A Mini Disaster

Nice France - Saturday, May 22nd

From the airport in Nice we take a taxi to our hotel. 40 €. = about $50 AND 
we give him a tip… But the Hotel Ellington is nice. On a beautiful tree 
lined street a bit away from the active tourist area but close enough to walk 
where ever we want to go. The room is neat and pretty spacious for a 
European hotel. There is free wi-fi in the bar area and scads of black and 
white prints of jazz artists on the walls.  

We drop our bags on the bed and I scurry to change the lens on my camera 
to hit the streets.  "Oh no." I discover my card reader is not in the camera 
bag :~( .  This makes my need to get out and into a store  urgent – No card 
reader –is a disaster in the making.  We get directions to a nearby FNAC  
(a Best Buy type of store) and are on our way. At FNAC they only have 
CF card readers that use a USB connection – bad news for me – it will take 
forever to download images from the 5D Mark II…. I buy it anyway, but 
get directions to a professional camera store - just in case.  

With no time to waste, most stores will close soon and since tomorrow is 
Sunday, and Monday is a National holiday – there will be no chance to 
purchase a card reader if I don’t get it today. So it is off on a trot…. We 
make it to Rue Massena and a gaggle of tourists but luckily, Arta-Photo
store is still open, and they do have a card reader that connects by Firewire.  
Whew…. disaster averted.


Click on photos to see full size.......

Rue Massena  - only pedestrians are allowed.  

Restaurants and shops line the street.

The street vendors waiting patiently for the all the stores to pull down their shutters.

Once the regular stores are closed for the evening, 
the street vendors display their wares.

On Our Way

My daughter, Charlotte won a fabulous, all expenses paid trip, and decided to take her mother on a wonderful vacation. Round trip to France and then a Mediterranean Cruise on the Legend - a small boutique ship of the Seabourn Yachts line.  She was tickled pink and I was tickled pink too.

I planned to Twitter, Facebook and Blog my thoughts every night - but realized I forgot to order an International Data Plan when I looked at the "free" AT&T message on my phone - each MB of data will cost me a whopping $19.95 - so long "Tweets" it's good old pencil and paper and the computer keyboard from this day forward...



We arrive at the Paris airport sleepy and sore from an eleven hour non stop over the polar cap (and Iceland - boy were we lucky the Eyjafjalla Glacier volcano decided to settle down ).  

After sitting on our bottoms so long our feet are swollen.  I knew better than to take my shoes off - but Char forgot...

The Paris airport, is pretty much like any other airport - there are people sleeping or using their "devices", eating food or reading, anything to take the edge off the boredom -  but in contrast, it is also very different from our good old LAX -  gigantic and dare I say it - beautiful.....  glass and steel and modern seating everywhere you look.  

Can you believe it - all the announcements are in French :)  It made it just a bit difficult for us to find our way to our connecting flight- but we made it, and were soon on our way to the French Riviera and Nice.  


Good bye Paris - we explore your neighborhoods when we return next week...

Looking down I see a harbor filled with yachts and later learn it is St Tropez.

We land in Nice and the Cote d' Azur