a Nice week at the beach

Greetings Friends!! 

The time has finally come for me to expound on my exploits in the lovely city of Nice. I figured 3 weeks at home had given me plenty of time to relax and get over jet lag:)
This is a very long post so sorry:) and I am very sad to hear what happened in Nice yesterday... its a gorgeous city with great people and it makes me heartsick to hear what happened. However we all know that every cloud has a silver-lining and that it is always darkest before the dawn. So I post this post in remembrance of the good times I had and with the hope that good times will go back to Nice again. 

My tale is one of great adventure and sunshine. 

We got to Nice on a Saturday and stayed til the following Saturday.

While there we went to 2 Museums--

Musée Matisse and Musée Massena:

On the first day we were there we went to church and then we went to the Musée Matisse next to Roman ruins.

The church building

 I climbed on Roman Ruins and it was awesome!!!!!!!!!!

The Musée Matisse

 Some of Matisse's islander collages

 A still life

 And a cool lady with his signature

All in all a nice Sunday activity while also crossing off something we had to do.
The Musée Massena:
We went to the museum on Wednesday before we headed to Monaco.

 The Musée Massena is a history museum for Nice.

 The inside is like so cool. I want to live there forever.

 The Library was really cool and very pretty

 This is a bust of a famous general

 Upstairs there were really cool paintings and objects of historical significance.

 This is the cloak and crown of Josephine wife of Napoleon, when she was crowned Empress of Rome

 This is just a bracelet that had a super cool case.

 A Painting, I really liked it because the longer you looked at her the more the old woman seemed to stare into your soul disapprovingly and I really like her fan.

 Queen Victoria

 And then a bunch of gorgeous old lace fans.

 All in all it was really cool museum and a gorgeous building right next to the beach,

We visited Vieux Nice ( Old Nice), The Old Chateau, and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
Vieux Nice:

 This is Place Massena

 There was this giant park so we walked through it

 All of the playground equipment was wooden sea creatures and Ashley had a blast trying out every piece.

 Then we walked out of the park down to a little square

 And then down this cool road that had like everything

 This is a clocktower, you can see it in the distance from the park and from the bus.

 This is Place Garbaldi, and the window balconies are actually painted on the building behind the giant fountain.

The Old Chateau:
After checking out Vieux Nice we climbed a large hill and about a billion stairs to the the Chateau and the rock. There isn't a Chateau there anymore because it was destroyed, so all that's left is a cemetery, a waterfall and a 180 degree panorama.

The view from the top of those stairs...

 They have too many old Mosaics so they just throw out the broken ones!

 This cemetery was awesome!!!

 This is the view from the walk up to the cascade

 A cool stone wall with some mosaics

 Almost to the top after climbing yet more stairs

It's a gorgeous waterfall and the spray was amazing and the perfect temperature for the day

 I found a rainbow!

 The view from the top of the waterfall overlooking Quai des Etats Unis

 a map to show which direction things are in...

 Some old  ruins they are currently excavating

 Some sort of chapel or shrine...according to a sign for Mary, however there was definitely nonchristain mosaics on the walls like the two tailed merman....

 I Climbed the Eiffel Tower;)
After climbing the Eiffel Tower and looking at the park we went to the tower that overlooks Baie des Anges or Angel Bay.

Then to finish off the day we walked through some shops so I could find a Swimsuit cover and accidentally found a Cathedral. 

 Then we went home...

 But of course we had to go to the beach so we did--

And it was gorgeous!!!! 

The other thing we had to do besides the places and the museums was go on the "Get Lost!" Walk again but in Nice. So we did that the day after Vieux Nice.
We started out on the beach and we went swimming... I swam in the Mediteranean Sea! Which was cool and I collected sea glass and rocks. then we cleaned up and went on the Get Lost! Walk.

We started out trying to go to the Musée Massena but it's closed on Tuesdays, so we couldn't go in.
Because I was hungry I stopped somewhere to get a waffle and then ended up behind the group for along while so this is my portion of the get lost walk.

This is my Nutella covered waffle that I ate looking out at this view...

Then I continued down the Promenade des Anglais and found the Mussée Massena

 Then as I continued to try and find my friends I stopped and got melon sorbet-- which was pretty dang good, probably the best sorbet I've had ever.

By this point Ashley had texted me back that they were on Rue de la Buffa so I looked it up on my phone and found my way there.

After I caught up to them we just meandered around that neighborhood until we were ready to leave.

 This was a little park that we sat in the shade at.

 This is Natalie showing off her purchases

 Oh My Gosh this dog was sooooooo cute!!! His owner would throw him a little red ball and he would just bolt after it.

I thought that the purple flowers on the tree across the street were really pretty.

 Just some street shots as we walked down the road

This was just cool because of the garden going all the way up that building

 These flowers were all over a park that we walked past

 Even in Nice they have fantastic Hausmann architecture

Then I lost them again and walked home down the Rue de la Californie and found a guy who looked like my dad in about 30 years...

 We went to Monaco/Monte Carlo and the Musée Massena on Wednesday but on Thursday we went to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral:

We made it to the church and there was as always cool Bamboo on one side

 This is the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, it was actually a gift from Czar Nicolas II either 1 year or a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution. It was really cool inside and out, very Russian architecture. It was also kind of cool to walk through the Russian part of town.

 Here are my illegal images from the inside. It was definitely alot more decorated than the Catholic cathedrals which makes sense since the eastern orthodox religion puts more weight on icons, images of the saints and the virgin Mary. Like a lot of emphasis.

 This is the ceiling but the cool part which you can't really see is the tip top blue spot is covered in stars, it was gorgeous.

 This is Michael with a nice back view of Maddy

It was a lovely building and very well kept up.

All in all a fantastic stay in a nice city:)

This concludes the log of my adventures in Europe...
So, until the next time friends--
Catch you on the flipside