Jour 5 Nice: Monastère de Cimiez

By this point in our trip, we'd explored two and a half cities and we were tired. And after our climb up Colline du Château, we were really, really tired. But, since it was only midday, we wanted to explore some more and not waste the day. We decided to hop on the tram and head to the Monastère de Cimiez.

Before we headed there though, we decided to grab some lunch. We walked back towards the Promenade du Paillon and towards Place Garibaldi to look for a good spot to grab some food.

Eventually, we ended up at Le Sully, a little restaurant in the plaza. Again, this reminded me so much of Rome! Eating semi-Italian food al fresco in a piazza with a fountain?

We shared three dishes. We had gnocchi with a fresh tomato sauce. The gnocchi was kind of dense and greasy but the tomato sauce was super sweet and delicious. I would've drank it with a straw, if I had one.

We also got "bruschetta" (which was essentially like a French bread pizza) called the 'reine' with jambon, mushrooms, and mozzarella.

And we got a second "bruschetta" with three different cheeses: mozzarella, goat, and blue. The blue cheese was excellent.

Our lunch was pretty yummy; it hit the spot. But, we thought we should also test out a second Fenocchio location for dessert.

We tried to hang out on the playground with our cones but we got scolded by two French police officers. It was pretty embarrassing. All I heard was, "S'il vous plaît... seulement... les enfants..." (Please... only... children...) and we hopped off and scurried away.

Since the monastery was a bit farther away, we thought we'd try and take the tram for the first time.

It's €1.50 per ride. You just hop on and shove your ticket into the validating machine. There's only one tram line and it makes a U-shape through the town. We hopped on at the Acropolis stop and got off at Pont Michel, which is where the tram terminates.

From our map, we had thought it would just be a simple climb up to the monastery but it turned out to be somewhat monstrous. We'd tired ourselves out a bunch that morning already so it was somewhat daunting. But, having made €1.50 ride all the way here, we decided to suck it up and get up there.

There are people that live at various levels along these stairs and I am so impressed that they are willing to make the climb day in and day out to get to their homes. We did a little spying on this person's garden. It was so cute and they had a whole patch of strawberries.

I guess with that climb, they get a nice view.

After the initial climb, we reached a paved road and caught a lovely view. But after that, we had to climb some more stairs.

Walking into the garden is like entering the Secret Garden or Wonderland.

There's a sweet little fountain and some pretty shrubs.

But, walking up the next little set of stairs is where the real treasure is. For us, it made the intense stair climb worth our while.

There's a garden up here that will bring even the sourest grump a ton of joy. By the way, yes, that's kale.

There are hundreds of gorgeous roses and the smell is intoxicating.

I think I took 100 photos of these roses. Can you blame me?

The monastery itself was also quite beautiful, though we didn't actually venture inside.

Spot the baby sis!

The climb back down the mountain was a lot less strenuous.

So that's what we did in Nice. It's an awesome town to visit and quite affordable and I think you need to plan a trip there ASAP!

"Today, nothing is impossible."

Cheers!