Birthday and Beaches

On Friday, my birthday, we took a train down to Nice which is in the South of France. The train was 5 hours but not to miserable as there was a very scenic countryside to stare at and daydream. Then on the way from our train to our hotel we heard, "Chelsea, Katy!" Much to our surprise it was a girl we went to Ohio State with (so crazy to see her on a random street in Nice). So we of course made plans to catch up later in the evening! Our hotel ended up being VERY small but everyone was very helpful and it was nice to have a room to ourselves! We then set out to find a good place for my birthday dinner. Sounds like an easy task, but when you're starving and I had a migraine and the street is lined with hundreds of restaurants to chose from this task can seem very daunting. We finally settled on a french restaurant that ended up being very expensive and not very good food.... Or at least not food we are used to..... I ordered the Shrimp tempura with squash mash. the shrimp came fried with their shells and heads completely on, eyeballs and everything, I couldnt bring myself to eat the heads as much as I tried and I believe I ended up offending our waiter and/or the chef. not a good experience :(

But the night did get better we met up with our friend we had ran into earlier and went out to a pub called waynes!! I wore a pink birthday sash and everyone was very interested in what it was for (because of the language barrier) and it even got me some free drinks! At one point in the night we were all doing the "buckeye bounce" (it is an OSU football tradition for those of you who are very confused right now) and got some very questioning looks but it was a good time. I also found out that I apparently look like the president of France's wife (I did google her maybe a little resemblance) which is not a bad thing when you are celebrating in France.... And I ended up having a very fun birthday in Nice!

Our second day in Nice was by far the most relaxing day of my time over seas... we slept in (didn't even have to set an alarm woo hoo!) then walked down to the beach and lounged all day. It was so nice to be at the beach, swim, and get some sun; I was getting a little pale with the London weather.... Then we had an amazing and carb filled dinner at La Favola!! Chelsea and I couldn't even decide on what to get so we split 2 dishes and then went back the next night and split 2 more!!! It was delicious!!!! Then we went back to our hotel, had some wine and gave our selves pedicures that were much needed.

Our last full day in Nice was basically a repeat of the second with some shopping added to the agenda! But after dinner was when it really became an adventure.... We set out to find a wine store that the guy working the front desk at the hotel told us about. On the way we stopped and had gelatto... the perfect end to our dinner. The wine shop was at the top of the street and beyond this point it turned into an alley that looked sort of like a ramp. We were in the mood to explore so we followed this alley all the way up and ran into an old church... We continued this hike up the hill of Nice (not an official name but sounded fitting) after many flights of stairs we reached some amazing panoramic views of the city and got some great pictures. Then we heard a waterfall, we had seen it from the beach earlier in the day and had been commenting on how high up it was. So we decided to make the climb up to see it when we heard loud whistles... a policeman approached us shortly after but spoke no english. We thought he was telling us a road was closed off or something of that sort so we pretended to leave and then continued our quest to the waterfall. On our way down it dawned on me that we had come through a gate to get to the top of this hill/mountain. We ran down to the gate and it was LOCKED!!!! We proceeded to run to all the other gates we had seen but no luck they were all locked!!! Chelsea was at one gate crying for people to help us.... one couple stopped and called the police but they never answered, apparently nothing bad happens on Sundays in France.... An old lady in an apartment up above heard us and sent us to the "yellow house" which was the park keeper. When we approached the house there was a huge German Shepherd outside the door... Chelsea was ready to leap on the car behind my and I slowly made my way to the door which was no help the "keepers" spoke barely any English and sent us down to a road in the opposite direction of where we had come from... Again the gate was locked!!! but this gate had a way around it, even though this way consisted of climbing around a concrete column that was almost the width of my wingspan that had spikes on both sides, not to mention the 20-30 foot straight down drop to the ground! I somehow made it around (and in a dress!) then held on to Chelsea with a death grip as she made her way over!!! It all seemed like a bad horror movie at the moment but we got out safely with some great pictures and have a story we will never forget. We walked the town after that in shock of the events that had just occurred and then had the wine (that had started this whole journey). The next morning we set back off for London (6hr train ride to the Paris metro to another 2 hr train ride) which was a very long day of travel. But we made it back safe and sound!!