First three days in France (Lieze)

Monday 28 March 2011

Hi everybody!

Today we arrived at the next country of our trip, which is France. We chose Nice to be our first stop because this beautiful city is only 30 kilometres away from the Italian border.

Nice is the capital city of the Alpes Maritimes department and also the second largest French city on the Mediterranean coast. So it is quite an important city!

As it is a very popular destination for tourists, we had no problem finding a place to have lunch. There are little restaurants everywhere and we chose to eat at “Chez Pipo”, a very pleasant little place at the port of Nice. The menu was so elaborate that is was difficult to make a choice, but eventually I picked a salad Niçoise, which is named after the city Nice. It was really delicious! I really love the French kitchen, which is known for its use of olive oil, fruit and vegetables.

After lunch, we decided to visit the port of Nice. We first went to the Garibaldi square, in the middle of the port, and we were immediately charmed by its beautiful architecture! The place is named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian hero who was born in Nice. It’s a pity you can’t visit his birthplace.

After our visit to the port, we went… shopping! Nice has some very beautiful shopping centres where you can shop for hours! But we didn’t want to spend all afternoon inside a building, so we also visited an open air market, which is typically French. At the market, you find clothes and food but especially souvenirs of the city.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach of Nice, enjoying the beautiful weather.

Lieze

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Bonjour!

I’m already completely adapted to the French way of living and today we continued our visit of Nice.

In the morning, we visited the “Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret”, which opened in 1928. The museum is, as the name already tells, especially dedicated to the work of Jules Chéret. But next to his collection, the museum also houses work of other artists. The museum is rather small, but the collection of art is so beautiful! There are even some ceramic pieces, made by Picasso! At the museum, there were information boards at every piece of art, so it was a very interesting visit.

After our visit to the museum, we had a quick stop at the Botanic garden of Nice but then, we had to leave for Bordeaux. Around 1 p.m., we went to the train station of Nice to catch our train of 1.30 p.m. It is quite a long trip to Bordeaux and when we arrived, it was already 7.30 p.m. Fortunately, we easily found a youth hostel to spend the night so we still had some time to go for a short walk. Because it was already dark, we couldn’t see much of the city. I’m extremely looking forward to tomorrow to start our tour of Bordeaux!

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Hello every one,

Today we discovered BordeauxJ The city is the world’s major wine industry capital, so you can imagine that it’s a very important city for the economy.

Bordeaux has over 10,000 wine-producing “châteaux” and an annual production of about 850 million bottles of wine! But it’s not only the wine which makes Bordeaux important for the economy. There’s also the company “Laser Mégajoule”, one of the most powerful lasers in the world, and about 20,000 people found a job in the aeronautic industry at Bordeaux.

But of course we’re especially interested in the wine, so we visited a vineyard today. There, we got a lot of information about the production process of wine. Afterwards, we could taste three of three best wines and we had the opportunity to buy their products in a little shop at the vineyard.

In the afternoon, we had a quick stop at the “Basilique Saint-Michel”, which is located at a very colourful neighbourhood. The basilica has a very sharp and high tower which you can climb. I’d loved to do this but unfortunately we didn’t have the time. We had to leave Bordeaux in time to reach our next destination.

I’m really looking forward to discover the other cities of France!

Lots of love

Lieze