You must be all wondering how many posts I'm going to dedicate to our trip. Well, have no fear we are nearing the end. I promise two more posts and we'll get back to the more exciting topics of being an ESADE student. Aren't you excited? Posts 1 and 2 if you want to read from the beginning.
So our initial plan for the day after Monaco was to head down to Cannes but due to the French deciding that it wasn't necessary to run trains that Sunday, we got stuck in Nice. Not a big deal. We still had more places to visit. So off we went to our first stop, the Musee et Site Archeologiques de Cimiez. I won't bother translating that for everyone.
Anyways, typical of any large city in Europe, Roman ruins were found in Cimiez. *Boring history stuff ahead* Nice has a long history of settlement, dating back to the period of the "Archaic Homo Sapiens" (400,000 years ago). Nice, itself, was founded as a Greek settlement and became an important trading post for the Greeks. The Roman town of Cemenelum was considered a rival to the Greek city and Cemenelum's ruins are located in the area of Cimiez.*End of boring history stuff*
The Museum's selling point is the ruins. The ruins we saw were what was formerly a bathhouse and a temple.
Roman bathrooms. No partitions so you're getting real friendly with your Roman buddies. You could basically high five the guy next to you after a particularly good bowel movement.
Portion of the underground water system. I'm always impressed by Roman engineering. It's mind bottling how they had all this figured out 2000 years ago.
After checking out the ruins we stopped by the Musee Matisse to check out some of his artwork and sculpture pieces. This was a morning of culture.
There was a festival going on in the park so we stopped by and checked out the street fair that was going on.
The SO wanted to get this Nicoise specialty called Sooca. It's essentially a chickpea crepe. I can only describe it as burnt crepe.
After a good couple of days of walking around and sightseeing we wanted to use this day to take it easy so we did. Pretty much all we did that day were those two sights.
Of course we still ate a big meal to offset those calories burnt. Ginormous plate of antipasti.
Huge bowl of seafood pasta.
And, of course, dessert. This was actually tiramisu. I've never seen it prepared this way but the SO told me that she's had it prepared this way before when she was in Tuscany. Must be some Mediterranean thing.
The French transportation department decided that they've had enough time off and got the trains up and running again so it was off to Cannes.
It's currently a blue carpet but change it to red and you'll recognize this place as the Cannes Grand Auditorium. Stars have walked on this stairway. Oooh.
What it looks like during the actual festival. The Cannes Film Festival this year will take place May 12-23rd this year. If you're a wealthy socialite you could watch F1 in Monaco and then head over to partake in the festivities in Cannes.
The Cannes Walk of "Fame". I think his nose is the more well known than his films.
La Croisette.
Decided to have a sandwich for lunch. Sat on the boardwalk and just enjoyed the good weather.
On our way to the ferry to St. Margerite we came across these mega-yachts. I've never really seen yachts this big up close but immediately I wanted one. This particular one was about 150 feet. Now, I'm thinking this costs about 3-5 million USD. No, when you get to the 150 ft.+ range of yachts they're about 15-45 million USD. Dreams crushed. So, maybe owning one is totally unfeasible but who's to say I won't be able to find a friend who ends up with one of these. That's more likely. If I ever do get to set foot on these things the first thing I'm gonna do is sing this song.
I'm on a boat bitches!!
Because there's not much to do in Cannes we were then off to Grasse, the perfume center of Europe.
The town of Grasse is very...umm...working class.
The old city was still very quaint and nice though.
Our first stop, Fragonard. High end perfumerie. They had a free factory tour. It was free to get in but you ended up spending way more than what the tour actually costs thanks to the strategically placed boutique store at the end of the tour.
Smelling the filters. It smelled perfume-y.
Fragonard sources their raw materials from all across the globe.
Everything is still all hand-made at Fragonard. Hence, the extremely high prices for their perfumes.
Old school preparation process. They would continually replace those flowers until the scent of the flowers would be infused into the fat. To just make the essense is labor intensive. 1 ton of roses only yields about 4 pounds of essence.
Fragonard also makes soaps.
Easter bunny not included. You'd think they'd include the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy for how much these things cost.
Where the Nose sits. The Nose is the expert that actually creates the perfume. They have specialty schools in France if you want to become a Nose but you also have to abstain from smoking, drinking and spicy foods. Yeah, no thanks.
Old school perfume seller. Why he doesn't just set up a small shop, I don't know. I mean is it really worth the savings in cost when you have to be a kitchen shelf?
The absolute highlight of our time in Grasse was the Perfume Museum. The thing was like 5 levels and just gigantic. Our guidebook barely mentioned the place but it was honestly spectacular. Well curated and tons of cool exhibits. Highly recommend it.
French graffiti, Not too shabby.
We had dinner in Cannes. It was a French/Arabic food place so it was nice to get something that didn't taste like the typical southern French cooking. I believe that's the 4 meat platter. Guess who got that one. If you said the SO then you win. What do you win? Just the end of this post. Congrats on making it this far.
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