Nice, France

We arrived in Nice, our final destination of the cruise and stayed in this cute (from the outside) hotel. The room inside was bland and boring, just a horribly hard queen bed and ugly furnishings. But it worked for us and it was cheap. Nice was really enjoyable, it is about 1/2 hour from Monaco and 1/2 hr the other direction from Cannes....so we decided we would see both of those during the three days we had left. Nice had the most fantastic shops with the most expensive clothing we had seen yet! If you can see the prices in any of the photos...remember that is in Euros, multiply by 1.5 ish to convert to American Dollars. But I love to window shop, so it was enjoyable even if I could not afford anything....I didn't want to afford these items!
There were shoe shops everywhere, with very fun fashionable shoes...I am not sure how you would get used to walking around Europe in these....Some of the more expensive men's shoes we found... would you even wear these at such a price? Or just put them on display in your home to show you can afford $700+ shoes!!

They sold lavender everywhere (as it is grown in this region); it smelled wonderful and we bought a set of these packets to take home to our girls.

These are pods of coffee that you put in a single serving espresso/coffee machine that was really popular, judging by the insane amount of people in this shop. They sold metal wall hangings that you could put your jewel tone pods in and so it becomes a kind of art piece. Definitely eye candy!And of course, as with everywhere, there were amazing chocolate shops! Can't find anything quite like it back here at home.Some of the original perfumeries are in Nice; we wanted to go tour them, but did not have time so I had to suffice with the shops that sold the perfumes from the perfumeries. For those of you who know me, you know I love smells and especially perfume, so I was in heaven. I bought one of the perfumes...but not this chocolate one, although I actually liked the scent, but couldn't picture walking around smelling like a flowery chocolate bar. I got in trouble for taking pictures of the perfumes in the store, the sales guy made me delete them from my camera, so I had to come back and take pictures of the window displays later! I guess he thought I was an American spy :)Check out the prices on the essences...and they were very small too!!Pictures of the architecture in and around the main plaza.

They had these uber-modern shuttle buses the went through town, it was a strange juxtaposition against the old quaintness of the city.Ahhh...to be back in France with the outward-facing seating in the cafes. There is something so perfectly charming about it. Here they would set the tables with the glasses like this, I think because it was fairly windy, being on the sea.

And here it is, the French Riviera... it looks even more romantic when it is written in French..the Côte d'Azur!!
More on that later...it was filled with these types of restaurants, many with bright blue umbrellas!

A fun thing for me was to see the home where Antoine Tchekhov (one of my favorite Russian authors) and Henri Matisse (the famous impressionist painter) lived (but not at the same time).