We made it to the Riviera, baby!

Greetings from Nice, on the gorgeous French Riviera! We just arrived at our hotel in Vieux Ville, which is French for "Old Nice with hotels that have tiny rooms with funny smells, wet carpet, and random stray cats on the patio." We left Provence this morning after a fabulous day yesterday. We began yesterday with a quick trip to the Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct. It was enormous, and we got to go down to the waters below and wade around while tiny fishes pecked at our feet. After Pont du Gard, we took an unplanned detour to the Haribo Bon Bon Museum in nearby Uzes. We paid 6€ apiece for some free samples and an interesting journey of how sugar and gelatin become those delicious gummy candies we all know and love. Unfortunately for us, the sweets machine that gave more free samples was only giving out licorice (like Good n' Plenty), which both of us detest. We wandered through the boutique, and pondered buying a 5 lb. bag of gummy colas, then left before we did something crazy.

We drove into downtown Uzes, which was in the throes of their crazy Saturday market and grabbed a quick lunch of galettes and cider in the 95+ degree heat. Cider goes down really easy when you're sweating it out instantaneously. After Uzes we made the drive to Avignon, at which point I was pretty much done sightseeing for the day. We walked through Avignon, seeing the Palace of the Popes and the gardens surrounding it, with a great panoramic view of the Rhone River valley. Since going all the way on to the famous Pont du Avignon cost more €, we just walked underneath it and took a bunch of pictures. We high-tailed it back to our hotel in time to soak in the pool for a while and chat with our fellow guests, motorcyclists from Grenoble (in the French Alps). They invited us out for a beer in town, which ended up turning into more beers, something called a Monaco (beer, grenadine and lemonade for Emily), and a phenomenal dinner at a local 'gastronomique' restaurant. We had tons of great food, great wine, and most importantly, great company with these new friends. Merci, Patric, Lucia, Kristophe, and Jocelyn! We will never forget the great time we had with you!

We left Provence this morning and headed due southeast for Nice, with a quick detour at the Chagall Museum and Matisse Museum. Highly, highly recommend the Chagall Museum--it was a fabulous collection of some of his lesser known works, as well as some unbelievable stained glass windows, sketches, and a lot of good personal history. It left me wanting more, the sign of a great museum! Matisse was also a good collection of his works, intermingled with those of Rodin and other contemporaries. While it was interesting to see how similar the styles of the time were between sketches, sculptures, paintings, and other art forms, the layout of the museum left something to be desired. No good flow, but still great works of art. We are now sitting on the 'patio' of our hotel, watching the crowds marche on by, and getting ready for our evening promenade. We have Wi-fi here, so we will post our pictures as soon as we can.