Here are still more photos from our time in Nice.  This wraps up our final few days there.

Here are the girls and I at the (apparently) famous fresh flower market.  It was beautiful!

I am usually not a cactus fan, but I thought these were very pretty.  Might've bought one were it not for the difficulty of getting it back home on the train.

Vacation can be very tiring for a little girl like Kirianna!

Night time on the boardwalk.

Doesn't Aliyah look happy to be there?!

And here it is!  These nasty creatures kept us on our toes during the whole trip!  Even though things were better after the first two days, Lance still ended up catching about a half a dozen in the days that followed.  I thought it only appropriate to snap a picture.  They are pretty, but very painful!  And unfortunately, hard to see in the water!  Good riddance!

We met a nice English family on the beach who had three sons, the youngest of whom was Kirianna's age.  They very kindly let the girls borrow their Batman boat from time to time.  The girls loved it!  Here Aliyah is laughing at her sister who got splashed in the face.

part of Old Nice

Would you believe that is Aliyah under there?!  She fell asleep in the boat out on the water!  So the guys brought it in and I covered her up.  She slept for quite a while like that!

Kirianna wanted to try getting in the water without her floaty.  She didn't stay too long and she kept a firm grip on Daddy, but at least she tried it!

Dinner our last night there

What a cutie!

Me and the girls.  Aliyah was pretty tired and cranky by the end (in case you couldn't tell!).

The girls loved this "statue"!  They wanted to go and see him every night!

Here we are at one of the many ice cream places.  This one had over 90 flavors!  You wouldn't believe some of the flavors they had! 

Getting ready to call it a night....

And that's a wrap!

Now we can move on to some photos from "normal life" next time!

 Here, as promised, are photos and summaries of our vacation in Nice!

. 

After a long train ride with two very restless, ("Are we there yet?") girls, we finally arrived in Nice.  After disembarking, we lugged everything to the tram where we crammed on with everyone else.  We then got off the tram at our stop and began the process of lugging all our affairs through the narrow streets in the hot sun to the apartment in what they call "Old Nice".  As you can tell by the name, this is the oldest part of the city.  This includes our apartment building, which was most likely constructed when Nice was established  -or a least when it was a Roman colony. By now we are hot, sticky, tired and sweating like pigs.  We walked into a very dingy stairwell, which probably has not changed much since it was first built during the Roman occupation. When we finally got up to the door, we saw a sign asking us to please take off our shoes.  But as soon as we did so, we regretted it because the floor had obviously not been cleaned very well.   To make matters worse the apartment was on the third floor with no AC and only one small oscillating fan.  We obviously weren't going to be cooling down there anytime soon!  Time to head to the beach!

We arrived at the sea after a short walk and quickly found out that Nice is NOT known for its' sandy beaches!  In fact, the beach is made up entirely of rocks.  Not long after settling in, we discovered that this particular section of beach was dealing with a jellyfish infestation that day.

Below, the girls are on their way to the water for the first time!

This was taken before Kirianna got stung by a jelly fish!   Our first two days there, it wasn't hard to spot one, especially after you heard someone near you crying out after being zapped!  Poor Kirianna got it bad on her leg (it left a mark) Obviously, that put a quick end to our very first day on the beach. 

We went back to the apartment and got cleaned up a bit, which included sweating some more, then went out to eat.  After all this, Lance had the audacity to say, "It can't get any worse, right?!"  I laughed and said, "Don't even go there!"  After dinner we returned to the apartment to discover that we had room mates!  Yep - cockroaches.  Yay!

Needless to say, Lance and I did not sleep well that night.  Between the heat, the mosquitos (real and imagined), the roaring scooters, the cockroaches (which I just knew were ready to crawl all over me as soon as my feet hit the floor!)  and the voices that sounded like people were actually in our apartment, we found it hard to get some decent shuteye.    The girls slept okay, but woke up with mosquito bites all over them (no, they do not have screens on their windows here.) 

Here is a photo that Lance took of us at breakfast that morning.  I posted it because the look on our faces, though not flattering, pretty much expresses how we were feeling about the whole experience so far:

After an expensive (but good) breakfast at a local cafe,  we had to make our way to two different stores to do some grocery shopping.  When we got back to the apartment,  Lance had to fight with the old vacuum cleaner to get it to work. Then he had to fight with the cord to keep it from retracting.   After he had worked up a good sweat vacuuming, I mopped the floor (because "mopping" was high on my list of things I wanted to do on my vacation....) and cleaned the bathroom and kitchen a bit (again, real high on my vacation list .)  Are we  having fun yet?!

After a late lunch,  we finally made it back to the beach that afternoon, hoping the jellyfish were mostly gone.  Lance went to check on it while I set up.  Seeing our two little girls, the first thing someone says to me is "Watch out for the jellyfish!"  Apparently, they had decided to stick around to see how many more innocent people they could get their tentacles into.  Kirianna, of course, is a bit leery about getting back in the water (as am I)at this point!  Turned out to not be much of a problem after all.  Not long after we got there, we heard some thunder.  We looked up to see LOTS of big, grey clouds heading straight for us.  The thunder continued, and soon the rain started to fall so we were forced back to the apartment, all the while cursing everyone who had told us we would have plenty of sunshine and no bad weather in Nice!  (Are you getting the picture yet?  It's like a series of scenes from a comedy)  So we went back to the (now clean) apartment and the girls watched a DVD while Lance went to an internet cafe.  I read a magazine for a while and then decided to try and lay down for a bit.  I had been laying there for about 5 minutes when the banging started.  Apparently, while I was thinking it was a good time to get some rest, a neighbor was thinking it was a good time to start his home-improvement project.  Which apparently involved a very large hammer that resonated loudly every time he banged it against...well, against-who knows-what.  At this point I just began to laugh and said, "You've got to be kidding me!!"

We did have a nice dinner out that night where we talked about our hope that things would get better soon and that it would actually start to feel like a vacation! 

Thankfully, things did get better and the rest of the time felt like a vacation!  Below are some shots of  different parts of Nice.  Enjoy!

Old clock tower near our apartment

In town, waiting for the tram

Me and the girls at the sight of an old fortress overlooking Nice.

View of the beach and Old Nice from the fortress.

Memorial built into the side of the cliff

This was the girls' favorite part of the day!

Not sure what they are saying here (carousal, maybe?), but it sure is cute!

"Kirianna!  Don't choke your sister!!!"

A view of the beach/town in the evening

Getting "just their feet" wet (yeah, right!

During which, Aliyah peed her pants.  Lovely.  That ended our evening out.

Well, this blog took me FOREVER to finish (lots of interruptions).  That said, I have plenty more pictures to share!  When you are in a beautiful place with very cute kids, you take a LOT of pictures!  More to come another time!

The title and photos speak for themselves!  A few weeks ago Lance bought a HUGE watermelon from a local fruit and veggie store.  It was sooo good!  Very sweet and juicy - just ask the girls! 

Gotta' love it!

Even Mendi got in on the action!

The view Lance had while eating his watermelon....

Would you believe she gobbled up most of our rinds?!