Nice was Nice

April 17th--Our last day in Nice turned out to be a pretty day. We spent a little time at the beach this morning before coming inside for lunch. After a short rest time this afternoon, we went to visit Nice's Russian Orthodox church, the Russian Cathedral (Eglise Rusee). It is claimed to be the finest outside of Russia. Russian families wintered in Nice in the late 19th century and needed a place to worship which is how this Orthodox house of worship came about. It was definitely beautiful from the outside with the onion shaped domes. Unfortunately, we were not able to see the inside because of services being held during Holy Week. It was definitely worth seeing the outside though. That's a wrap on Nice. We are packed up and leaving via train tomorrow for Florence, Italy.

Rainy day in Nice

April 16th--Today was a rainy day in Nice. After being cooped up all morning, we decided to venture out for lunch. We have found this little dive by our apartment that has great food, so we headed there. They had some kind of steak-k-bobs as their daily special so that's what we had. After lunch, we came back to the apartment and watched a movie. Once the movie was over, we began to see some sun breaking through the clouds. Well as you may have noticed by the lack of blogs for the last 2 days, we have been without Internet service in our apartment. So we decided to head into town to search for an Internet cafe. Well the skies didn't look so good towards town, but we decided that the storm was probably blowing over. We took the bus into the downtown area and as soon as we got off it started sprinkling. Then we heard a few thunder claps and saw some lightening. Before we new it, it was pouring rain. We ducked under an awning of a building to stay dry. Then we looked up and noticed that it was hailing. At this point, we decided that it was not worth finding an Internet cafe. Luckily, we noticed a bus stop across the street. So once we saw the bus pull up, we took off running and hopped on the bus. We came back to the apartment and Mike decided to check the Internet one more time. For whatever reason, it decided to start working again. I guess we got drenched for nothing! So we "retro" posted our blogs for the last 2 days. Hopefully the rain will move through tonight since tomorrow is our last day in Nice.

Eze-le-Village

April 15th—Today we took a bus ride to the small Village of Eze. The bus route was on the Middle Corniche (Moyenne Corniche) which runs right through the village and provides breathtaking views of the Mediterranean. We had taken a bus ride on the Low Corniche and now know why the Middle one is recommended. It is more impressive mainly because the views are incredible higher up. Eze-le-Village is located high above the sea with magnificent views and many stony paths. By the time we arrived, it was about 1:30 so we had to find lunch. The first restaurant we saw was Le Pinnochio. We chose to eat here because of it’s name and the fact that it had a Jiminy Cricket menu for the kids. It was great food with a great atmosphere! After lunch we wandered uphill to the town. On our way up, we passed an exclusive hotel with many fancy cars parked outside it. We continued wandering uphill through the narrow lanes to see the Eze Church. At this point, we aren’t going to miss seeing a church. We are really enjoying all the many churches we’ve seen throughout. From the church, we continued up the hill even more to the very top where Jardins d’Eze is located. Jardins d’Eze is located 1300 feet above the sea and is home to 400 different plants, primarily varieties of cactus. Once up top, we got a wonderful 360 degree view of the area. We could see almost the entire coastline of the French Riveria, from St. Tropez to Monaco. After enjoying the wonderful views, we made the walk back down the hill to the Middle Corniche where we visited the Gallimard Shop. This is a local perfume shop where we were treated to all the wonderful scents. The kids even enjoyed themselves sampling all the different perfumes. The perfumes were all made in the nearby town of Grasse, the capital of perfume. It was then time to catch our bus back into the Nice bus station. All went well on this ride, can’t say the same for our connection bus to our apartment. I have to say this is without a doubt our first “bad” bus experience. We got on the bus and were all sitting at the very back of the bus. We probably waited about 10 minutes while the bus was filling up. Right before the bus left, a man got on that was clearly not right. His eyes were barely open and all bloodshot and he was sniffing. He reeked of alcohol so it was obvious he was drunk, but all of a sudden I had a stinging feeling in my nose and my mouth (as the bus was leaving the station). I looked at Mike and he confirmed that he was experiencing the same thing. We both looked around and people were sneezing, rubbing their noses, etc. It was the weirdest thing. The guy started messing with his phone and playing some music loud. After passing about 2 stops, we realized that this guy was “messed up” and we needed to get off the bus. He might have just been drunk or high, but it was not worth taking a risk that he would do something stupid. And still, we have no idea what was causing the burning sensation in our noises. So, we exited way before our stop and walked to another stop to get on a totally different bus. Crisis adverted!

MONACO

April 14th—We traveled via train to Monaco today. The principality of Monaco consists of three distinct tourist areas: Monaco-Ville, Monte Carlo, and La Condamine. Monaco-Ville is located up on a hill referred to as “The Rock” by the locals. This is the oldest section and home to the Prince’s Palace. We visited this area first by making the walk up the hill. Our first stop was the Prince’s Palace. This is where Prince Albert lives, son of Prince Ranier and Princess Grace. Actress Grace Kelly first came to Monaco to star in the 1955 Hitchcock movie To Catch a Thief, in which she was filmed racing along the Corniches. She later married Prince Ranier. In 1982, Princess Grace tragically died in a car wreck on that same Corniche. Outside of the Palace are cannons and cannonballs overlooking the city below and a great view of the port and the Grand Prix bleachers being set up along the streets. The race takes place on May 21-24 this year. Just down from the Palace is the Cathedral of Monaco, where Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly were wed and later buried. As you walk through Monaco, there are many Princess Grace billboards (small) marking certain events that took place throughout her life. Abby was very interested in all of them because they had a “Princess” on them. Every time we saw one, she would immediately ask “what does that say?” She was also interested in the palace because a real Prince still lives there. She kept looking for him, although we never told her she would be looking for a 50 year old bald man! From Monaco-Ville, we decided to take a bus to Monte Carlo. On our way to the bus stop, we saw a small pair of sunglasses sitting on a wall. Abby was the first to point them out and wondered why someone would just leave their glasses sitting there. Well, Austin had received a pair of sunglasses from the Easter bunny and quickly lost them the next day at the beach. We had gone back to look for them, but were pretty sure that someone had picked them up. So we decided to pick these up and Austin immediately adopted them as his own. We laughed about the glasses all the way to Monte Carlo. The bus ride was about 15 minutes and very crowded! We walked up the stairs from the bus stop to the beautiful Monte Carlo casino. Mike and I had to take turns going into the casino since the kids weren’t allowed. We both just made it into the lobby area because the actual gambling area has an admission fee. So, basically you are already 10 Euros down before you even start gambling. While standing outside the casino, we saw lots of money with Rolls-Royces and stores like Prada & Cartier lining the streets. From the casino, we walked down the hill towards La Condamine, the port area of Monaco. At this point, it had a been a day of lots of walking and just snacking so we wanted to find a real meal for dinner. Unfortunately, most restaurants don’t start serving dinner until 7:00 and it was only 6:00. So, we decided to head back to Nice on the train. Once arriving back at Nice, we went to an area recommended in our guide book that has many cafes along the street. We started at one, but waited over 10 minutes and still had not even been waited on. So, we moved on to the next café, and were immediately greeted and given menus. The unfortunate thing is that it was all in French and our handy French dictionary didn’t have any of the words in it. After about 10 plus minutes there, the waitress comes to help us. We asked her if she can help us in English and responding to us in English, mind you, she tells us no. So we politely tell her that we are sorry, but we are going to have to leave. If it wasn’t almost 8:00 at night with tired kids this situation could have been manageable. Anyway, we decided to just head back to the apartment, but we ran across a restaurant on our way and decided to give it one more try. It was a great restaurant because in the end we got great service and food. We left this restaurant to walk to the bus station only to find out that the buses stop running around 8:00 p.m and it was after 9 at this point. With tired kids, there was no way to walk back. We knew there was a night bus, but were not familiar with them so our only option was to get ripped off by the taxi drivers. While the buses are super cheap, the taxis are a different story. Most of the taxis are Mercedes, so I guess they have to charge more to cover their cost. So we hoped in our Mercedes taxis and 15 Euros later, we had made the 2 mile journey back to the apartment. The best news of all is that we arrived back to the apartment safe and sound!

Happy Easter

April 12--The kids woke us up this morning excited to see if the Easter Bunny had found them in France. Luckily, he did. They hunted for a few hidden Easter eggs in the apartment and then sat down to watch one of the movies they got, Pinocchio. We then got dressed and caught a taxi over to church. We went to Holy Trinity Anglican Church in downtown Nice. It was an old Gothic style church from the late 1800's. We dropped the kids off at "children's corner" and headed into the sanctuary. It was the first time in 69 days we had been apart from the kids and we started to just run. We took Communion and I believe it is the first time we have had Communion with real wine. Afterwards they had a reception in the common building where we enjoyed some refreshments. Everyone was really nice and welcoming. We left the church and walked a few blocks to a restaurant where we sat out on the patio for lunch. It was supposed to rain today, but just ended up cloudy. We enjoyed a nice light lunch of crepes. Afterwards we came back to the apartment. We spent a little time on the beach this afternoon to cap off a great Easter in Nice!


Here is a video collage of many of the churches and beautiful scenes we have seen that highlight God's indescribable majesty.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mikegath01/EasterVideo?feat=directlink

Jesus doesn't care what you wear...

April 11th-- ...but apparently we do! Today was a very windy day in Nice. We finally ventured out this afternoon and spent several hours shopping for clothes to wear to church on Easter Sunday. We found an English speaking church to attend tomorrow, but realized that we don't have any church attire. We went on the shopping trip with a mind set to stay cheap and practical. Well, our first stop was ZARA. This is becoming one of our favorite stores in Europe. Great clothes and great prices! We immediately found Austin a sweater and Abby picked out her own outfit. She insisted on getting this cropped sweater so there weren't a whole lot of choices to go with it. The kids stuff is very cute! The men's section is on the same floor as the children's so it was off to find Mike something. After trying on several pairs of pants, he decided on just a sweater as well. We then went downstairs to the women's section. You could barely stir them with a stick on this floor, and I just can't shop that way, so out we went. We had walked past a store earlier where an outfit in the window caught my eye so we headed there. The store was called Pimkie. It was a 2 story shop that had great prices as well. I spent (per Mike) about an hour in there. I had a hard time finding something to fit since the sizes were not in US sizes. That makes it a little difficult, but I finally found something. In fact, I ended up with 2 things because it was all so cute and reasonably priced. (Lisa, you might get lucky enough to borrow it if I don't have room for it. I'll just send it back to the States with you.) Anyway, all in all, a successful shopping trip for everyone. Stay tuned for pictures tomorrow...