Carnival!
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2010
1
16
41
Trip End
Jul 17, 2010
Nice, Provence, France
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The theme of Carnival was "Our Big Blue Planet," so everything was earth themed. The first night, Friday, the floats of the King and Queen came out along with some globes that had different natural textures (ie water, rubies, dirt, wood) on them. The Queen was pregnant with planet earth, which I found a perplexing concept. On Saturday Colleen, Eddie, and I went to the beach where we ran into Shane. The four of us spent the morning walking around the city, and then had a delicious traditional Nicois lunch, including the fact that it took about 2 hours. As a result, we missed most of the flower parade, but we saw the end of it from behind the barricade. That night we saw the parade with all of the crazy floats. The french were not subtle with their sybolism. The floats ranged from a giant super hero Obama with a tree in one hand and the Kyoto treaty in the other, to a sick Earth hooked up to IVs and getting shots of HIV and H1N1, to Noah's ark with Noah and his wife tied up and the animals ruling the ship! We saw all of the floats and then left when they started going around a second time because our feet and hands were going numb.
Sunday we went to the "Chateau," which is the ruins of a midevil Castle/Palace type of building on top of a cliff. There was a beautiful waterfall that ran from the highest point of the Chateau which used to have a balcony over looking the sea. The whole thing was kind of like a park mixed with an archeological dig, with an amazing view of Nice and the Mediterranean. After a few hours there we headed to a museum of an old burgoisie Mansion in the vielle ville or old city. The mansion was nice, but the best part was the incredible artwork that was there. I think the museum was called Musee Messina, and it is a great activity for a couple hours in Nice.
I think the highlight of the weekend was our lunch with Shane, the New Zealander also known as a Kiwi. He told us all about how he's a gourmet chef and the reason he was in Nice was because his friends told him to work on a charter boat as a chef. Apparently there isn't any money in being a chef unless you own your own restaurant. The alternative is working 4-6 months non-stop in Monaco and then having enough money for the year. Shane had been travelling for the past 7 months so I was also able to get some good advice about where to go and how to travel. Our other roommate was Brazilian, so when the subject of Brazil came up Shane told us about how he spent a few months there doing jujitsu training on the beach for fun. (Shout out to Lauren- I totally was able to name drop things like Reais and how my awesome friend loved Rio.) I also learned that it can take about 3 days to make a sauce for meat, but it's you can "whip up" a butter sauce for fish in a few minutes. That's why the chef who does the meats and sauces (called the sauce chef) is usually the best chef in the restaurant.
