This weekend, I went to Nice to meet up with my friend, Christine. Christine is a Guelph student currently on exchange in Poitiers, France. It has been a while since we've seen each other because we both had 8 month co-ops before our exchanges... so after 10 months of not seeing each other, we met up in Nice for 4 days!!

Thursday:

On Thursday, I had class from 10-12 and then I took a bus to the Lyon airport. The bus only takes about 1 hour. From Lyon I flew to Nice. It was possible to take a train from Grenoble to Nice, but if you can believe it.. it was double the price of flying!! (The trains here are quite expensive) My flight was only about 40 minutes long and I arrived in Nice at 5:00 pm and met Christine at the hostel at 6:00pm. We haven't seen each other in so long, I don't think we ever stopped talking from the moment we met up to when she left today!!
After getting a 1 euro beer from our hostel bar's happy hour, we went out to dinner. We had a very nice dinner - I had lamb flambée (that was set on fire right in front of me!) and Christine had rabbit. Our delicious dinner was followed by crème brulée and coffee. After our long day of traveling, we decided to call it an early night.... and ended up staying up late talking anyway!!

Friday:

After a leisurely morning enjoying the hostel's continental breakfast, Christine and I set out for the day. We were blessed with beautiful sunny weather! Our hostel offered a free walking tour of Nice, so we took advantage of that. The tour guide was really funny and he took us to a lot of great places. We saw the fruit and flower market, which is just so adorable, and then we walked through the old town. Nice used to be a part of Italy, and it remains quite Italian today. The little winding streets in the old town really reminded me of Venice! The tour ended with a great view of nice, and a paperbag lunch a top the Chateau. After the tour, Christine and I got some gelato, and after finding our way through the confusing streets of the Old town, spent the rest of the day soaking in the sun on the beach!!

When the sun started to set, we headed back towards the hostel and stopped by the grocery store. We picked up some food and cooked ourselves dinner at the hostel. During the walking tour, we met a girl from Australia named Eliza. The three of us went out downtown to a bar that had a live band. It was a great night! The only bad thing was that the tram had stopped running when we left the bar, so we had to walk an hour (mostly uphill) to the hostel... on the upside we worked off a lot of the beer carbs lol.

Saturday:

Saturday morning was a pretty late start after our night out on Friday, and sadly it was raining all day. Christine and I decided to brave the weather and take a day trip out to the village of Eze. Eze is a tiny little medieval village 20 minutes outside of Nice. It is very charming and it really take you back in time. The rain did become a bit much so after our short visit, we had a hot chocolate and headed back to Nice. We were planning on seeing Monaco that day as well, but the rain really impeded our plans.

We headed back to hostel cooked dinner and had a quiet night.

Sunday:

Today it rained again :( booo!!!!
Christine and I decided not the waste the whole day inside so after breakfast, we went to the Matisse museum. The artwork was very interesting and diverse. After the museum visit, we enjoyed some Italian pizza for lunch. Christine had to leave right after lunch.
After seeing her off, I explored the Old town and went into some of the shops. I bought a skirt and a scarf for very good prices!

Now I'm just hanging out at the hostel, killing time until I have to get to the airport. Overall I had a good weekend, and it was really Nice to see Christine. I wish we had better weather for the last two days but I'm grateful that we had a beautiful day on Friday.

Nice is a beautiful place and I would love to come back someday!