, but when we found the stop, it said it came 10 minutes ago and the next one is in 40 mins. So we head back for more shopping! And also back to the beach. People really like rollerblades here. We ran into a bunch of people in rollerblades who set up a ramp and a type of vault. This is going exactly where you think it's going. They are doing trick jumps over the vault. On rollerblades. What??? We watch a lil, then walk a lil, then it was time to head back to the bus stop. This bus was more or less on time. At least it wasn't 30 mins late. When we got back it was about midnight. O I forgot to mention something! So the night before when we arrived, as our host opened te door to our room, a cockroach ran out and into the room next door. I pretended not to see it so I didn't mention anything. After we were left alone Rach starts talking about it and semi freaks out. Well it ran to the next room so no worries. This night however, it ran from underneath one of our bags and under the bed. Rach yelps a little and I laugh. Not because I'm so manly I laugh at big ugly bugs though, because I am also afraid. But I don't think cockroaches bite? (No right?) So I wanted to leave it alone. When I came back from my shower, Rach was on the phone with Dalton and indirectly trying to provoke me to deal with the cockroach by calling me a pussy. Luckily I'm not afraid to admit it in this situation. So I left it. It was under Rach's side of the bed anyway muahahaha. We spent the next half an hr exterminating all other bugs (really just mosquitos and a fly that got killed in the crossfire) because I recieved about 6 bites from the night before and Rach got bit on the eyelid. Hah hah.