laduree - Travel With A Butterfly

Ah… Nice! The most central location for the French Riviera. Nice is probably the best place to serve as your base when visiting French Riviera. In fact, it was where we stayed most days when we were visiting Monaco, Eze, Menton, Cannes, and almost went to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferret if it weren’t time constraints.

Today, I will write a blog about the two hotels we stayed at, and the random things we did around Nice. If you want to find more information about where to eat in Nice, you should check out my Bakeries to Fine Dining Restaurants in Nice blog post as I cover a few bakeries, and from a simple café to a one star Michelin fancy restaurant.

For everything about French Riviera, here are the couple of blog posts you should read about as well after this – my first time at Cote D’Azur, one day itinerary at Menton and Monaco, one day itinerary for Èze and Cannes, visiting a vineyard at Chateau de Cremat, seeing lesser known touristy spots like Saint Maxime, Verdon Gorge, Plateau de Valensole, and Gréoux-les-bains, and a weekend at Saint Tropez.

Let’s start.

Continue reading The Ultimate Guide For Exploring Nice

A short excerpt from Jan. 4, 2014 while on the train to Paris, “It’s Saturday 9am. I’ve only slept a little over 2 hours at the moment. It seems that the taste of beer hasn’t completely left my stomach yet. Neither my stomach nor my head seem to be friends with me right now. I am dehydrated. Instead of sleeping and waking up early to catch the 6:18am train to Paris, my friends and I decided it would be better off to party our asses off. We initially tried Ministry of Sound at first. Yes the legend, the place where all EDM was created and played and the record label that produces many many super DJs. To our disappointment, the place was closed. It was cause Christmas and New Year apparently was an extended holiday in London, more like a 2 week vacation than a 2 day vacation. No problem. This time we decided to check out Funky Buddha. It was a risk – we were wearing tourist clothes; well I was. White pants with stain. A fur jacket which was layered with another twin jacket, a mullet, and white shoes, the killer of going to a classy club. Anyway we tried going in and boom there we are, we managed to get into the ‘Sugar’ (old HK club) of London. BURP. There’s another weird taste lingering in my mouth. That’s the taste of the salted roast beef we had walking back to (my friend’s) place pretty much passing Brick Lane and all the sketchy places there was but that salty roast beef was amazingly good.”

Arriving in Paris, I clearly wasn’t in my best state. Neither did I have any time to recover as I had a short two day weekend before my trip back to London. So within this short span, I was determined to visit all the touristy locations in Paris. This included little sleep and well organized planning. Continue reading C’est Paris!