Samedi, 22 Decembre 2012: A Day of Discovery

I woke up pretty early Saturday to the most surprising view! I knew that the guys lived on the side of the mountain overlooking the water but I wasn't expecting this from my bedroom!

I got ready for the day and went up to the main building to see if anyone was awake. Ori was up there hanging out. I had some coffee with him and admired the view some more while I was waiting for everyone else to get up there. Everyone was mesmerized by the view. We all stood together in front of the living room window while Ori watched us. He kind of laughed about it but hinted that everyone reacts the same way.

 

The four of us decided to go see the chateau first thing. We were hungry though and since the pizzeria we visited was closed for a private party, we stopped at this cute little Thai place. The food there was amazing!!! Except for the eggrolls that were filled with cheese, the rest of the dishes we had were authentic. All of the servers in the restaurant spoke English. It was sad to me though because even though I don't remember much, I wanted to practice my Thai. We settled for English when the girls obviously couldn't understand me. Ha haha

We were eating while some random donkeys strolled by. There was a cop that stopped them. He was so cute! I guess cops here do a lot more than they're paid to do. Cops in Indiana don't even help you shovel your car out. 

 

We climbed the hill up to the chateau after our humongous lunch. It was a bit of a struggle so we stopped halfway at a scenic view. We met another American up there. His name was Anthony and we chatted with him for awhile. It turns out he's from San Francisco like Mark.

We continued on up to the chateau. We walked around all of the corridors which were filled with shops and quaint little cafés. We stopped at a beer garden to get some drinks and walked on. 

Since Monaco was only 6 km away, we decided to go there afterward. Monaco is nice and all but other than the parks and the ocean, there wasn't really anything to see. 

We stayed in Monaco for an hour or two before heading back to Nice. We got back just in time for the sunset and sat on the smooth rocky beach while the sun went down. 

We went back to the villa afterward and tried to nap before we headed out for the night. I was woken up twice during the short hour that I was in bed. The first time because I was parked in front of a neighbor's gate, and the second time because I was parked in front of the other neighbor's door. The second woman was a SUPER BITCH!!! I got out of bed as soon as Oded told us there was a complaint. I was dressed in less than 10 seconds and running up the stairs to move the car. The neighbor was standing at the top of the stairs tapping her feet. I immediately said I was sorry and she just looks me up and down with her arms crossed and says "Can you explain to me HOW I can get in my house?" I didn't reply because I didn't have a non-bitchy reply and decided not to allow the situation to escalate. It's a good thing Mark was with me because he had the same reaction I did. I just kept walking to my car. She followed me and said "What? You have no answer? HA! Oh, and when you move your car, it would be good if you didn't hit the one behind you...." I just rolled my eyes and went on. Of course I'm not going to hit your car. I'm from America, and we have respect for others' personal property, unlike in France when there are hit and runs daily. I can't believe that woman thinks she can treat people that way. She's obviously someone that's used to people kissing her ass. Her husband was this mousy little bald man that huffed and puffed everytime she made a snobby comment. He obviously doesn't have any balls and didn't marry her because he loved her. C'est la vie ;-)

I moved the car to the end of the street and went back down to my room, fuming. I knew I wouldn't be able to nap after that so I got everyone out of bed to go back to downtown Nice for dinner. We stopped at the first Italian restaurant we could find and walked in. We sat down but then the waiter had us move to a table that already had people so that another family could sit down. It was weird at first but the guys we sat with were funny and tried to speak English with us. The resto became really packed as soon as we got settled. We understood why a few minutes later. There was an important football match on the TV. Lyon vs. Nice. We were in Nice at an Italian establishment. Of course these guys were die-hard fans. We were entertained throughout our entire dinner which was sooooo good!!!

We went out to a bar afterward and finished watching the game. Kami got this really gross pear liquor that made me kind of sick. It was so strong I thought I was going to pass out just from sniffing it. It was served in a whiskey snifter so the aroma was extremely pungent. All of the bar patrons cleared out after the match and the four of us were left sitting in an entire room by ourselves. We didn't really feel like partying hard so we went back to the villa around 23h00 and passed out.