A Nice stopover

The last week seems to have gone really quickly, and we are actually in Barcelona (and about to move on from here tomorrow), but I wanted to fill in the blanks so I will be able to remember where we have actually been- Nice.

The main street of Nice

After an amazing month in Italy, we hopped over the border and took a train to Nice. Second country we have been to (third, if you count the Vatican), and sadly still no stamps on the passport. Though we think this is only a good thing, so that if our travel plans run a little slowly, the whole 3 month Schengen visa won´t be an issue (fingers crossed).

I can now say I have been to the French Riveria, which sounds really fancy and swanky. And the truth is, that´s exactly what the area was- a rich person´s holiday destination which isn´t so good on a backpacker´s budget. Nice is a beautiful place, but a strange one as well- there´s a main street lined with every possible shop imaginable, a pebbly beach with rocks about the size of half my hand, really clear blue water that was so nice to swim in; yet you go a couple of streets back or head out at night time and the place has this different vibe, as if all the rich people have headed home and then it´s just the somewhat seedier locals hanging out on the streets. It´s not a place with any ´must see´sights like Italy, so we were looking forward to spending 2 nights there just relaxing before moving on to Spain. At least that was the plan.

The Old Town of Nice

Tuesday night came, and the plan was to head to Spain the next day. We had worked out that a late night bus would be able to take us to Barcelona in about 11 hours, and since it was the cheapest option and we could save a night´s accomodation, we were going to try out sleeping on a bus. We tried booking the bus, and that´s when we realised that an international journey is probably not something you want to book the night before. After spending hours struggling with the spanish bus website, finding a guy in the hostel who spoke Spanish so we could try booking over the phone, we eventually realised Spain was not going to happen the next day. And that turned out to be very lucky.

It turns out our friend Georgina, who has been working on a super yacht sailing around the Med for the last 4 months, was anchored just 10 minutes away in Cannes. It just so happened that she sent us a message on facebook while we were struggling with the buses, asking where we were, and it was very exciting to realise we were so close to each other! So we decided to take the next day to catch up with her, and added another 2 nights to our time in Nice.

By 10 the next morning we were with a familiar face, and it was great to catch up and hear her stories of life on a yacht, and the eccentic rich people she had to work for. We toured Nice, and saw the Old Town, which was by far the nicest area of all, found a pirate-themed lolly shop with barrels of lollies everywhere, walked through a food market, and went to the beach with her. Glad we were in Nice for longer than we planned!

The hostel we stayed at was basically an old hotel converted into dorms, but it was a lot of fun- 2 euro pasta and wine nights and two great English guys staying in our room made for a good four nights. We didn´t actually eat out in Nice at all, because it was so expensive compared to the relatively cheap Itaian food, and plus we couldn´t pass up the 2 euro pasta that was on offer every second night.

When we weren´t at the hostel, we did get to explore the Riveria a little in daytrips. First, we went to Monaco, a place with waaaaaaay too much money. Monte Carlo in Monaco was just full of casinos, and the streets out the front were lined with every fancy car imaginable. It was pretty amazing to see though, because the whole area has these perfectly manicured gardens and fountains everywhere. Even the McDonald´s there was swanky- overlooking the harbour and fitted out like it was an underground nightclub or something. It´s sad but I was actually impressed by that. Since we weren´t up for losing our money in a casino (and we don´t have any clothes nice enough to go to a place like that), we ended up spending the day on the beach. They had smaller rocks there which were actually nice to walk on, and it was the closest thing to sand we were going to get!

Our second daytrip was to Antibes, based on Georgie´s recommendation because that´s where she lived before she started on her boat. Antibes is about halfway between Nice and Cannes, and it has a big shipping port on one side, a main centre which isn´t too exciting, but then an old town on the other side which was very cool to see. It´s full of tiny little streets and markets and was one of the highlights of our time in the Riveria. They also had all these amazing looking French patisseries, and it took all of my willpower not to just do a ´bakery crawl´ through the streets of Antibes.

Five days later, and we got our Easyjet flight to Barcelona. It was only 50 minutes until we arrived in Spain, and all I was thinking was ´lucky we didn´t get that bus´....