Swimming in Nice with the local fauna

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Again I attended some of the seminars however it does get a bit tiresome listening to people talk about very technical details that i can't understand. There were some interesting presentations from Columbia, about dealing with a species of plant that was taking over a lake, and there were some more presentations from Canada. By the end of the day most of the students and the people attending the conference would just be standing outside chatting.

After the conference finished, at about 6pm, i went for a swim with some of the graduating students. The beach in Nice is very accessible no matter where you are and there is an artificial stone beach. I would definitely prefer a sand beach but i am not gonna complain since the water is so clear, blue and beautiful. We swam way out to the buoys (a good couple hundred meters out) and i am pretty sure i saw some sorta jellyfish or something else floating just under the surface of the water. It kind of looked like this:

I guess i was a bit freaked out considering that in Bermuda you had to be so careful when you saw jellyfish. The funny thing was that i had been talking about the Portuguese man of war (jellyfish) a few minutes before i saw this thing. Anyways, i just swam aside and didn't see anything else in the water.

Later that night there was a banquet on the beach for the people who were attending the conference and the graduating students were also invited. I didn't have a ticket but since i was hanging out with some of the students who were going i was able to get in.....the man who was organizing the whole conference said if i waited around a couple minutes, he would see if there was enough space. Well i did get in and i enjoyed a nice buffet with lots of seafood and of course some French wine.

See ya,
Steph