What a nice New Year in Nice.

For our first European New Year celebration, we decided to meet up with our good friends Andy and Beth in Nice, France, the unofficial capital of the French Riviera.  Beth is also a recent transplant from the States; she moved from Seattle to Newcastle, England in November.  We rented a small apartment right in the thick of the action and spent five wonderful days together, exploring Nice, the surrounding cities and the tiny principality of Monaco.  As always, Austin came along with us, so we had 10 hours of train travel each way!

Almost every day we walked to Old Town Nice and bought fresh foods from the market there.  Fruits, veggies, cured meats, cheeses, and what France is famous for, fresh baked baguettes!  Coming from Switzerland, we were amazed at how inexpensive everything was.



Here is a sampling of our daily deliciousness!




Happy New Year! For New Year's Eve we spent the day exploring Nice, shopping and drinking beer on the beach.  That night, we all got dolled up and hit the town for dinner and celebration.  It turns out we should have made a reservation, as almost of the restaurants were booked.  We did find a decent seafood restaurant where V and Beth each ate a half-lobster.  It was fun to watch them eat that!  After dinner, we headed to the promenade with a bottle of champagne to ring in the New Year.  There were lots of people milling about and most of them were lighting fireworks and shooting them on the beach and some into the crowd.

The next day we had an extremely leisurely walk about town and up Castle Hill.  From the hill, we were afforded many beautiful views of Nice.  Here you can see the Old Town in the foreground and the lovely beach and promenade to the left.  The Old Town was filled with tiny streets chock full of restaurants and shops.  It had quite an Italian feel to it.  We even stumbled upon a wine shop where you could have a liter bottle filled for only two Euros!



So we had heard that France was a dog-friendly place.  This is absolutely correct and more! Shop owners would come out of their shops during our morning walks and greet Austin with a hearty 'Bon jour!' all the while ignoring us.  With this, unfortunately, comes another truth which is that most of the French do not clean up after their pets.  This picture illustrates this point and more.  How did the dog poop on the bench?  Was it a talented small dog or a large dog pretending to use a toilet?  The world may never know.  We spent a significant amount of time avoiding dog piles on our walks.  It is worth it, however, when your little furry friend can come with you anywhere.  Dogs in Nice are also very socialized and friendly.



This was our mascot for the weekend.  Andy received this disco ball from his father for Christmas and we would listen to music at night while it entertained us.  We made it that much better by putting an orange on top.



Austin, as usual, found a comfortable (and pink) place to call his own in the apartment.  What a pampered princess!

This is Frenchie, one of Beth's fresh food sculptures.  We ate him up real good!

The next day we took the train to the tiny town of Antibes. We had a lovely time walking around and looking at stuff.  Beth and Andy has a look around the Picasso museum there, but that was one of the few places Austin was not allowed.



Andy and Austin had many in depth conversations on the train.  This one was about whether cheddar and bacon biscuits are better than beef.



We also went to Monaco.  You may not know this, but there are yacht-loads of extremely wealthy people there.  We went to the Jacques Cousteau aquarium and we also went to the famous, and very boring, Casino.  That place is much better in Bond movies.  Monaco is worth a visit though, if only just to look at all the fancy cars and giant yachts.



Jon got in trouble for trying to go in the royal palace in his skivvies.  He should have read the sign first.  Whoops! 

 

Beth had a serious crush on 'Crabby MacBeth' at the aquarium.  There are about 500 photos of him in the Flikr set linked to below.

We also acquired 'the real deal', genuine absinthe!  You pour water over some sugar on a spoon and this potent liquor turns a cloudy color that signifies, it's time to hallucinate!  It also tastes like anise, mmmm, anise.




The EuroFadoks had a wonderful New Year in Nice!  We hope you all had a good one as well! There are tons more great pictures on the Flikr set, so check them out, yo!
Nice New Year's 2011 Photos


Love,

The EuroFadoks