31 decembre 2009 (Day 122)
Wahoo! After waking up at 6am, having bread and honey and hot chocolate in the car, we caught the bus that Jean Claude dropped us off it. The bus ride was really calm even though it was a really windy road. It was foggy and we got to see the sun come up by the mountains.
We arrived in Nice around 9 or so and it was gorgeous! There were hills and the ocean is aqua and clear. There are palm trees, it was warm and sunny, and so were the people! I had more people say, “hello” to me in Nice then I have in all my time in Nantes. Nice is super super pretty. It isn’t what you think of when you think of France, but it is chouette!
Brooke and I meandered around Nice through the Old City. We climbed up to a castle and some ruins. The view was amazing and seeing an archeology site was super great. Brooke lost her memory chip, but luckily the cleaning men found it and asked me if it was mine.
After climbing up we went back down to a marche. I bought some amazing clementines from a mean lady, bought a sweet treat from a sweetheart and tasted some delicious nougat. I found a gateaux des rois so I bought it. It was only so so. There were so many flowers for sale and lots of lavender and soap (region specialities). Brooke and I found some fun postcards by the Palais de Justice.
As usual, Brooke slept on the train while I read. I was a Book of Mormon reading demon, I didn’t want to stop. We had two cute older ladies sit by us and by the end of the train ride the car was full, people were standing in the aisles to get to Marseille. I asked the lady next to me what a word was in the Book of Mormon. She didn’t ask about what I was reading though.
I’m not going to lie, Marseille was kind of disappointing. I thought it was going to look a lot cooler since I have heard so much about it. It has this red like rock surrounding it, no beaches, and lots of factories. We took the metro and then the bus to get to the chapel. We played ping pong for quite a while with some of Brooke’s friends from school and other people.
Dinner was later in the evening so we went off with Brooke’s friend, Anaelle, to find a grocery store to get some munchies. We passed the most awesome Michelangelo’s David statue on the way. We all got cookies, except for Brooke. She bought one baguette and 500 grams of cheese for herself. Gawl, I love that girl, lol. I tried giving the security guard a cookie (I guessed the faster line by about 3 minutes) while I was waiting, but he didn’t want a swirl cookie.
More people slowly started to arrive and boy were they dressed up. I might as well have gone to prom! Well, not really, but still everyone was very formally dressed and I looked like a frump. I had on my black skirt, a black shirt and my bright blue tights for my detail ‘that killed.’ Brooke wore roller skates. She got 3rd place in the contest. The details that beat her out were colored contacts, and something that I don’t remember, so it obviously wasn’t that cool. We had a kind of lame dinner. Lunch, a slice of lunch meat, grated celery or carrots, and a 2 inch square of pizza. The plates were magically square and shiny though.
The dance was slamming! It was definitely not your Utah LDS dance. The leaders definitely didn’t know what some of those songs were saying. My personal favorite was when I heard some lyrics and then said really loudly, “Oh my gosh! That song just said sex! Where is the First Presidency!” All the songs were fast and 90% American hip hop/R&B. The best song of the night was, “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas. EVERYONE sang along.
Even the delicious cake that we ate couldn’t keep me dancing all night long. New Years was kind of lame, I ran in while they were counting down (I thought I still had 8 minutes) and no one kissed me. *Sigh* Maybe next year. Whitney, my new found American friend and I kind of crashed around 1 or 2 so we were just upstairs talking. We had a nice time. We really hit it off, other than the fact that we had no other friends and people weren’t socializing with us, we are both cross country runners. Whitney is 22, goes to UVU and just came to France to vacation for the semester. And bless that girl’s heart. She let me come sleep in her hotel. Brooke apparently decided we didn’t need a hotel and was just planning on dancing until 7am and checking in then (why she thought you could check in then, I have no idea). I slept pretty well at Whitney’s and I paid for part of the night.
