Nice is nice.

Goodness, where to begin. Salty, turquoise water, sparkling under the golden Mediterranean sun; a beautiful apartment with a beautiful view to stay in for FREE; lots of laughter and great food, accompanied by a dear friend—in short, it was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had.

Thursday morning, I packed all of my things in my by now well-loved backpack, including a tiny sleeping bag in case we didn’t have a bed to sleep on. Then after class, Reid and I headed to Orly to catch our plane to Nice. I have much greater respect for EasyJet now that I’ve had a positive flying experience with them. The plane was very clean and, contrary to the jokes my dad likes to make, I’m pretty sure they had a sufficient number of engines. Reid and I talked the whole way there, and before we knew it we had arrived.

First off, our hosts (friends of Sophie’s) were honestly too generous. The husband offered to pick us up from the airport fairly late at night (and then drove us this morning at the ungodly hour of 5:15 – perhaps the only downside of EasyJet). Upon ascending the gorgeous, tiled stairs up to their apartment, we were greeted by the wife, cool glasses of water and a view that people dream about. And – surprise! – we had a huge bed in a room to ourselves, so the sleeping bag was gratefully unnecessary. After chatting for a bit, we went right to sleep, our heads spinning full of ideas for what to do the next morning.

Day 1: I’m pretty sure I had a smile permanently plastered on my face for the entire day. We woke up at the same time, thanks to Reid’s alarm, opened the shutters (yes! They actually do serve a purpose here!) and just about fainted from beauty overdose. Here I insert a photo that Reid took, because my camera simply could not capture how stunning it was.

After breakfast of fig-jammed-bread and yogurt (also included, free of charge – seriously we were so spoiled), we put on our bathing suits and headed out into the already baking sun. I will never forget what it felt like to get in that water. Living in the Pacific Northwest, the water is too cold and the current too strong to really swim in the ocean, so it was my first experience treading salty water. Utter bliss. The water was so clear and beautiful, I could see the tan rocks beneath my feet. Heck, I could actually see my feet. Looking around at the panorama of Nice and the Mediterranean, it was too much to handle. I was so happy that I was breathing too hard to really stay afloat very well so I had to come back to shore after not too long, much to Reid’s amusement.

Reid in the Mediterranean.

For lunch we had ice cream and some cheap-but-delicious strawberries we bought from an old woman at the market in Vielle Nice, the old part of town. Then, another highlight of the trip, we rode bikes along the beach. Nice has this great system where, after calling and typing in your debit card number, you can rent these blue bikes from many of the docking stations in the city and return them whenever you want. The trick is to re-dock and re-rent them every 30 minutes, before which it’s free to loan them. So we biked to the airport. Seriously Paris makes Nice look tiny. We biked along the entire coastline in around half an hour. It was so nice to just be able to go like that, without having to worry about traffic or red lights or air pollution, like in Paris. This whole weekend was quite literally a much-needed breath of fresh air. Despite being full of other foreigners, the slow-paced way of life, the sun and the salt in Nice allowed us to relax with every fiber of our beings.

After our little bike ride we hiked up to the top of a hill that I’m sure is somehow militarily significant to regard the view. Need I say it again? Stunning. Zigzagging our way back down the other side, we kept stopping to take photos, each corner offering another angle of the terra-cotta-roofed town. The lighting was perfect, the temperature was perfect; we felt very lucky.

Dinner was at a place called “Chez Pino,” a hole-in-the-wall, jam-packed place so good it received mention by Lonely Planet. We started out with some crunchy bread appetizer and a tiny portion of delicious pizza, but their specialty was socca, a flatbread made with roasted chickpeas on top. The reputation did not disappoint. We hungrily wolfed down the whole portion in a matter of minutes. Although we had a cranky waitress, the food was so tasty it made up for any lack of service. We finished off with the most authentic (and maybe the only, if I recall correctly) tiramisu I’ve ever had, the lopsided cream sinking beautifully into the warm chocolate at the bottom. This, too, we finished off more quickly than I would like to admit.

We went back into Vielle Nice to observe the very happenin’ night life and ran into a huge group of Englishmen on stag (spelling?), their term for a bachelor party. Honestly, going to Nice for a bachelor party? I guess that’s what can happen when all European countries are so close together. After they had hilariously harassed some street musicians into playing “Wonderwall” and sang along off-key and without reservation, we wandered around with them for a while before heading back chez nous. All-in-all a successful day.

Day 2: The next morning we got up a little later… Again blown away by the view. Again received breakfast, over which we half-jokingly talked about politics with our hosts. The husband asked how well-liked Barack Obama was in the US, and said, with a smirk on his face, that we ought to return the States with the impression that François Hollande is a “communist pig.” Although obviously kidding, it was interesting to hear him say in all seriousness that sometimes the amount of aid given out in France is too much, something that’s easy to speculate but different to hear directly from the mouth of a French person.

After breakfast we walked around, took pictures. After walking around we changed, grabbed some pizza à emporter (to-go) and went back to the beach. It had artichokes and kalamata olives on it. After our pizza we sunbathed. After sunbathing we swam in the water. After swimming we sunbathed. After sunbathing we swam. After drying off I sketched the landscape, Reid journaled. We topped it all off with some sunbathing and swimming.

It's a rough life we lead. 

Wearing the dress that Mormor gave me. Thank you! :)

By then it was about dinnertime and we walked back to our house, changed into dry clothes and walked in search of a place with good pasta. We didn’t have to walk far. Just around the corner was a restaurant with tables outside where we could eat our pasta in the yellow light of the evening sun. And boy, did we eat. That may have been the best pasta I’ve ever had. I ordered a heaping portion of freshly-made gnocchi, smothered in pesto, layered with partly-melted ribbons of parmesan cheese and sprinkled with pine nuts. Good heavens, I thought my taste buds were going to jump for joy. Reid had risotto with real slices of truffle. Let me tell you, the proximity to Italy has done wonders for the food in Nice.

Also taken by Reid.

The weird thing about our dinner was that, slowly, I began to realize we were literally surrounded by Scandinavians. I at first asked a family that I heard speaking a familiar language where they were from. Norway. Okay, cool. Then I noticed that the couple to our right was speaking Swedish. And the family to our left. And the family behind us. This after having passed several people on the street that day having conversations in Swedish. What was going on?? There really are not that many Scandinavians. I actually asked this of the couple, who said that it was just because flights were cheap and there was a car show going on in Nice. Somehow I doubt it was because of the car show… But still, understandable. If it were cheap, why wouldn’t you go to Nice? Before I knew it I was having a full-blown conversation with these people in Swedish, which was so nice. It was a little uncomfortable at first, after speaking so much French for so long, but soon enough I got into the rhythm and I was enveloped by the melodic tones and guttural vowel sounds of what is still my favorite language. Reid just sat there amused, laughing to herself at what must have been the most random conversation she’s listened to during her time here. I love that we’ve been speaking in French much of the time, but it was nice to take a break.

Anyways, dinner was incredible. We finished the night and our stay in Nice by sitting on the stony beach, talking and listening to the waves until late, before heading back and falling into a deep sleep for a few hours. This morning we reluctantly said our goodbyes to Nice, who had treated us so well this weekend, threw our things in our backpacks and got on the plane back to Paris. I haven’t done much today apart from taking a nap in the sunshine (yay! Finally good weather in Paris!), but am very excited to have dinner with Jan tonight, yet another good friend from Harvard who was able to come over from Germany. These days, I look at my life and I can’t help but feel blessed.

Only a week left!