Nice is nice! (I’ve made that joke far too many times in the last three weeks). Such a beautiful beach (again – like I’ve said at every cruise stop we’ve made). Today our excursion consisted of one of my favorite things: drinking before noon. We signed up for a tour called “Old Nice and Wine Tasting”, and I kind of assumed it would be an afternoon thing. 10:00 am rolls around and I find myself in a swanky wine cellar with a glass of wine in my hand. Who knew! This is what vacations are made of…

Back to the beginning. We started the tour by wandering ‘Old Nice’ with a tour group, checked out a local food market full of antiques (aka, what looked like a very big garage sale with a lot of stuff not a lot of people want). Or maybe it was too early in the morning and I was cynical. Either way, I had very little interest. We found an old church and went inside, saw beautiful old paintings, etc. I feel like this could be a drinking game in Europe. Wander in a city, and go in three random buildings in a street… if you stumble upon an old church, take a drink. Surprise, you’re drunk by noon! Just kidding. Let’s continue with my day. As I was saying, I was drunk BEFORE noon.

This wine tasting entailed sampling a few different glasses of wine, some cheese/bread combos, and listening to some wine history. Let me reiterate… We sat down in the wine cellar at 10:00am. I did not get much sleep the night before. And this was one of the few mornings I decided to start with quite a small breakfast. Add these together, and it equals 1 Mandy with 4 parts alcohol on 1 hot day with 1 strong buzz. Ian and I were sitting on our own and ended up getting the giggles pretty hard, which lead to Ian dropping a piece of his cheese on the ground and us laughing out loud, me snorting and echoing into the wine glass, and the guy beside us asking what’s so funny as Ian is in tears from laughing so hard. All in all, one of the best excursions. Did I learn anything about the history of wine the guy was telling us for an hour? Not at all. Did I like the wine? Somewhat. Would I do it again? Every day. In fact, I may start one of these up in Lethbridge. Especially if no one listens to the wine history part… 10:00am, my place. You bring the wine.

***

We spent the rest of the day packing because its our last day on the cruise ship! Time to get some laundry done, drawers emptied, drinks drank… Our last dinner on the boat was at the five star Italian restaurant, Toscana. It was very good, but I feel like I’ve had so much Italian food in the last few weeks that it’s getting to be way too much! And I feel like such an a****** for saying that. First world problems, right?