I amaze myself
and apparently I'm pretty good at molding hearts by hand

We went to Nice for mon anniversaire!! And, how convenient, it was the first weekend of Carnival!!

The beach was less than a five minute walk from our hotel


Rachelle and Phuong My in front of the pretty water


This is the view to the left whereas Rachelle and Phuong My were straight on and the sun was to the right



Jean and Katie throwing rocks (they'd given up on the rock-skipping idea)


A blurry view from the ferris wheel


Ale and I on the ferris wheel. I think we switched seating positions about 5 times- right now Hanni Phuong My and Jean are on the other bench


Day 2


We spontaneously decided not to wait until Sunday but to go back to the hotel and get in our suits to catch some sun before the parade!


And then came the parade with lots of silly string and confetti and flowers


Float number one



At first they all looked so pretty and by the end they were torn apart from throwing all of the flowers into the audience.


This blue guy had it out for us and they were stocked with spray bottles, confetti, and of course their catapult


Starfish man and the freaky water lady


Another pretty float pre-demolition


Give peace a chance!


I don't know if you can see the limbs hanging out of the trojan horse, but they were there


Showgirls


Those guys were crazy hanging out of their blimp


I loved that guys mask but my picture isn't very good because this is right after he threw flowers at us so I was being pelted unexpectedly


Giant heads!


And giant dragons who could open and close their mouths.. so they tried to eat us of course


Another float....I really should have taken pictures after they'd gone around the circle a few times and lost their flowers


Yay confetti!!!


After we got attacked by streamers


Post-streamers, pre-lots of flowers


I got a pretty sparkly white rose from that guy


The bouquets are growing...


The rose I spoke of 2 pictures ago! Oh yeah, Jean got one too.


The final product= beaucoup de fleurs. It did envolve fighting with some old people...


I could live in Nice


Not the best picture of the crowd with the elephants before the "rush into the water" aka about 10 people went in and they didn't even run ... not impressed. I'm sure we were much more entertaining entering the water the day before. Back to the point- I squared Waldo, the point of the picture because check out his amazing old fashioned striped suit + hat + safety tube (is that what they're called?)


Wandering Vieux Nice later that day


Random alleyway that smelled like laundrey...


Katie showing us how she posed for a picture once


And the last picture before walking on the beach to go back to the hotel to catch our train. It started out nice because we were walking along the beach (the sidewalk was closed because you had to pay to get into the parade of the day to be there) but the problem arose when we came across a river... and the security guard up at the sidewalk wouldn't even let us traverse the sidewalk to get to the other side of the river. And we were pressed for time. SO we hiked up our pants and forded the river, killing our feet in the process because all that's on the beach AND the floor under the water is rocks. It hurt something fierce and when we finally made it back to the hotel after that adventure we were before the others (did I mention we split up?) Anyway, apparently the same security guard let the others so on the sidewalk! gyar!! Anyway.. memories.. I'll have to get the picture that captures the moment from Katie.

Stay tuned for pictures I acquire from the others-