Here in Nice

Nice is amazing. We arrived late on saturday to our hostel here, Villa Saint Euxpery. The hostel is an old monastery up on top of a hill just outside the center of Nice and still has a ton of the old architecture and buildings from its original use. For example, the bar at the hostel, is called The Chapel, after its former use! Its a really great place with free internet (yeah!!!), a kitchen for us to use, and again, lots of really great people to meet and hang out with.

Our first full day in the South of France was spent in the small city of Antibes, just west of Nice. We hopped a train with a group of Canadian guys we had met here the night before, and made our way to the small seaside village. Antibes has all the charm of any Mediterranean port city. Everything is within walking distance from each other, all the colors look like they came off the same paint chip called "Mediterranean Sun" and the water is clear and blue (so clear that you can see the jellyfish swimming under you!). In Antibes, we visited the acclaimed Picasso museum, where we spent much time wondering how such such pieces became acclaimed works of art...and then considered the chance that our art careers could take off if we could only smear some paint to look like that! From there we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the beach for the rest of the day.

After dinner, a couple of the guys who we had met in Interlaken arrived in Nice and we all headed out to Vieux (Old) Nice and the downtown area to hit up the bar scene. Going out is very different in Nice. Partly because I actually can go out here, and partly because there is just so much to do and everyone does it all! On that note we took advantage of the chance to really do Nice up right and after closing down the first place, Wayne's, at 2am we headed down to the next, smaller bar, called the Blue Whale to finish our night before it closed at 4am. We finally got back to the hostel after a hassle of a taxi ride and made it to bed nice and early...at 6am. Needless to say the next day was half spent on much needed sleep, but allowed us to relax here on the riviera...like a good vacationer would.