Nice, France / TLP

Yeah, you guessed it...we recently took another long weekend trip to Nice, France to visit Lana's relatives and enjoy the southeastern coast of the country. Lana's relatives, an Aunt and Uncle from the UK who have a home in France as well, actually live in a town just to the east of Nice called Eze Bord de Mer...it's between Nice and Monte Carlo. The drive from our place took about six hours, but about an hour was spent stuck in travel due to an accident north of Genova, Italy. The southeast coast of France is fairly mountainous, so from the house we had a great view of the Mediterranean below. Many rich Hollywood stars also have homes around this area...it's not difficult to see why.

After a good night's rest, we decided to drive into Monte Carlo since there were clouds and Lana's Aunt needed to get groceries. The next day Lana and I spent at the beach in the town of Villefranche sur Mer, and actually met up with some friends of ours from the squadron who were in the same area for the weekend. The town was interesting and reminded me of a city on the coast of Italy. Later that night we met in downtown Nice for dinner at a restaurant Lana worked at a few years back. One summer she decided to take a bus to Nice and find a job to pay for her holiday...she found one and stayed two months. It helps she speaks French as well. I tried escargot (snails) for the first time at dinner, and actually thought they tasted pretty good. After dinner about 11:00, a few of us went for a late night swim before calling it a night.

After sleeping in a bit the next day, Lana and I drove north a little bit to a river in the mountains where she enjoyed going during her time working in Nice. The water was very cold, but enjoyable after getting over the initial temperature shock. The next day we started making our way back to Sacile around mid morning. Our first trip to France together was great, and hopefully before we leave we can make it to Paris.

More Pictures:
Nice, France

A few days before we took this trip, I was told I had been chosen as one of two pilots from the squadron to attend a NATO tactical leadership program (TLP) at Florennes Air Base, Belgium. The flying course would be for the entire month of October and we would train with fighter jets from many other nations. I was also told I would be the project manager, meaning I was responsible to coordinate with maintenance and the TLP staff to ensure we had all the equipment needed and a place to stay for the everyone. I'm really looking forward to the training and getting to fly in and see another part of Europe...more to come on that.