Day 21 Neitzche Hike in Èze

We hit our steps max today - 28,378 - totally unintentionally.

Our destination was Éze, an historic town nearby 1400ft up overlooking the coast - another venue where Neitzsche hiked back in 19th century. Seems we did it the opposite way to everyone else, though.

We took the streetcar to Vauban station, where we caught bus 82 to Éze. Ticketing was smooth & intuitive - not like Vélo Bleu. Soooo glad we caught the bus there and got a seat, because at the first stop it was jam packed with people - standing room only.

A lady from Switzerland, who was traveling with her teenage daughter, asked if we could open a window, which got me into a lovely conversation with her - and a chance to practice my French. She was “Tellement gentille” and didn’t even grimace too much at my French.

It was so crowded getting off the bus, we instantly headed off to find the trail - no actually we headed off to find a toilette. Surprise! There was a sign saying “Fermature de 13h a 13h30 pour le déjeuner. “ YIKES only in France . . . .

We didn’t pause to tour the city, just headed down the trail. It was super steep with slippery gravel and rocks. Took us a good hour to get down - stepping carefully. This is when we realized that most people were heading up from the Éze train station below.

At the bottom of the trail we found a small outdoor restaurant and ordered our usual Niçoise salad. An older couple from Germany, who were touring around Europe in their large motor home (5 wheeler) sat next to us and we got into a good long conversation with them.

The decision then was whether to take the 100 bus back to Nice, but the “royal we” decided we should climb back up to Éze - not the trail we came down, but another route that All Trails suggested. Glad we had that app as it managed to get us almost to the top - heading straight up the whole way. See video.

John, we were thinking of you throughout the climb - and agreed that Neitzsche was crazy, fit - or both.

We ended up at a bus station below Éze, so thought we’d wait there for the 82 bus to come down. It came by shortly thereafter - but zoomed past us. The bus driver had obviously never picked up anyone there before.

To make a long story short, we ended up walking 12.4 K back to Nice - arriving at 7:00pm. The plus was that we wandered through a different section of the old town and found a great shop with fresh fish. We picked up fresh tuna - what a treat. We also wandered thorough some quaint streets we hadn’t seen before.

Needless to say, I was happy to get home, crack open a 1664 and chill a bit.Read more