Day 17 Off to Nice

Saturday morning a “herd” of students arrived - good time to leave. We had 4 trains to catch to make it to Nice.

The trains in Rio were running late, and we had tight connections, so we decided to catch an earlier one. Good thing we did, otherwise we wouldn’t have make our connections.

At Rio it was standing room only, but leaving Cinque Terre it finally thinned out. The humourous part of the trip was watching people use the toilette, which we faced on 2 of the train.

Our conclusion - about 60% figured out how to lock the door, the rest ended up “exposed” as people assuming it was unoccupied pushed the button and the door opened. Must confess I was one of those people. YIKES!!! lesson learned - perhaps why I was so amused when it happened to so many others.

Once we hit France, the trains were relatively calm until we hit Monaco, when hordes of young “beautiful” people piled on. Interesting that no one checked passports or tickets going from Italy to France. In fact in Italy we were only asked to show our Eurail pass 2 times - either we looked old and innocent, or it’s an honour system — and you don’t dare get caught.

Our check in went quite well, although we had a bit of trouble with the fob and 3 keys they gave us. We then headed out to get a bite of lunch and explore Nice.

WOW what a city - 7 k of beaches from port to airport, broad promenades- totally different from the narrow streets of Cinque Terre - amazing views of the Mediterranean Sea, beautiful historic building. So much to see & do.

Some highlights were the Promenade des Anglais all along the sea, and 7 statutes in Massena Square that represent the 7 continents and are called Conversation à Nice. The colours constantly change.

Fortunately our place is in the heart of all this. Tomorrow we’ll stock our fridge with the essentials - wine, beer & food and start really exploring.Read more