Florence to Nice

Ok today involves us driving from Florence to Nice, as the title of the post suggests. I’m going to skip to the part where we stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower and take some obligatory photos of us pretending to hold it up. I don’t think anything interesting happened before that anyways. Pisa was only a 45 minutes stop because all they have is the leaning tower and all the leaning tower has is people pretending to hold it up. Here is how it went:

“Come stand by me, children. We will take a beautiful picture together.” said the tower. “Thanks tower we will do that. But I see how you are looking at the girls and I don’t appreciate it. Now I shall knock you down with my super punch!” said Patrick. “Nooooo! I’ll save you tower! I’ve always loved you!” said Lisa. “You guys are retarded. Please get off my property.” said the tower. And the tower was right. The End.

Before we left I ate what will probably be my last good panini of the trip. I also had one of my last good espressos of the trip. Booooo. We still have one more rest stop before leaving Italy and that will be our final chance for Italian goodness. Greg joked on the bus that we should get our coffee fix at that stop because the coffee in France is rubbish. Australians say rubbish instead of garbage. I kind of like it. Anyways it turns out he wasn’t exaggerating. I tried an espresso in France at a café and it was so bad I couldn’t finish it. I thought maybe it was a fluke so I found a coffee shop to try again and it literally made me gag. I’m pretty sure I tasted tarragon. I’m getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Nice about two hours before our scheduled dinner at the hotel so I went for a walk down to the beach. One of the reasons that I booked this particular tour is because it was taking us through the French Riviera where would get some European beach time. I did not know that the beaches here were comprised of stones, not sand. This was disheartening because Long Beach has amazing, clean, sandy beaches which I have been away from for two weeks now. Once I accepted the fact that I would not be going to the beach in Nice (screw laying on rocks), I walked down the promenade looking for topless women. Just kidding it was actually almost time for dinner so I walked back. But I’ll probably do that tomorrow, weather permitting.

Dinner was served at the hotel and was probably the best dinner we’ve had yet. We had quiche and a nice salad to start, a half (small) chicken, potatoes and mixed vegetables for our main course and ice cream cups for dessert. Our food is usually pretty basic when it’s included because there are 50 of us so they have to fire up some generic, easy to prepare banquet food. It was never bad food, it just wasn’t memorable.

After dinner Greg lined up some drink specials at this bar called Waynes in the Old Town section of Nice. The Old Town is basically where all the cool stuff is. It reminded me of Venice in that it had narrow, winding streets that just went up, down and all over the place at random and usually terminated at some awesome café that you would never have found unless you just got lost while you were looking for Waynes. There was a live band playing at Waynes and two other Contiki tours there as well. We always intersect with at least one other Contiki group when we are out – they seem to just criss-cross all over the place.

I split around midnight because I was tired and wanted to have a full day at the beach the next day. On the way home I got Glace which is French for “I’ll have two scoops please.”  Coincidentally,  I’m thinking of starting my own tour company where I take people all over the world to try espresso and ice cream at different places. That would be sweet.

My camera was dead all day so I have no pics of the coast or anything at all really but Tracey had hers at the bar so you get this:

And that concludes Day 11. In the sexiest way possible.