How the heck did I end up here?

So one of the very first things that struck me as I came into Nice yesterday was that I'm in a totally different part of the world. To kick things off, when the plane landed in Nice the airport wasn't actually ready for us... People weren't there to move the gate out to the plane so we could actually get off! That was the first of the delays. The second was that the luggage took over half an hour to come out, including turning on and off the carousels on multiple occasions despite being the only flight in to the airport at the time.

I got thrown into the deep end a bit. On the way up to the house, Max's dad told me I was getting lunch. So fighting jetlag and having not spoken the language for two years I had to somehow acquire three baguettes. I got there in the end... "Je voudrais trois baguettes".

Max, Zane and I went up the mountain behind the house top help me ward off the jet lag. I had to make it until 10pm which proved to be a total bitch from about 6pm onwards. The Baou de St Jeannet is this breathtaking rock formation. Basically it's a 250m high rock formation that drops straight down. It's about a 40 minute walk up to the top. There are even anchors at the top for rock climbers. It's pretty intense.

There are so many towns all about an hour's drive from Nice and we went out to San Remo on Saturday. It's an awesome town! The market is so cool. You know the market down by Waitangi park on Sundays? Yeah. That has nothing on this place. The food market is huge and the best in Italy. It sells all those typical things you expect from Italy. Everything is dirt cheap and amazing quality. All around the food market are the stalls with people hassling you to buy their fake designer labels. Some of the clothes are really cool and really cheap as well. We spent a couple of hours at the market before we headed off into the town for some clothes shopping.

For lunch we went to a pizzeria. The pizza is amazing. Stereotypical Italian pizza comment, I know. But seriously. It's good. Zane and I were talking about how New Zealand really has no idea what it's doing with pizza. After lunch we walked along the waterfront. The beaches here are way different to back home. There are public and private beaches. These ones are all closed off during winter because they're owned by the resorts. Walking past the marina was pretty cool. All these little fishing boats were moored up and there was even a guy sitting in his fixing his nets.

On the way to San Remo we took the motorway. It's a toll road and cuts through the base of the mountains. This took about an hour and cost €4, but on the way back we took the road around the coast. This was really cool. We went through all these other little towns and through Monaco and Menton. I can't remember the names of the towns but they all close up between 1 and 4 in the afternoon because everyone goes home for lunch as their main family meal.

Driving through Monaco we went around parts of the Formula One race track. It's literally just the city streets and you can see all the tire marks on the road. It's really cool knowing where I'm going having watched it on TV. In Monaco the main swimming pool gets frozen in winter and turned into an ice skating rink.

The last town we went through was Menton. It's the last town before the border to Italy. It was pretty much like San Remo in terms off the scenery. The only difference is in the architecture but I can't really explain that. One just looks Italian and the other looks French. 

San Remo market

Pedestrian zone in San Remo

Waterfront in San Remo

Looking back at San Remo in the distance from Menton

Menton

Christmas decorations in Nice. These go all the way along the waterfront and hang from every tree

Next post will be in about a week. Otherwise I'll have been spending all my time writing this instead of actually going out and doing stuff! Until then, Merry Christmas everyone!