Place: Nice, France (ECIS Teachers Conference)
At the conference, I attended a few workshops and browsed through the materials section. I picked up a book on Einstein (of course) for a little light reading on the plane. One workshop in particular really excited me. It was fractal geometry and chaos workshop that was based on a web site designed from Boston University. The speaker was a professor at BU and he walked us through all the capabilities of the site. It was fascinating. For the first time, in a long time, I was very excited about mathematics. It sparked the interest in me to go back to school and get my masters in Mathematics with a particular focus on Fractals. (I know this makes me sound like such a huge math nerd, but I can't deny it). I left the conference around 5:00 and headed back out on the streets of Nice to see what I could see. Ironically enough I ended up in hair salon. I had been thinking about doing something different with my hair and so before I knew it I was in a chair in front of a very French airstylist named Pascal watching inches and inches of my long hair fall to the floor. I watched in the mirror and continued to ask myself do I really want to be doing this?? An hour later I walked out with light, layered, hair that looked totally different than when I went in. On my stroll back to my hotel I stopped in many shops along this main strip of stores that ran parallel to the street that our hotel was on. I kept catching my image in the glass of the store windows and having to look twice to make sure that it was I.
When I arrived back at the hotel, the others (Mark, Tracy, and Ian) were getting ready to go grab a bite to eat again. We had arranged to meet at 7:00 so that we wouldn't miss each other. We strolled just a little way and then ended up at a cute little Italian restaurant. Unfortunately we did not have such a cute little waiter. He was incredibly rude. One member of our party, Ian, speaks French well enough to translate for us. The problem was the gentleman refused to get us what we ordered and then refused to admit that he had made the mistake. It was incredibly frustrating but we tried to make the most of our meal anyway. There was an accordion player and a little dog on the stage and we sat next to a table of teachers that were at the conference from Belgium. The atmosphere was nice; it was just too bad that the waiter was a jerk. From dinner we walked to an Irish pub that was recommended to us. We each sat and had a beer but we were too full to have more than one. The pub played American music and there was a group of (I would say) 15 year olds next to us drinking and dancing. After our drink we headed back to our hotel for another early night of check in. We promised each other that we would not eat a big meal tomorrow night so that we would not be too full to go out to the discos. And off to bed we went.
Luckily the route to the oceanfront went right through the old part of the city. The streets were extremely narrow and filled with tiny little shops. There were lots of shops with olives and vinegar; also common were tapestries and fabrics, pottery and olive oil. I spent all afternoon browsing through the little shops and looking at all the beautiful things. Eventually I made it down to the waterfront. The coastline was absolutely breathtaking. I walked the boardwalk for what seemed miles and just stared out that the Mediterranean teal blue water. The cities coastline was built up with very old building that seemed to hang right over the water as if they were carefully balanced there. I took a lot of pictures and even went down to the beach and took off my shoes to walk along the waters edge. It was a little cold but nothing intolerable. I soaked in every second of that fabulous afternoon.
When it was time to go out we realized that we were without Ian. It turned out that Ian had run into old friends from his last teaching assignment in Cairo and went out to dinner with them. He gave Mark a ring to try and meet up with us but as you will soon see, our evening did not work out as planned. Under the suggestion of Isabelle (our little French librarian) we decided to head to La Siesta, a dance club on the other side of town. We knew that it would be far so took a taxi. Well calling a taxi was quite an adventure in itself and after several tries; we resorted to asking the gentleman at the front desk of the hotel to help us out. Once we were in the cab we realized how far across town was. It took us over 20 minutes to reach the place and about 30CHF worth of French francs. We continued to reassure each other that this was supposed to be the best disco in town. When we arrived (finally), no soon had we stepped out of the cab, we were told by a bouncer that the club was closed for the night. So we climbed back into the cab (extremely disappointed), paid another 30CHF worth of French Francs and headed back to the other side of town. The cab driver, which spoke very little English, said that he would drop us off at another disco that was within walking distance of our hotel. That sounded good to us, as we were still in the mood to dance, and needed to be uplifted from our expensive disappointment. So once he dropped us off we walked to the nearest ATM (since we had spent all our cash on the taxi) and then walked up to the entrance of the disco that we had been dropped off at.
Mark, Tracy, and I were stunned. After a delayed reaction we quickly decided that for some reason destiny had decided that we should not get into a disco that night so we, rejected, turned around and started toward our hotel. So nightlife in Nice was not something that we had the opportunity to partake in. Sunday morning came early, as we didn't get back to the hotel till well after one. I had wanted to try and find a French mass but had the conflict of one more workshop that I wanted to attend at the conference. I decided that since the school was paying me to attend the conference I had better check that out instead.
As I strolled toward the end of the market I heard someone yelling my name. I looked over and was shocked to see Isa sitting at one of the many outdoor cafes having coffee with her friends. Very excited that I had found them, I sat down and introduced myself. Her three friends were very friendly but spoke next to no English, so with my very limited amount of French, unfortunately conversation was very limited. We sat at the caf� for only about five minutes when we saw Peter. Isa quickly called him over and he joined us for a few minutes and just as we got up to go find another restaurant for a little lunch we say Giovanna. So we all headed down the street to find a restaurant. We ended up at another Italian restaurant although this time everything went smoothly ordering (as we were with a group of French natives). It was a very nice meal but unfortunately I had to leave a little early because I had made arrangements to meet Tracy and Mark to take a bus to the aero port. Isa, Peter, and Gio were going to take the same flight but I didnt want Tracy and Mark to wait for me.
So I walked back to the hotel just in time and we walked to the bus station together. We planned everything with plenty of time and arrived at the aero port about an hour before our flight. We had a little bite to eat and then headed to our gate. The flight was smooth and our ride back to Leysin went fine too. I arrived in Leysin in time to go to the Sunday night movie (Coyote Ugly), so from the movie I was in bed by 11:00. A full yet restful long weekend. I enjoyed Nice but happy to be back in Leysin. I knew that I only had three and a half more days until my next trip (Barcelona) for Thanksgiving. I would have to say that Nice would be very enjoyable to do again when I had more time to do more to do sightseeing stuff.