Desti-Weddi, Cacio e Vino: Ça va? A Nice Rendevous

^{My first destination wedding and it’s in Italy. We first started the trip lounging around Nice; with a side quest to Monaco and Eze. Then met up with some friends to explore Rome and the Vatican City. Took a train to Florence and ate some delicious foods before joining wedding crew. After a White Lotus experience, we attempted to stay cool in Pisa and Florence.}

Planning for this trip was a bit exhausting. 1, there was an initial desire to plan this trip as a group but a majority of our mutual friends were wishy-washy on going. 2, flights from SAN to Italy weren’t easy to find and the ones with manageable layovers were pricey. Thankfully, I had an abundance of American Airlines (AA) AAdvantage miles. So I was adamant on applying them on this adventure (alliteration bb). After a bit of researching, I ultimately was able to use AAdvantage miles on a SAN>PHL>NCE flight.

This was the first time we visiting the Sapphire Lounge in SAN and it was a great way to justify going to the airport early (forgot to take pics as per usual). We were stoked to check the one out in PHL during the 3.5hr layover. But San Diego decided to be extra foggy so we were stuck on the runway for around 1.5hrs, cutting our time in the PHL Sapphire Lounge to 50 minutes. Thankfully it was close from our gate but we definitely had to rush to get eat some dinner (again, forgot the pics). While there, I noticed that the last row on our flight was empty, so I decided to change our seats last minute. The space was nice but the one flight attendant talked the whole time. So it was pretty difficult to sleep. Oh! This was Carolyn’s first time flying internationally since she was a teen. It was a bit humorous seeing her surprised that the flight meals were free.

We landed in Nice a little after 13:00 and had our sights on socca. There are only two train lines from NCE so getting to the city center/Old Town is really easy. It was about a 40 minute train ride to Port Lympia and from there a 5 minute walk to Chez Pipo.

After resting at our Airbnb we strolled around the neighborhood. It was mid-June and it was getting hot and humid. I’d be lying if I said the stroll was completely pleasant but the walk to Colline du Château was worth it. The waterfall was refreshing and the view is arguably the best in Nice. We made our way through the Old Town for dinner at Peixes. Coincidentally, the city was prepping for some oceanography event so the area had oceanic decor throughout Promenade des Anglais. The next day we took a side quest to trip to Monaco and Eze. Getting to Monaco is really easy to get from Nice. Getting back to Nice was a whole experience of its own that landed us wet in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

We manage to get back for dinner at De Gesu (which was recommended by our Airbnb host). I’m glad we pivoted to this spot because it was hella good. Though I’m still curious how that Vietnamese restaurant that our friends recommended.

Our flight out of Nice was in the afternoon so we had the morning to explore the Old Town in the morning. We walked a portion of the Promenade des Anglais and sat on the beach for before getting walking to Rene Socca for fried sardines and one last socca.

To be transparent, I had my guard up when I got here. I held on to the snobby, anti-foreigner French stereotype. Instead we found the people were patient with our English, wasn’t standoffish, and the people were actually… nice. Carolyn and I agreed we would want to come back and explore more of the French Riviera. I mean look how inviting that water is.