"Waiting, waiting, waiting"

In my head I've been singing this to the tune of the Dreidel song. All day long. First waiting for a shuttle, then a tram, then a train, then an Apple store appointment and now the train again. I know travel is supposed to be about the journey but this journey seems to flash from stressful! to waiting to crazy! to boring. This is the hard part of traveling alone. No one to share the burden of the stress and no one to fill the wait time with. The fun times of trying new foods, being on the beach or exploring new cities are easy to do alone and often easy to find a hostelmate to accompany. It's all the in-between times that are tough and that means I haven't really relaxed in a long time. I'm constantly on the lookout for danger and fighting my way through simple battles like finding the right bus stop. I will be so relieved one week from today when I meet up with Nathan in Ireland and will finally be able to take a breath. That all being said, I'm pretty proud of myself for how much I've accomplished on this trip given my solitude and my lack of language skills. I might just need a vacation to recover from this vacation, that's all.

So...France! That's where I'm at. I've been in Nice for the past two nights which is difficult to convey in print because the conversation usually goes like this -

"Where are you these days?"

"Nice, France"

"Where in France?"

"Nice"

"What's so nice about it?"

I would describe the city as kind of a cross between Miami and London. It has a really pretty old town district with narrow, winding alleyways that look like they're straight from the sets of Moulin Rouge. And of course the gorgeous blue Mediterranean water doesn't hurt the view. I have already mastered the public transportation system (I know how to take one line in one direction) and my language skills are superb. For some reason my French 1 course really stuck with me, well at least the fruit and vegetable lesson did, so I have lots of terribly useful phrases at my disposal, including "Ou est la pamplemousse?" ("Where is the grapefruit?") and "Zoot alors! Les haricots verts!" ("OMG! The green beans!").

My food goals for Nice were pissaladière and macarons. I've accomplished both and they were pretty good, nothing fantastic. I neglected to try the place with "the best macarons" because they were 20 EUROS each and that's just wrong. I paid 0.70 Euro/each for mine and that's a price I'm willing to pay for mediocrity.

Style alert! I apologize in advance because I thinks this trend is also happening stateside and I probably have some friends who are embracing it but WTF is up with these sandals with leather legcuffs?! Isn't the whole point of a sandal to let your legs and feet get air because it's HOT out? I don't think I've ever thought to myself, "Gosh, my toes are stifling hot but my calves are frigid. I could use some leather stockings right about now." Also, they're really unflattering. See: "prosthetic cankles."

Oh and if you're wondering how the Apple store appointment went, the great French Apple (aka Pomme) people confirmed that iLiana is dead as a doornail. And I wasn't going to pay 700 Euros to buy the 4G version just so you people could have photos in your blogposts. Welcome to mediocrity :)