the blue coast

  




  

(full photo set here)
I spent a four-day weekend on the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) based out of Nice, the name of which city lends itself to so many good puns. But Nice really is nice. I went to four different beaches along this stretch of coast: Cap d'Ail, Juan les Pins, Villefranche-sur-Mer, and Nice (listed in order of awesomeness). Cap d'Ail's Plage Mala (with the red umbrellas and the sheer cliffs rising out of the Mediterannean Sea) was the best due to sheer stunningness of scenery, though Juans les Pins (where a Canadian girl I'd met at the hostel and I snuck onto a private hotel beach, until we were regretfully requested to vacate the premises) was also stellar. And this is not to say that the beaches at Villefranche-sur-Mer, with its adorable old town, or Nice were not lovely, too, though the "pebbles" at the beach at Nice are really more like fist-sized rocks. I recommend paying the EUR 14 or so for a padded beach recliner, in spite of not having done it myself.

Other highlights of the trip: the view from Èze Village, over terracotta roofs, gorgeous coastline, and yachts; a brief visit to Monaco, which looks like Disney and Louis Vuitton teamed up to design a country; and the market at Nice, where I showed a great deal of restraint and bought only 1.5 liters of Niçoise olive oil to cart home, in addition to a couple of olive wood utensils, herbs de Provence, etc. I think that sometime in the future an excellent vacation would be to rent an apartment somewhere with a beach and also a wonderful market, and spend the whole time cooking delicious things, lounging by the sea, and people-watching from the balcony, which would naturally have a great view. Noted for future vacations!

Though not for my next vacation -- four days in Stockholm with Megan and Lucy, starting, ahaha, tomorrow. Because returning from Nice on Monday night and flying to Stockholm on Thursday night is totally a thing that people do.