Nice

I'm a little behind on posting, it's been a busy few days and accessing an internet cafe hasn't been as easy as i'd anticipated. Here's an overview of our time in Nice France, which I wrote out while I was on the train on the way to Paris.

Nice was, well, nice. :P We arrived in Nice around 10:15 am, then we stood in line at the train station to book our train to Paris. It was a good thing we did too, because the night train we'd hoped to take to PAris had a full quota of Eurail passes (they only reserve so many spaces for Eurail) and the early train to Paris the following morning only had spots in 2nd class left. So we booked those nad set out in serach of a hostel. WE'd gotten some names of hostels from the trousit information place, so with map in hand, off we went.

The first place we found was nice, it had a courtyard with palm trees, a little cafe and glassed in eating area, a kitchen where we could prepare food AND a 3 person room available with ensuite shower and sink!!! So we took it.

Unfortunately we couldn't check in till 3 pm, so we went exploring. We discovered that right down the road was a full on grocery store (Monoprix)!!! It was like a fancy Fortinos with pharmacy and LCBO and clothing store included. So we picked up some meat and cheese and croissants for lunch and went in search fo the beach. WE cound it along with a nice park where we had lunch (the croissants were the freshest, best I'd ever had, I am FOREVER tainted! ha) WE strolled along the boardwalk and looked into some of the shops lining it. I had a chocolate from a little chocolate boutique, we looked at some clothing stores, then we returned to our hostel to check in.

Once we were into our room, we secured our valuables in one of the lockers and put on our suits. THe beach was not too packed, but it was different because it wasn't sand. It was all smooth stones ranging from the size of a penny to a CD. We laid out our towels and basked in the sun (since it was after 3 pm, sunburn was unlikely - but we still used suntan lotion). The temperature was a glorious 32 degrees, but with the wind off the ocean it felt a lot cooler. We even went in for a swim, which was pretty cold, but we couldn't come all this way and NOT swim! It was great.

After the beach we picked up some penne noodles, sauce and Emmanthal cheese and a bottle of red wine, which we made up for dinner. It was as good as any dinner out (especially since we were sitting at a table in a glassed in porch) but MUCH cheaper.

I had a GREAT sleep that night, we even slept in till 9 am. Then we ate the breakfast provided by the hostel. It was composed of cereal, orange juice, hot drinks and fresh bread with butter and jam. Very good!

The rest of the day was spent shopping, eating and lounging on the beach. While we were at the beach we got swamped by a HUGE wave while lying in the sun. No one was too worse for wear, Denise's camera was ok, we didn't lose our shoes (although they did float away a bit). It was hilarious. Wish we'd had a video of it.

We went to bed in good time again, woke up tired but refreshed from our 'vacation from our vacation' and hopped on the 7 am train to Paris.

As I'd said before, when we reserved our seats for this train, the woman at the ticket counter said there were no first class spots left. So we had to reserve 2nd class seats, which is a bummer because we paid for first class tickets. She said when we got on the train to ask the conductor and if there were spots we could move to first class.

Well our tickets ended up being a saving grace. One of the men in our compartment in 2nd class had the worst BO and it was making us all nauseous. We had to wait until all the pick ups had been done to see if any first class spots were left, but thankfully there were and about halfway through our trip we were able to move up to first class. The rest of the ride was spacy, comfortable and BO free!!! :)