Once in Nice I had a conversation with brother Tristan that went something along the lines of:
Tris: So where are you now?
Me: Nice. It's so beautiful. Love it.
Tris: Cool... So where are you?
Me: Nice. With a capital N. In France.
Tris: Oh. Fuck I'm dumb.
No Tris, you aren't dumb. English and/or French is.
The bus trip from Barcelona was a long one. I can't remember how long, but let's go with 9-12 hours. After much fitful sleep and attempts to find comfortable positions, we arrived at about two in the morning, probably with upholstery prints and drool on our faces. It's always weird arriving somewhere at night. Everything looks completely different. I remember, as we were driving into Nice, seeing lots of landmarks, like a funky little two story carousel, only to spot them again a few days later and be surprised by where they were. For example, the carousel was across the road from the sea... I somehow managed to miss the sea the night we drove in.
We were staying in 'THE BEST HOSTEL IN EUROPE' (it was pretty good... I've had better. The resident cat was a knob head) but we had no idea how to get there, and so rang reception to be told that they would come and pick us up and take us to the hostel. It was a good start. The guy who picked us up, Shen, also told us not to talk to anyone because 'it's a pretty dodgy area.' Eek. I blame it on the time of the night and the lack of sleep, but Courtney and I also had a conversation when she got off the phone that went something like this:
Court: He had a really nice British accent.
Bron: Ooh... did he sound hot?
Court: He sounded hot.
Bron: I hope he's hot.
Yeah... he was hot. And he could manhandle both of our now very heavy packs at the same time, which was greatly unnecessary, yet appreciated. Hurrah! We had an equally dumb conversation with him where he told us that the hostel staff "Heart Throb"'s mum was called Bronwyn and was nick-named B-Dog. 'Heart Throb' will make a heroic appearance later on in this blog too...
The hostel was up in the hills of Nice and had a gorgeous view out to the sea over the city. Thankfully Nice, infuriating strike and all (a great many people in our hostel were stranded due to cancelled flights) had a really good tram system, so it was a piece of cake to get around. One day Courtney, as a tram was arriving, decided we'd be OK getting on without tickets. We pulled up to a stop and I noticed the terrifying Gendarme-like beret-ed and booted ticket fascists bearing down on the tram. Seriously, they're terrifying. They look like they're more likely to shoot you than issue you with a fine, and they flank every door of the train to stop anyone from getting off without a ticket. Thankfully we never throw anything out and produced two tickets we had from a previous day which, bizarrely, worked. I think we probably should have realised that Nice was not one of the cities you can get away with fare dodging in. Apparently in Prague the ticket inspectors like nothing more than fining cocky tourists, and in Berlin we got booted off the metro for carrying tickets that we about five minutes (literally) out of date. Italy was incredibly lax though. One night in Rome we waited in line for ages only for the only working ticket machine to break. We solved this by Courtney hugging close to me as we went through the turn styles on my ticket without anyone batting an eyelid. In Paris every second person seems to vault over the turn styles and in London there are so many members of staff, not to mention CCTV everywhere, that you'd never get through without a ticket or an Oyster card. If you do end up in Italy or Germany at any point, I have figured out how to spot them. They all seem to sport denim-on-denim ensembles and fetching black bum bags. Far less intimidating than their French counterparts.
A couple of days in Nice we went to a food and flower market that paled in comparison to the giant market in Barcelona, but still had yummy bread and spice stalls that smelt incredible. It was also right next to the sea. The main beach in Nice is pebbles. Just pebbles. Big ones. Every single beach I've seen on this trip has made me feel spoilt to have such magnificent beaches all over the place in Australia. The residents of Nice, on sunny days, didn't seem to be letting the pebbles get them down though, and lay out on towels (ow) and swam. There's a steep stairway up to a lookout over the beach that has the most stunning views of the city and the sea. Such lovely shades of blue.
The beach is incredibly unpleasant on rainy days though, as we probably should have guessed. The day after we met up with Timo we went to the contemporary art gallery in Nice, which was nice, and mercifully small. I like a bit of art as much as the next person, but there is only so much I can take of rooms full of installations of pools full of foetid water and maimed dolls stuck to canvas. Later we went for a walk along the beach, despite the fact that it was rainy and windy and we hadn't thought to bring rain coats. By the end we were considerably soggy and Courtney's hands felt like they'd been in a freezer for a good two hours.
The weather did clear up though and we went on a day drip to Monaco, a good three quarter hour bus trip from Nice. A day trip is all you need to experience Monaco if you are a backpacker. I'm sure if you have a whole lot of disposable income and the urge to gamble it would be easier to spend more time there.
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| The Casino |
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| All above: The Expensive Views of Monaco... |
It was lovely to wander around for a few hours and we climbed up a ridge in the middle of the city that had some stunning views, though fearing the price of food we had nothing to eat but a few peices of fruit. We were also stranded in traffic on a hot, crowded bus on the way back. When I saw Timo in London the other day he recalled that when he got off the bus he basically stumbled out and curled up on the pavement. It wasn't quite that bad, but it was pretty unpleasant.
Whilst in Nice there were a number of protests going on. The one we witnessed was just students (high school age) but it was enough to have the Gendarme out in force and cause many of the shops on the main street to pull down shutters and stick security outside. Official as the cops look, the ones on little scooters we less than menacing.
Our main threatening encounter in Nice had nothing to do with French anger at raising of retirement age and Little Sarkozy though. Our hostel was very near a soccer stadium (yes, soccer, not football) and one day coming back on the tram from the city we got off at our stop to police vans and cops kitted in riot gear. Big sheilds, helmets, batons, helicopter buzzing around, the whole lot. There was also a mob of people heading up the street, but we wanted to go to the supermarket to get the makings of dinner, so walked towards them. A bit stupid seeing as my every sense usually tells me to steer clear of yelling mobs. We all realised this was a stupid idea at the same time and Timo vocalised that we should probably turn around just as the mob fired a flare at the police and the police whipped out their batons (snigger...) We then couldn't go down the only road to our hostel because the stadium was on it and it was blocked by police vans, so were led on a wild goose chase up a different road where we met another six or so people from the hostel who were equally lost, and learnt that one of the trams behind us had had it's window smashed by the mob. We milled around briefly, wondering what to do when with a screech of rubber (I'm not kidding) the hostel heart-throb comes around the corner in the hostel van. Courtney and I even screamed 'Heart Throb' and burst out laughing. All in all it was actually a pretty exciting way to end the day. We got to say dramatic things like 'Chill out. Just keep walking', and further cemented the truth that soccer is the root of all evil.
I really liked Nice. It was incredibly pretty, the Old Town was cool to walk around and the food was good. Even though it wasn't really hot and it rained a fair bit while we were there, I just recall it being ridiculously sunny, with very blue seas, orange and yellow buildings and red tiled roofs. Also, dangerously brown sun bathers. I think it's my favourite experience of France. The people were all nice too, including a hilarious old lady who slapped me on the back of my bare legs, said something in French and then walked away chuckling what sounded like a dirty chuckle.
Next: Marseilles (shudder...)
Now I'm going to go smash, then burn this key board!!
Merry Christmas!!
Bron xoxox
