Turkish Treats and Dreadful Dining

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Hello my fellow travellers!

This morning we headed out together with François again to visit the old Roman settlement of Cemeneium located not far from here, close to the Cimiez Monastery. The first stop was the monastery and boy was it beautiful! Both the Franciscan Church, the Cimiez Monastery and the monastery park are all absolutely amazing! The Franciscan Church houses some truly wonderful paintings, especially the painted ceiling is breathtaking!

Not much of the Cimiez Monastery is open to the public since there are still monks there but the parts that we could visit was quite nice and I even got to see one of the monks which was kind of cool. The park outside used to be tended to by the monks but it's now under the responsibility of the city of Nice but it's still quite beautiful and located with a stunning view of Nice. Me and Andreas sat down here and François took a beautiful panoramic picture of us that almost looks like it's framed by the terrace.

Afterwards we headed to the Gallo-Roman settlement which is not all that big but quite nice, especially the old bathhouse. The coolest part though is the quite well preserved amphitheatre that is located a bit away from the settlement. That one I would actually put on the must see list in Nice!

With that we again said goodbye to François since he wanted to visit the Matisse Museum which neither me nor Andreas was very interested in doing so we took the bus down to the port of Nice and from there changed to the bus going to Monaco. It's only 1.5 EUR to go there which is a very cheap way to visit a new country!

In Monaco we started by visiting the Prince's Palace which is quite beautiful, not the grandest I've ever seen but still very beautiful. Especially the view from there is beyond words as you can see all of the city from up there. As we were walking around on the grounds I pointed to a big group of tourists that was laughing, photographing and talking quite frantically and told Andreas that I could hear that they where from Turkey.

As I stood there watching them a middle-aged lady asked me if I could take their picture and I replied yes in Turkish and she looked a bit surprised but didn't quite react until she asked if she could take our picture in return and I thanked her in Turkish. That however set off a funny chain-reaction of hilarious responses and attempts at communication. My Turkish is bad to say the least but it was enough to get her contact information and of course we took a good picture of us all together.

When we had walked around the Palace area of Monaco we walked down again and continued on to the beautiful Monte Carlo Casino which is marvellous. Unfortunately it's not allowed to take pictures inside and I even had to hand in my camera and cellphone so I couldn't even snap any covert pictures like I usually do! Neither me nor Andreas are the gambling types so you will unfortunately not be granted any grand stories of our fortunes around the tables. Afterwards, while sitting down in the park outside the casino a nice little pigeon became quite friendly with me and even nibbled at my outstretched hand. That was the actually second nice moment I shared today with a bird because I also made good eye contact up close with a seagull over by the Oceanographic Museum. Thinking about it I also spotted some overly cute pigeons by the palace so it's been a good day for birds!

Since we felt quite satisfied with Monaco and quite burned by the blistering sun we decided to take the bus back to Nice. It stopped though at the outskirts of Monaco to let on some form of controller I believe but the didn't check the tickets of anyone but rather seemed to check the logs of the driver. Whatever it was it took for-freaking-ever and when the bus finally started rolling there was a spontaneous applause across the bus!

Returning to Nice we decided to head back to the restaurant we visited yesterday but they unfortunately didn't serve food on weekends so we went to a restaurant across the street instead. Bad choice as it was dreadful! The meat was really dry and hard to chew and Andreas meat was even burned! As he sent it back they returned with the same piece and then it was even more burned! It was like charcoal by then! Then they told us that they didn't have any other meat so Andreas had to order something else so he ordered a salmon pasta which was better. The attitude of the waitress now was however really bad and she was acting very disrespectful, even saying that surely mine was cooked well. I quickly dismissed that because my meat was also way overcooked!

As a final loving touch they also charged us for the meal we had sent back so we had to send out the check to be adjusted and well we were not happy campers!

Tomorrow we will take a day trip to Cannes, I'm looking forward to it!

Until tomorrow I wish you all peace and happy travels!

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