Blown away by Nice

Thursday, June 10
Day 43

Today Marissa and I took the bus to the Musee Massena, which was an old mansion house from the 19th and 20th centuries that has been turned into a museum. The museum is really beautiful, situated amidst a lovely garden overlooking the Mediterranean. The interior of the home is rich and elegant. I especially admire the beautiful gold inlaid doors that led to the other rooms such as the Salle a Manger and the Great Hall. The museum houses an array of old portraits and items, including a vest worn by Napoleon and his wife Josephine’s tiara and cloak. I also enjoyed looking at the old photographs and advertisements from Nice in the early 20th century. There was even a poster setting forth rules for bathing at the public beaches in Nice--it was required to wear appropriate bathing attire at all times, a custom that seems to have been lost over the years in France, if you know what I mean.

Napoleon's vest

The weather was crazy today because it was so windy. The wind was so strong that it blew things from the trees into the streets, and a huge bushel of pine needles or something was blown down onto my head--hard. It actually hurt a lot, and of course all the sand and leaves on the ground were blown against our bear legs, so that stung a little too. The wind also affected the sea, and the waves were so big and wild that they closed the beaches off from the public! The waves were crashing over the docks and the rock outcroppings. It was a beautiful and majestic sight. But I can see why it would have been dangerous to be out there--especially due to the short shelf here. The shelf ends a couple meters out and just drops off so that you can no longer touch, so it would be very dangerous to be out there in wavy conditions.

Getting blown away

However, Marissa and I braved the windy streets to find the shopping center. We eventually found it and went to Zara’s where I bought an adorable skirt and a tan belt (that was only 9,95e!). Then it was about 4 o’clock so we headed back on the bus to our residence where we met up with the class later for dinner at 6:15pm. Once everyone was present (at around 6:30) we took the bus and went to a nice little restaurant for our last class dinner together in France. The meal was pretty good. The first course was salad that had tuna fish, a weird piece of fish that I took off, and lots of different vegetables (celery, tomatoes, red and green peppers etc.). It was okay. I liked the peppers a lot. I tried the tomatoes and actually gagged. They were gross. I’m really trying to like them, but they were too big and too raw. I still only like them cooked. That was the worst I’ve been about food the whole trip--I actually gagged and made a face with every bite of the tomatoes. I gave away three to Andrea and ate two myself. Ew.

The salad

The second, main, course was beef with gravy and onions and a side of potatoes with cheese. It was good--very American really. And the dessert was a choice between lemon meringue, apple, or strawberry tart. I chose strawberry and had a couple bites of Marissa’s lemon. They were decent. I wish I hadn’t had it though because after dinner Professor LeBras took the whole class out to a really good gelato place that gave us three scoops each! Luckily we walked the whole way (and it was pretty far from the restaurant) so I could digest a little bit, but I was still so full! But the gelato was really good, and it was located in this cute little square with an old church, old buildings and a fountain in the middle. I had speculoos, hazelnut and some sort of fruity flavor (I don’t remember which one I got). They were all really good. The interesting thing about this place though was that there were tons of different flavors and many of them were really strange. It was the Italian gelato version of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans! They had black olive flavor, tomato basil, avacado, roses (Betsy had it and it really tasted like roses), pepper, and even beer! So bizarre.

Crazy gelato flavors

Sarah, Me, Paige, Marissa and Betsy lying across us
(It was quite a production getting Betsy into position)

After we finished eating we started walking back to the residence. It was about a half hour to forty minutes walk back. We ended up getting split up a bit so I walked most of the way back with Sarah, which was nice because we got to have a good one on one conversation. We talked about our first impressions of people, how we liked the program, our experience in London (we each went, but with different people). She and I agreed that we liked London, but we now loved Paris better because we knew it and we using it as a comparative. I told Sarah how I had remembered meeting her before the initial interviews for the program in December, and that I didn’t recognize her until several weeks into our trip in Paris. We also compared our impressions of Paris and our favorite parts and talked about school etc. It was fun. We also ran into Richard and Jessie and walked with them for a little bit.

Eventually we got back to the residence and I tried to study a little bit for the test, but I shared with Marissa so I didn’t get it until 1am and so I didn’t really study that night. I worked a little on our movie, wrote a few journal entries and skyped for a little bit. I ended up going to bed around 2:30 and decided to get up early and study before my test at 10:40am.