Seafood Splurge

On my last day in Nice, Gerry and I had a seafood splurge. We went to the market and brought loads of seafood, most of which I had never tried. We set up the table on the baloney.
We started with sea urchins. I never even knew you could eat sea urchins. We started with herbal tea.

Table set with our sea urchins

Inside a sea urchin

 Sea urchins are very difficult to eat. You need to cut them open at the beak which means holding them on the spikes! And they are purple. There isn't much to them. The orange stuff is the only stuff you can really eat. The black/green stuff is not nice! Though the liquid is good when you dunk bread in it.
The next course was sea snails. We had two different types. And a very nice white wine called Pouilly Fume from the Loire valley.

The big sea snails

The little sea snails (purple!)

Enjoying snails and wine

The big ones were nice though I preferred the slightly smaller ones as they were less chewy. The little ones were nice. They really were purple. In the Roman empire, they used to grind them up and use them for purple dye. As you need a lot to make enough dye to dye a robe, this was only for the really rich, so the deep purple became a sign of the rich and influential. But we only had a few so ate them instead! :-)

We also had a violet. This is a really odd creature which looks like a vegetable but it is a oyster without a shell. If you hit it, it goes hard because it is a huge muscle. They only grow in the Med. It was very nice, though once again, not the easiest thing to get in to. 

a violet.

Finally we finished the seafood courses with a spider crab. They had longer thinner legs than a normal crab. 

spider crab

Waving goodbye to the crab as it valiantly gave his life!

The crab was very tasty.

Dessert was a 2 course deal again. We had some cheeses for the first part and some little pastries from my favourite bakery. The cheeses were good, especially the goats cheese with cranberries.

Our cheese table

Pastry mouse!

It was a good way to spend my last day in Nice. And very French! I will miss France, especially the food and wine and the sun. But it is good to be home. :-)

Night carnival and closing ceremony

Last week I went to the night parade with Deanna (and have finally sorted through all my photos). It was great, though the parade is the same as the carnival parade in the day, which was a little disappointing. Still I got my photo taken with some of the entertainers. (And Deanna is good with a camera so I have more than me with a pair of Madonna style boobs!) She also had a thing for the Italians guys in the tights, which was fine with me as we got a few pictures taken with them! :-) They certainty had nice ... form.

I love the abs!

Smiling Luigi and a tired Mario

Me and the Italian men in tights!

Sunday night was the closing ceremony and fireworks. I went down and sat on the beach to watch. They burnt a replica of the King at sea. Very dramatic and very creepy. The arm would not stop moving and then the head feel off! It reminded me of when the Termintor was set on fire and keeps coming after you! Still fun. :-)

The fireworks were amazing! The best ones exploded into hearts. And others were stars. That, I have never seen before. My camera was useless. I took some videos but they aren't that great so I just sat back and enjoyed. And laughed and clapped like a little kid. They lasted for about 30mins and were brilliant. Someone put a lot of time into it. They played music with a sports theme. Including "3 lions on a shirt". And who said the French hate the English?
After that I walked home, which is a hike but the trams were packed. So I decided to just walk the 50 minute walk home. It was a good end to the carnival (though my feet were killing me by the end).

Parc Phoenix

On Saturday, the weather was lovely so I went to Parc Phoenix with Deanna and Marie-Chloe. Parc Phoenix is a large park, petting zoo, and one of the largest greenhouses in Europe, out near the airport. We took the bus out there (I wish English public transport was that cheap). And at only 2 Euros to get in, a bargain. I am pretty sure we were the only group without children but we made up for it by being as excited as some of the kids at times.
The gardens were beautiful.

The gardens

Seating area.

There were lots of little streams and waterfalls

The park has a strange variety of animals including otters, kangaroos, crocodiles and guinea pigs.

That foot sticking out looks really uncomfortable

The G-Force team on holiday

He stared at us the whole time.

Anyone home?

There is also an Avery with parrots, owls, ostriches and otherbirds.

Hiding parrots

Having a groom

One of the owls

Dude with serious afro!

In the greenhouse, there is a waterfall in the centre and different areas branching off. There was a beautiful garden of Orchids (my Mom would have been in heaven!).

Pink poinsettia

Orchids

Ground orchid

There is also an aquarium and bug house, which as always gave me the creeps.

Dory and Nemo(s)

"I'm coming to get you....And your little dog too!"

I think my favourite was this guy. He was very chilled out and just munching away.

Cool dude!

The most bizarre thing was the tortoise valley, as they called it (I think). This is just a small section of it and everyone of these is a tortoise. They really need to have a word about safe sex and population control with these guys!

LOTS of tortoises

Battle of the Flowers

Yesterday I took the day off and went to the Battle of the Flowers (Battaille de Fleurs) with Deanna. It was down on the Promenade Des Anglais, along the sea front. I had brought a seat ticket but decided to stand instead as you get more flowers. The carts go up and down the promenade and thrown flowers into the crowd. At the start, they are mainly these little yellow flowers called mimosas. However, once they are out of those, they start literally taking the carts apart and stripping them of their flowers. Lilys, roses, sunflowers, carnations, all sorts. I really wanted a sunflower but alas. Unfortunately some of my photos didn't come out as the sun was on the wrong side of us. (Though I got some great ones of the backs of floats!)

Throwing Mimosas at the crowd

I got one of the red lilies on the top at the end!

More lilies.

On the Eagle of Nice float.

Garlands of flowers

The back on one of the floats

Another float.

There were also dancers and carnival bands going around at the same time. And a lot of costumes similar to what I imagine you would see in Rio. (Some could really have done with more material.) Deanna and I decided there was way too much eye candy for the men and not nearly enough for us!

Dressed as flowers

Rio type "dress"

Blue bird

With drum band from South America

One of the parade queens

One of my favourite ones was the bubble machine. What is it about bubbles that makes you feel like a kid?

Bubble machine float

Lots of bubbles!

Unfortunately, we were standing next to these two young teenage boys. Now, you would think that would be a good spot. What self respecting teenage boy would jump and yell and fight to get hold of flowers? Well French ones apparently. And they had longer arms than we did.
Anyway I did manage to get some flowers. :-)

My flowers!

Corso Carnavaleque

On Sunday afternoon, we went tot he carnival parade at Massena. We got the cheap tickets, standing but got a great place. The parade comes down the road and turns in the square. We were standing in the square so the floats went around us. I was expecting barriers but there weren't any. You mingled with the floats and parade. It was amazing.
If you dressed up, you got in free. And there some great costumes.

Buzz Lightyear, cleaning up!

These guys really made a effort (and got me with silly string later!)

 It was the place to be. There were celebrates everywhere! :-)

The Royal Family showed up.

Will and Kate

Even the Pope...

...and Barrack put in an appearance

The floats were amazing! There were 20 in total, all on the theme of sport, in honour of the 2012 Olympics. 

Roi du Sport, king of sport.

Reine Du sport, queen of sport

I'll leave you to make you minds up about this one...

Shot silly string and streamers at the crowd.

I have no idea what she is doing...

Wacky races car.

On the doping scandals in sport.

Huge monkeys before the India float

Scared lots of kids. Its eyes flashed!

 And the costumes were amazing. In between the floats were dancers, musicians, and entertainers.

White dragon

In front of big bird cousin.

Dancing Daffodils

Unfortunately the head was cut off the photo!

These ladies were on the last float...

 After the carnival, we headed to a bakery for something to eat and drink, and a much needed sit down. It was a great day and I am looking forward to the other parades on Wednesday.
(I'll put more photos up on Facebook as I took hundreds!)