Vegan in Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) ~ Day 7

Nice and back home

I had the last of my cereals and soy milk before we had to check out of our Airbnb, at 10am. Since we only had to be at the Nice airport at 19h, we decided to spend the day in Nice, have lunch there and get to know the city.

We decided to have lunch at Hard Rock Cafe, since I had seen the menu beforehand, but we were pretty far from it when we started getting hungry. So instead of heading back and cutting our walk short, we decided to have ice cream instead! All around Nice (and all Côte de Azur from what I saw on this trip) there are ice cream parlors, which sell a lot of Sorbets, that are usually made only with fruit and sugar (always ask if they have anything without milk, or "sans lait" in french). I got mango and raspberry, and it was so good!

  It is a shame though the disposable plastic they come in. I never get the cone because I don't think it's vegan and it's easier to ask for cup than ask the cone's ingredients. I might start walking around with a reusable cup, a spoon and a napkin so I can refuse in these situations and still have ice cream, but I haven't tried it yet so I'm not sure these establishments permit it.

Anyway, we kept walking and taking pictures and admiring how beautiful this city is, while heading slowly to Hard Rock Cafe.

It took a while so when we got there, we were already hungry again. We had a seat in the restaurant, got our menus... and I noticed that I had misread the menu before.
So what I had read that I thought I could order was the Veggie Leggie, which I thought was a burger which instead of the patty, had a grilled portobello mushroom. It also had mayo, that I could easily ask not to put.
But, when checking the menu in the restaurant, I saw that it actually said that it had a veggie patty and was topped with mushrooms.
I've been vegan for a while, and I've learned that when a non-vegan place has a veggie patty, it usually contains egg. Still, I asked the waiter, praying he said it didn't...
But it did... to hold the burger together.
I was heartbroken, I had seen fries pass by me and they looked so good... We asked the waiter if they had any vegan options and he said "Not really".

Since I didn't want to bother the rest of the group, me and my boyfriend ended up leaving the others at Hard Rock Cafe and went searching for somewhere that had a vegan alternative.
Luckily, just next to it was a restaurant that served pizzas! I ordered a vegetarian pizza without the cheese, and I was so pleased with my meal!

Once again, I forgot to take a photo before I started eating, but I actually quite like how the pictured turned out

It turned out to be cheaper too! The Veggie Leggie was 18 euros, while I paid 12.5 euros for the whole pizza, which is not bad for an expensive place like Nice.

We then continued our stroll. It was a hot day and we kept looking at the beach, wishing we could go and swim a little, but we had an airplane trip later that day and it wouldn't be comfortable be sitting on those chairs covered in salt and sand.

We saw a couple of Subway restaurants while we were walking, and I thought maybe it would be better to get a sandwich there to take to the airport since I didn't know whether or not I would find vegan food there. I ended up not doing that since I thought that the airport would have at least one thing I could veganize. Spoiler alert: Big mistake.

 I was starving by the time we got to the airport, and went around to look for alternatives to have dinner. The problem was that , not only there were no vegan (or vegetarian!) options, all the food was already pre-made. There were pizzas, salads, wraps and sandwiches - all already displayed, in their packages. I asked in a sandwich place if they could make me a sandwich but they told me it wasn't possible.
I couldn't find anything to eat but bags of chips in the duty-free store. So all I had to eat was chips and left over bread we had brought with us.

When I got home I was too tired to eat anything, so I went straight to bed.

And that's how my vacations ended. I still had a week before school started to get back to my regular routine. I have to admit, I missed Lisbon. I love traveling, but home is definitely my favorite place in the world.

Read Also: Day 6 ~ Villefranche-sur-Mer