Nice is (you guessed it) nice!

I left Marseille yesterday, taking an easy train ride along the coast to Nice. I didn't plan with this in mind, but it was a good decision to go from Marseille to Nice rather than the other way around because although I liked Marseille, it's a lot "grittier" than sedate, elegant Nice. I think if I had been to Nice first, I would have just thought Marseille was dirty. (I mean, it was.)

I have quite a nice hostel here - it's just a couple blocks from the sea, and easy walking distance of all of downtown. I'm sharing the room with four other girls: an American, two Australians, and one English girl.

This morning, I decided to go down to the large open-air flower market:

There was a lot more there than flowers - it took a lot of self restraint not to buy everything. There was all sorts of produce, and also mushrooms, olives, spices, cheese, meats, oils, and bakery items. And, of course, the homey crafts, like crocheted Kleenex box covers, that are apparently ubiquitous the world over.

One of the food specialties in the South of France is called socca. If you combined falafel with crepes, you would get socca - it is a thin pancake made with chickpea flour, then sliced and folded up. The Spanish guy at the front desk of my hostel said that I should get socca from Theresa, who sold it at the flower market. She wasn't hard to find as there was a long line. The production method for the socca was kind of entertaining. They were not made on the spot, but rather, a man would ride up on a motorbike/scooter with a tiny little trailer. From the back of the trailer, he would unload one large socca pan with freshly made socca. He would trade Theresa for an empty pan, get back on his bike, and leave. Theresa would set the socca pan down atop a trashcan grill, drizzle olive oil over it, and slice it up, wrapping each portion in paper and handing out the portions - 3 Euros for a portion. Once she had sliced up the fresh socca, we would all stand around and wait for the man to return with another pan. It took about half an hour to get my socca, but it was worth it - it was hot and really good!

Here is Theresa slicing socca for the assembled crowd:

I didn't feel like paying to sit at Theresa's "restaurant" (plastic chairs around folding tables) so I did the American thing and ate while I walked around the market. After I finished my socca, I wandered through the edges of Nice's "old town". This is pretty much what you would imagine when you think of old timey France - narrow, winding streets, full of restaurants, cafes, and stores. I was half wandering and half looking for La Cure Gourmande, a candy shop recommended to me by Alexa. Finally, I found it. It was a wonderland! I tried to take a picture without looking like a weirdo:

The photograph doesn't really do justice to the abundance of brightly colored, enticing candies that overflow from the shelves. The front section (lower right corner of the picture) is all sorts of delicious looking bakery goods. The left hand side of the picture is a wall of hard candies and lollipops in every imaginable flavor. The other side of the store is chocolate and caramel. I walked in, eyes as big as saucers, and could barely take in all the colors and candies around me. To top it all off, a clerk (who I think the store must have hired for his resemblance to Johnny Depp in Chocolat) suddenly appeared, opened a box of chocolates, and offered me one. IT WAS AMAZING.

Though I was pretty sure I was dreaming, I decided to get some caramels since I figured they would travel in a backpack better than the chocolates, and this way I could satisfy my sweet craving that I often get after dinner. My little bag of caramels rang up to 11.80€, but given how much money I COULD have spent in that store, I felt I was getting off easy.

I walked back to my hostel and am currently waiting on my roommates to return because we are all planning to walk up to "Le Chateau".

[Note: I just checked to see if La Cure Gourmande ships to the States, in case anyone is looking for a Christmas present for someone they either want to impress or fatten up, but it looks like they do not... anyone want to start an import business??]

Here is one more picture I took this morning, looking from the edge of the flower market out to the Mediterranean: