Last Post - the wedding!

I am sure you almost forgot why we went to Nice in the first place - the wedding! On Sunday night, we attended a lovely 'welcome' dinner in a French restaurant.  The wedding, which was at a Russian Orthodox church, was Sunday afternoon followed by a 7 hour reception.  The wedding service was beautiful and so was the bride! Paul was in the wedding and had to take several shifts holding beautiful crowns over the heads of the Olga (the bride) and Matt.

The reception was CRAZY.  Appetizers, drinks, sit-down 4 course dinner, band, magicians and 'dancers.'  Paul even got asked (by surprise) to come and 'perform' for the crowd. 

Here are some pictures!

Paul with the groom and another groomsman

Church

Paul and I before the wedding

Paul and the other groomsmen

Holding the crowns

The bride and groom leaving the sanctuary

Paul 'performing' at the reception

The random dancers

Paul and I pretending we are on the red carpet

Carnival Parades

While we were in France, the 'Carnival' was going on which was a big party.  There were parades day and night and you would see people dressed up around town.  We got to see the parade twice - once during the day and another at night. Here are some pictures. We really got into the action as you can see!  One thing we did notice is that they don't have a very good view of Americans as shown in some of their floats!



One of the main floats



Paul having some fun at a float's expense

Me doing the same

Not sure what the meaning of this float was but it probably wasn't a compliment!

Parade during the day



Apparently, France thinks we need to go on a diet!

Around town in Nice

So this blog post is all about our time around town in Nice. We had a great time walking around the town. We visited this lovely park up on this hill that used to be a fort.  We saw a couple of museums (Chagall and Matisse), But mostly we did a whole lot of 'cafe' drinking, eating, people watching, and wine drinking, and sleeping.

We quickly learned that the French are a lot more laid back than we are about their meals and life in general. In the U.S. we really rush around here there everywhere often drinking coffee and eating on the go or at our desks (case in point, just ate lunch at my desk!). In France, and probably other places in Europe, they really know how to sit down, relax and savor their meals.  I totally had ants in my pants during the first couple of meals there wondering if our waiter had forgotten us and why was the coffee so small?  By the end of the trip, however, we had learned to spend at least an hour at each restaurant enjoying the views, each other and just sitting there relaxing.

Paul is now a big fan of 'Cafe Americano' which is just expresso with more water added while I liked Cafe Crema (same thing but with cream). I also learned that the French word for fish  "poisson" when mispronounced by a dumb American sounds just like the word poison in French. So when i was at various restaurants telling them that I was allergic to poison, I got a lot of weird looks!

Anyway, here are some "around the town" pictures from our trip.



Paul at Fort du mont

Paul at a Cafe



Chagall piece from museum

Doesn't this just look like France?

Beach in front of our hotel - notice the pebbles versus sand

Me drinking a 'cafe' - something we did a lot!

Nice here we come!

Last week we got the opportunity to travel all the way to Nice, France to attend the wedding of Matth, one of Paul's best friends from college.  Matt, who currently lives in Zurich,  married a woman from Russia and they decided to have their wedding in Nice.  The next couple of blog posts are all about our trip!

The trip itself was a LOT of fun. The travel, not so much fun.  On the way there, our flight was delayed out of Nashville and we missed our connection across the pond.  This delay ended up re-routing us and, even though we left our house around noon on Thursday, we didn't get to Nice until 6:00 PM the next day (Friday!). Yuck! 

Anyway, once we got there and got caught up on our sleep, we had a great time. We stayed at the Hotel Negresco and had a view of the ocean from our room.  Here are some pictures:



View of Hotel



View from our room at hotel



Another view from our room



View of Alps from plane