Nice. It was OK. :)

Nice Nice. Ah yes, I do amuse myself!

Anyhoo, thankfully, intrepid readers, we did just find Nice nice. It might be a super-happening rich people haven in summer, but we found it quite quiet, relaxing, definitely a rich-people place with all those fancy yachts and big apartments, but generally… not overly exciting. We both agreed that 3 nights would have been too much if it hadn’t rained on one day, effectively making it a bit of a shorter explore.

The Cote d’Azur is beautiful. And lives up to its reputation in that way. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the cliff-hanging drive there (nothing on Croatia, and we’re talking 6 lanes of safe goodness, but I think the Croatian experience combined with Rome’s mental drivers got me all jumpy and whatnot for a while) and it was a long drive from Verona so it was a relief to arrive. And, we hoped, find some food other than pizza and pasta. I know it sounds snooty, but in other countries we’d been to, you could at least find food that’s not national food - the locals even get into a bit of variety. Italy…. Not so much. It was yummy as in Verona, but it was still time for some choice.

But don’t go to Nice for choice either - they have beautiful bouillabaisse and seafood dishes, such as paella, but in the ’cheap meal’ category you’ve got… pizza and pasta. Although we did find a kebab shop (that we attempted to eat two days in a row) and I was asked (after ordering hideously, without a phrase book and without even a basic knowledge of French) by the only fellow customer why I was eating kebabs as it was food for muslims like him. The French-speaking owners had no idea what we were talking about… After I recovered from my initial shock (wondering if I’d inadvertently boobooed) it turned out the guy genuinely thought that non-muslims had no knowledge of kebabs, and so I (and Nick, when he returned from the bottlo) was a complete curiosity to him. Us three had the best chat while we waited for the kebabs, and it was such a novel experience to be talking to someone in English, who is actually an emigrant from a French colony in Africa, dressed up in a suit (because it was a strike day - one of many - in France but that’s just what you wear) in a French kebab shop, explaining about the Australian tradition of the late night kebab shop. Ha!

So, unlike Croatia, where we found an Enlgish-Croatian phrasebook quite easily, the same was not the case in France. I would definitely advise getting one before you travel somewhere, because it sucks being so restricted that you can’t even speak general niceties (something we had tried to do all along our trip) and ask where things are and just generally work out what someone is saying to you! So we lived in a bubble really, just us and anyone who spoke passable English - which thankfully covers most people who work in restaurants. We did indeed eat some yummy food there, and once again (after Italy) we embraced the meal deal phenomena of 2 meals and a bottle of wine, or food and matched wine for one. It was a pretty place, and we explored the market-filled streets of the old town (way more expensive than Croatian markets, so I kicked myself for not going to town while in Split), climbed the hill at the entrance to the marina with the old monastery and castle on top, and just… relaxed.

Oh, and there was one funny moment when driving along the winding coast road, still in Italy, when Klaus’ oil light came on, indicating that he would like a litre of oil when we next filled up. No problems right? Ummm yeah. Try having a diesel car, for which the log book’s completely in german but has a table indicating something about different oils for different freezing/ambient temperatures, and being in Italy - with little Italian - where the Italian for diesel is “gasolio”. Sweet. After about 15 minutes of standing at the rack, gaping with an open german manual, a german translation book and an Italian translation book - an attendant came over and helped, with much better English than my…well, my anything… but still very basic English. Ahhh. I was so happy to hand over the oil choosing, and his little mate even put the oil in for us, thereby relieving us of all responsibility, or so we felt. But Klaus was fine, and that was the main thing. Phew! I have no idea if he understood that I couldn’t read the manual cos it was in Deutsche, or just thought I couldn’t read, but all was well in the end.

Oh - noteworthy re Italy but I forgot to say - toll roads are really expensive, but it’s way better than winding through mountains on crappy roads. And we got into a traffic jam on one of those roads that goes on stilts for about 30 km through the mountains, this being the only major road that goes North-South up the leg of the boot from Roma - and there was barely half a lane altogether extra (I.e. maybe a metre on either side) before the barriers and a 50m drop. And this being also the only trucking route… there was an intense number of trucks (we literally would have seen thousands that day) and yet still those crazy drivers were ducking up the 1 m area where the ambulance and traffic control were miraculously supposed to go, and zigzagging where they could through crawling traffic. Horrid. Annoying. And we did consider that maybe we might die there, starving and irritated with the local driving habits. But we didn’t. The trucks involved would have been backed up over 30 km from the accident (our max was 10km but the driving rules there mean trucks in a particular lane for certain stretches of road) and so those trucks would have been 3 or 4 hours off schedule. At least. Ahhh, Italy.

Here’s the pics from Nice anyways!

Two views of the Castle Hill, fair and foul weather. Still pretty either way.

MY (capitalisation deliberate by the way) awesome artsy pic along the main beach in opposite direction from castle, marina on the other side, and where we were staying.
View up to the castle hill with the excavations of the ruins of a 13th century monastery. Definitely worth the walk up the hill.
10s/100s of millions of boat dollars, and then expensive real estate. Ah, the place was just all money!!!
Fountain. Still pretty cool, but by Nice we'd seen better. Ooooh, I AM such a travel snob now! :)
The only tram/train line I've ever seen that "does" grass. Yes, noteworthy. Riveting? Perhaps not. But I already told you Nice was only “nice” my friend, not intriguing or riveting. So there.
Hmmm. Art in a park surrounded by rich people hotels.
You really notice that the streets are different everywhere. I think it was one of the coolest things I found about travelling, that you'd always know you were somewhere different just by looking at the streets.
More "art". Still - interesting to look at, although I don't particularly find it thought provoking! Outside museum of modern art (or its French translation, no doubt. Not that I'd know!)
Below... view from castle.
Below you've got bouillabaisse and paella, that’s one for me and one for Nick by the way. No wonder we had a few kegs each to lose when we got to Liverpool!