We had a good sleep in today. By the time we had all used the bathroom it was 10am & we went out in search of breakfast. Found a place not far away where we all selected a pastry & we then headed to the promenade to eat them. It was a gorgeous sunny day with bright blue sky & we felt a bit too hot in our jackets.
Nick & I are thrilled to have sunglasses on for a change, but Cam is less thrilled & is finding the sun annoying. 
We wandered the promenade for a while surrounded by lots of wealthy old people. We admired the cafes on the beach & decided that could be something for Nicks birthday.
The beach is just grey stones & pebbles, but the vibrancy of the sea & sky seems to compensate for that. We sat on the stoney beach for a short while & got nice white-grey stains on our bums.
There was an old wrinkled topless woman beside us...does she think she looks good? This would certainly be an interesting place for people watching.
We decided to find a supermarket to get drinks for our room, & then took to our room, all had a drink & removed a layer of clothing.
We headed back out again, this time towards the old town area. Along the way we noticed signs about the Nice Carnival (which runs from 13 February to 1 March) & the flower parade was at 2:30pm today. 
We decided we'd better find somewhere for lunch so we wouldn't miss the parade.
Making a decision about where to eat is always difficult & so many of the cafes & restaurants were packed...so we eventually agreed upon a salad place called So Green. You picked from around 6 different kinds of salad leaves & then selected each vege, meat, cheese etc that you want ....a bit like sumo salad at home, but portions were enormous. 
Turned out to be really expensive but I enjoyed having simpler fresh food for a change & Cam enjoyed his smoothly. The coffee was pretty awful though!
We then followed the crowds towards the parade area where there were hundreds of police blocking the roads. Turned out you had to buy tickets to see the parade €35 each for seats in a stand, or £10 each to just stand along the road. We had to quickly find the queue to buy last minute tickets & then another queue to get in.
The boys weren't too bothered about seeing a parade but I thought it would be crazy to miss out when we'd managed to coincide our visit with the carnival. (This further explains why I struggled booking our accomodation here & also why our train fares back to Paris were so expensive).
We got in just before the parade 'Bataile de Fluers' started...and it was really good & very colourful. The whole parade fills a circuit & it takes 90 minutes to see the complete circuit go past.
Many of the floats had beautiful girls on flowery floats throwing flowers to the crowds. 
I was pretty excited to catch some flowers fairly early on, but the boys kept their arms crossed as didn't want any. As the parade progressed some people got a bit aggressive grasping for the flowers, but there really were plenty to go around. 
Other acts included opera singers (not that talented) up high in voluminous skirts, drummers, synchronised flag wavers, massive coloured balloons, 
musical floats, ethnic dancers....and many more. 
One of our favourites was a gigantic bug that breathed smoke & had acrobats hanging off it...wow! There was also irregular bursts of streamers & confetti. 
Many in the crowd (especially kids) were in fancy dress as well & street vendors were selling masks, balloons & coloured silly string to the crowd. I bought some blue & yellow silly string cans, but it got a bit messy & we didn't like to spray strangers with it. 
After the parade we made our way into the old town. This was as fabulous as Lyon only there was more of it. I wanted to photograph everything as it all looked so "French".
There were places to eat galore as well as shops selling cheeses, butchers, chocolates & gorgeous soaps. Once again I was wishing I could bring it all home...if only! Nick had read about a gelato place that we needed to try so he looked it up on his phone & marched us past many nice looking gelato place until we found Fenocchio. There were lots of people queuing to buy but we needed the time to make our selection. There was an incredible choice of flavours (94 all up) including things like olive, tomato, basil, beer, violet, jasmine, bubblegum, mojito, and every fruit imaginable.
I choose salted caramel & vanilla meringue, Cam had coke, coconut & cinnamon, while Nick went for guava, fig & cactus. 
We had a tiny taste of each other's as we sat at outdoor tables in the lovely square. Yum!
After this we looked at the church in the square 
& then kept wandering around old town 
heading towards the port area. We eventually got to the port & admired some of the extravagant boats moored there.
I really liked the small colourful boats though, so we kept walking for a closer look. 
I decided to go down next to the small boats to get better photos...bad move! I had just handed Nick my phone & stepped forward & took a massive skid in some green slime ending up on my side on the ground. Didn't do obvious damage but my whole body jarred, head hurt a little...& my left side was covered in green-brown slime. Decided we needed to go back to the hotel to change into my only other outfit. Unfortunately it was over half an hour walk. Luckily the beautiful scenery & setting sun made up for my discomfort.
Back to old town we headed & made a relatively quick decision for us- an Italian place that seemed to have very nice pizza....& it did. They looked enormous but they had lovely thin crispy bases so we didn't waste any. 
The pizza place happened to be just round the corner from the gelato place we'd been earlier, so we couldn't resist. This time I tried passion & lemon meringue, Cam had white chocolate & ginger chocolate, & Nick chilli chocolate & rhubarb. Very full now!
By the time we got back to our room tonight we had covered 18km today. Not so many stairs here though.
Lying on my bed, taken panadol & I have a very sore left rib & expecting some bruises to show up in the morning. Bit of a bummer & I have been so careful after my foot injury.
Nice has been very nice today!
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