"Nice" is an Understatement

Hey! Guess where I am!

If you guessed Paris - nope! Tricked you!

I'm in Nice, which is pronounced like "niece." As in, "If Kerry & Danyelle ever have a daughter, I will feed her chocolate and buy her clothes because she will be my NIECE." So, that's fun.

I've only been here a couple hours, but already so many things are starting to make sense. When we were driving up (training up? rolling up? racing up? zooming up? ... what do you do in a train?), I had a moment of agreement of Ingrid Michaelson. In her song "You and I" (I love that song - go listen to it here if you haven't before), she has the lyrics: "Let's get rich and buy our parents' house in the South of France." And I used to be like, "ya, or somewhere else. There are lots of nice places."

Nope.

I want a house in the South of France. Not here in Nice, but somewhere east or west a little. I don't think I want to live here full time, but being able to come here whenever I want would be quite lovely.

This place reminds me a quote of my uncle Greg's that I may have actually referenced before. I remember a couple years ago, we were in Yosemite and he said, "It doesn't get any more beautiful than this. Maybe different beautiful, but not more beautiful." I thought about that here. It doesn't get any more beautiful than this.

There are big green hills right until the the ocean. But they slope down just in time to leave room for a perfect little beach that hugs the whole coast. The water is the definition of "crystal clear." It's not just "clear" like you would write down under your description column in a science log, as opposed to opaque or cloudy. Nope. Crystal clear. Meaning if you melted down crystals, they would look like this water. It sparkles and shimmers like it retains it's crystal properties. As you move away from the beach, it turns from colorless, to turquoise, to a perfect blue.

And some of the mansions we trained (?) by had little walk ways right down to the water. I wouldn't mind that at all.

So the first thing I noticed when getting off the train was that I was the biggest annoyance to all things France or French related. I didn't see when the line I was in was open for me to go to a booth (it was behind a pole), and people looked at me and shook their head in disgust. Then the ticket lady (I was buying my next ticket) was so annoyed with me.

Then she was nice.

And all was well.

I don't know what the change was. Maybe she noticed that I wasn't a complete idiot, and instead of just saying, "Uhh, I wanna go somewhere," I knew exactly where I wanted to go, the train numbers, the time they left, etc. So that was helpful.

Anyways, everything is in French. I don't speak a word of French. I don't understand a word of French (or so I thought). All new and foreign.

And this is what I was thinking when I was walking toward the beach after checking into my hostel, when I heard a faint yet familiar jingle.

Could that be? No. But it sounds like . . . ? I think it is...

I walked closer to a crowd of people, following the music, and sure enough. Two seconds later: "In West Philadelphia, born and raised. . ." the familiar tune of Will Smith's Fresh Prince of Bell Aire played as a street performer danced to it.

France suddenly felt more familiar.

I wandered my way down to the beach. Jumped in the water (perfect), laid around, and then got lost on my way back. Which wasn't a big deal, because Niece is fairly small and I had a map.

So, ya. Then I came back and met my cool Australian roommates, and I'm writing this while they're showering, then we'll go forage for food.

Oh, my itinerary has (obviously) changed. So here we go...

LILA'S NEW ITINERARY 
0900 wake up
0930 rent a bike and ride around Nice
1100 go to the beach because it's too hot to do anything else
1700 leave the beach. shower. change.
18 find food.

life is good. :-)

Okay, but here's my real itinerary:

now - 6/22: Nice, France
6/22 - 7/5: Barcelona and other places in Spain (tbd)
7/5-7/10: Paris, France
7/10-7/12: Little town in Switzerland that I don't want to look up how to spell, Switzerland
7/12-7/15: Verscio (David), Switzerland
7/16 - 7/22: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Then other stuff.

Other stuff I want to quickly mention:
- My family in Italy is THE COOLEST!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel cool by association to be related to them. Two cousins, aunt, and uncle. I really loved spending time with them. Super fun.
- I heard the song "Hotel California" here, and I felt cool.
- Everything is neon here.

- Here's a funny picture of people taking a funny picture

- They make the douches go to a separate beach here, so that's nice.