We're Cooking But Happy

After breakfast today, we left the hotel (above) and took a long walk on the Promenade des Anglais before it got too hot. We left at about 8:00 a.m. and the temperature was already hovering around 23 degrees. On our stroll we were happy to find a public beach (most here are private and cost about $20 to gain access). The beach here is made up entirely of pebbles so I'm sure not everyone is willing to shell out cash to tan. Ryan can't understand why anyone would want to lie on the beach, free or paid. I think it's great! No sand wedged in all of your bits.
Nice has been very different from the rest of our trip. We are having a great time but feel like we were transported to South Florida in a trashy retirement community. It is hot, overrun with tourists, full of casinos, and has the most bizarre locals of anywhere we have ever been. Think of Magda going to the beach. For real. We tried to take some pictures of them on the sly this morning but they didn't turn out all that well. We're going to take the good camera out tomorrow and try to pull some paparazzi shots. Stay tuned.

After our walk we came back to the hotel for a quick repose (read: air conditioning) and headed for the Marc Chagall museum.

It was only about a half an hour walk from our hotel and it was great being able to see all of the architecture of the inner city. The artwork was beautiful, although the museum was small. This is not a problem but considering we cracked off the Louvre in about 45 minutes, we resisted the urge to leave before we had been there at LEAST 15 minutes. Good thing there was air-conditioning.

After the museum we walked back towards the hotel and looked for a place to find a late lunch. We stopped in at Virgin and Ryan was delighted to find a Celine DVD that he did not have in his collection: 'Celine Dion: Live A Quebec.' We couldn't buy it here because the DVD wouldn't work at home but I can guarantee that the first weekend we're home, Ryan will be making a purchase.

Ryan's day got even better when we found an Italian bistro that had an inexpensive Croque-monsieur (glorified grilled cheese with a paper thin piece of ham) and unlimited packages of ketchup.
After lunch we headed towards the Colline du Chateau (Castle Hill) which was the first part of Nice to be settled. To be honest, I have no idea what most of the history is behind it. All I cared about it getting to the top, getting our photo ops, and getting the hell back down to air-conditioning. We started from the promonade and climbed to the top. Like everything else, it was totally worth doing. Totally beautiful from the top.
Tonight, we're going for dinner and plan on turning in early. We're kind of done with Nice (even our concierge suggested we spend our last day in other towns) and plan to spend half of tomorrow in Eze and the other half in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Apart from the driving, it should be another amazing day.