Vegan in Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) ~ Day 1

Antibes

 On my first day in France me and my mother woke up earlier than the rest of the group so we could go to the Bio Market and the Casino supermarket near my apartment to stock up on food! Before that I only had a slice of bread with strawberry jam that I got on the mini-market the day before.

On the bio market there was a big selection of vegan cereals and cookies, as well as non-dairy milks, but I was expecting there to be more meat alternatives than there were. 

On the casino supermarket we mostly got our basics (rice, pasta, beans, vegetables, etc) but we also found a few Vegan labeled fake meats, which was great! We got them for me to try them. 

One thing that I saw a lot in France that really isn't a thing in Portugal is a bulk section, pretty much every supermarket had one, so bring your produce bags and jars to France since it's so easy to avoid plastic there! Unfortunately I still haven't found convenient reusable bags to buy in bulk (as I said, buying in bulk isn't really a thing where I live) so I didn't enjoy this as much as I wish I had.

After going back home and enjoying a cup of almond milk with cereals from the bio market, we went on to explore Antibes.

Not my picture, got it here; I forgot to take pictures, hopefully won't happen again

At around lunch time, we stumbled upon Graze, a small vegan restaurant. I had read about Graze in Happy Cow but didn't look at the address, so finding it while we were wandering around Antibes was a funny coincidence! We went in to have lunch, and again, didn't take pictures.

Honestly, I wasn't too impressed. The food was good but it came in small portions. The south of France is a very expensive place and this restaurant wasn't an exception, so I would probably take food with me if I visit Antibes again. Since it was so expensive I ended up not getting dessert, which is probably why I'm disappointed. 

We went back home and I tried some of the cookies I bought at the bio market.

These were probably the best vegan cookies I've tried! Plus, no palm oil and had "Commerce Bio Équitable" symbol, and commerce équitable means fair trade in french. My only problem with these cookies is that they come in so much plastic! Each box had 5 packages of 2 cookies each. 

 Since it was still early, we then went to enjoy the pool before dinner. 

 At dinner time, we had a few veggie burgers, also from the bio market, with some funny oven fries shaped like churros. The burgers were okay, a little bland in my opinion, but the churros were awesome, I'm way too into fries. 

We finished the day trying to understand some French TV and planning our trip to Monaco the following day...


Read also: Day 0 ~ From Lisbon to Antibes