Nice: Où sont les toilettes?

Time for the Beach!
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The train ride from Cinque Terre to Nice is the most amazing train ride. For parts of it (and also probably when we were sleeping) you could look out the window and see the Italian/French Riviera with the blue waters and fancy yacht parked at the docks. We found a quiet and basic hotel (thanks, Rick Steves!) where we paid a cheap price for a room with 2 double beds, bathroom and kitchenette (where we saved $ by cooking our own breakfast) and SPACE. It was a nice break from being in the cramped hostels. Nice had lots of rich people and tourists. We didn’t have as much time here so the night we arrived, we did some wandering, had dinner at the French restaurant recommended by our friend Rick, and had a couple drinks in Old Nice (Vieux Nice). There were so many weirdos here so we had a great time people watching on the patio of the pub. We were very excited to use our Grade 12 French although we found out we forgot a lot since then!

On the Promenade des Anglais (boardwalk)
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The next day we did the beach thing. We wandered up and down the boardwalk to find ‘our spot’ and ended up seeing a girl squatting and peeing so we didn’t go to that beach. We found a spot with some younger people and lay our towels down on the pebbles (that’s right, pebbles-no sand). I got burned a bit (not a bad one so it’s ok) but Steph and I definitely needed some back massages after lying on the pebble-y beach for so long. The water is blue blue blue and it´s really pretty. We were close to tears when we found out that we couldn’t book the advertised segway tour because that company had moved to Paris. There was some Rick slamming since his book was not up-to-date on the segways!

We were very excited to use our Grade 12 French although we found out we forgot a lot since then!

On the Promenade des Anglais (boardwalk)
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That evening we took the 20 min train to Monaco and felt even poorer than we did in Nice.