France

We caught a bus from Genoa to Nice, France on the 30th of October where we spent two nights enjoying walking along the beach and coming to terms with another language change. I managed to dust the cobwebs off my high school French so that we have been able to survive comfortably for the past 12 days. Nice had a relaxed seaside vibe along with the little bit of glamour that is the French Riviera. One of our favourite things here was the public sparkling water fountain haha. We are big fans of sparkling water and back home use a soda stream to minimise plastic waste. We made an effort to refill our bottles as much as possible. We read about locals who make a trip once a week to refill 10 or more bottles instead of buying plastic ones like they used to!

We also caught the train to Monaco for the morning. It was only 20 Minutes to Monte-Carlo where we saw the casino and wandered around looking at the extravagant buildings, shopping malls and super yachts. It was an interesting place and felt like it would be a lot of effort to live there and keep up appearances.

After Nice we caught a bus to the port city of Marseille. The city has a lot more areas which are run down and full of graffiti than some of the other European cities we have visited. Other parts are quite beautiful however. We liked the waterfront area as well as the Panier district which has a Provence village feel, along with a little bit of street art.

Our next stop was Lyon which I absolutely loved. The city has a lot of historic buildings as well as lots of little local restaurants called Boucheries. These restaurants are specific to Lyon and used to be a way for working men to enjoy well cooked meals made with local produce for a good price. Holding on to tradition a lot of Boucheries have a menu heavy with offal and try to use all parts of the animal. As we had been cooking most of our own meals we treated ourselves to a three course traditional boucherie meal. For the first course Matt had a pigs trotter and snail tart, I had a braised beef cheek and pumpkin risotto. For the second course Matt had beef with parsnip purée and I had a quenelle, This is specific to Lyon and was very rich. It was a fish dumpling served in a lobster bisque. For dessert Matt had a chocolate pistachio tart and I had a crème brûlée. After this along with a bottle of red wine we were very stuffed walking home. This meal came in at $110NZD which is to date our most expensive meal. We thought though the price wasn’t too dissimilar to a restaurant back home with drinks included and when in the city which is known as the home of French cuisine we just had to. This also meant coming in 10 euros under budget each day for the next six days.

Our final stop in France was in Paris for four nights. With 20 different districts the city is enormous and choosing where to stay was difficult. We ended up staying in the 18th district of Montemarte which was absolutely perfect. I really loved this area and it had that romanticised feeling of Paris which I was hoping for. Cobblestone streets, lots of markets and the best pastry shops made us not want to leave our district for too long. Having an Airbnb apartment made it feel a lot more local too. We spent the four days walking between districts, seeing a few monuments as well as visiting the Louvre museum. We cooked all of our meals using produce from the markets. The mushrooms here are so so good. We also got into the habit of having pastries and desserts everyday, sometimes twice a day haha.

Climbing the Eiffel (Matt very concerned about some parts rusting)

Montemarte ❤️

Louvre – so many incredible works of art. We were here for nearly four hours and only saw two floors.

One of my favourites

One of Matt’s favourites 😬

Right now it’s 12:30pm and we are at the airport getting ready to fly to Morocco where we will spend two weeks. France has been absolutely delightful and we can’t wait to come back. On our next trip we will probably hire a car to visit more of the countryside and also definitely go back to Paris.