Week 27

I was traveling this week and I don’t like to post about being away while away. Here is a brief run down of the week. I plan to write something about the trip in more detail soon.

• Sunday we had planned to start early but didn’t get moving until 11 after a rough night of sleep. Here I think the travel, time difference, and all the going caught up to us.
• We ate breakfast in the room with the cafe downstairs closed and not wanting to commit to a sit down cafe experience. Then we caught the bus to the mall to do some shopping.
• The mall was seven floors almost all with brands that we were not going to be buying (tres chic). Leah did find some Swarowski earings that she got. Noah liked a t-shirt but it was 450 euros about $600 so we did not get that.
• There was a section of souverniers where some shirts were obtained and roof access where you could get some good pictures of Paris.
• When we left the mall we took an Uber to Musee D’Orsey. Proper hungry, we had some lunch at a cafe across the street.
• Inside Musee D’Orsey we went directly to the impressionist section on the fifth floor in the back. This was a popular place to be and there were a lot of people taking selfies with the paintings.
• We did see an entire room of nothing but Van Gogh. Despite the crowd this was great.
• For dinner we went to another local cafe and saw a local french woman order the beef tartare which was fun.
• Monday we took an Uber to the train station and got stuck in a bit of Paris Fashion Week traffic. We rode the train for about 5 hours to Nice. I saw a castle in the French countryside which I think was pretty cool.
• Once in Nice we Ubered to the new AirBNB, were dropped off in the wrong spot, but made it around the block and up some stairs to the new apartment. This one had a terrace that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. The view was spectacular.
• Tuesday we needed some groceries and having tried and failed to use Deliveroo I walked the 20 minute round trip to the nearest Monoprix. The distance to most shops and cafes is the only major drawback of this new location.
• This part of the trip was meant to be more relaxing so we spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday eating at the cafe near by and going to the beach.
• The water is clear and blue and the beach had rocks instead of sand.
• Wednesday in the late afternoon Leah and I went for a walk and found a flea market and a square with some restaurants we wanted to try.
• Thursday we rented beach chairs with umbrellas to have some place nice to sit in the shade after a few days of beach towels on rocks and full sun.
• At about 4 PM I asked about our seats on our flight to Paris the next day which is when we discovered that the flight had been cancelled. The air traffic controllers were on strike and we had to call and reschedule things.
• While on hold we walked to the flea market where Noah got a ring and Leah saw a necklace she was not sure about. When we got through to someone at the airline the news was not good. We were going to be in Nice a couple more days.
• We grabbed dinner at a cafe in the square from the night before.
• After a truly deranged flight option, Nice -> Paris -> Atlanta -> JFK (NY) -> Laguardia (NY) -> Detroit, we settled on Nice -> Paris on Sunday and Paris -> Detroit on Monday.
• Friday we got a late check out from our AirBNB at 1 PM and left our bags while we went to the local cafe and back to the flea market. At 3 PM we grabbed our bags and Ubered across town to a new AirBNB.
• This is when I was reminded that 2nd floor in France is 3rd floor in the US. We had some stairs to get up but at least this place had A/C. Having spent over a week without it in a heatwave it was a nice change.
• Bummed out from the travel changes and tired from the trip we didn’t go very far for the remainder of Friday or Saturday.

This is day 27 of #100DaysToOffload.