Nice, France
Trip Start
Feb 27, 2008
1
26
31
Trip End
May 28, 2008
Nice,
Provence,
France
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Dear Spar, Thank you very much for being located in nearly every major city in Europe. You're not always very big but you usually stay open late and have good deals on local wines. We appreciate you. Love Kevin and Karla.
That evening we walked along the boardwalk and enjoyed the scenery. Nice is, like most French Riviera towns, long and thin with a boardwalk and a beach along the water. At one end is a harbor where absurdly large mega-yachts dock. The main difference between Nice and all the other beaches I've been to is that the beach is made of ROCKS.
Cannes film festival
That's right, round river rocks about two inches in diameter. This makes it almost impossible to lay comfortably on the beach unless you have a reed mat to spread down. It also makes barefoot romantic strolls around the shore practically impossible. Other than this fact, Nice is beautiful. Day 74 - We woke up bright and early and walked to the post office to finally send our box. The post office was closed. "Unbelievable," I said and walked the Beast of Burden Box back to our hotel. I asked the concierge why the post office was closed and he explained to me that it was a French holiday. "What holiday is it?" I asked. He pondered a second to find an appropriate English word to describe the French holiday. Not finding one, he said: "It's just a French holiday. Banks and post offices are closed today."
Those sneaky bank bastards! It's bad enough that they only operate from 9am to 2pm. Now they want an extra Monday off! This is almost as absurd as one day strikes in Rome. We would try again tomorrow (sob). Not to be deterred by the slow start this morning, we went to the train station and caught a train to Monaco. As you surely know by now, I have a fascination with small countries. Monaco is the second smallest country in the world next to the Vatican City. When we arrived, they had set up for the Grand Prix and the main roads were blocked off with guardrails and chain link fences. The harbor was full of gigantic boats. I thought the ones in Nice were impressive but this put them all to shame. We walked to the Monte Carlo casino and had a look around.
Chateau on hill
I have to pause for a moment to tell you about the best invention I've ever seen. In the Monte Carlo casino are toilets that clean their own lids. That's right! After every use a little arm comes out of the back of the toilet over the lid while the lid spins, sanitizing the whole thing. In doing so, it also warms the seat. I've always dreamed of having a urinal but right behind that dream was the dream of a self-cleaning toilet that would warm the lid so I didn't have to sit on a cold one. Anyway, I digress. Outside of the Monte Carlo casino, a constant parade of $100,000 cars go by. One of the Ferraris revved his engine as if to say, "look, I own a Ferrari." The two cars behind him followed suit as if to say, "look, we ALL own Ferraris!" Again, we had another late lunch. I've got to stop doing this to Karla-for my own good. She gets in a terrible mood when she doesn't eat. I think it was a little bit depressing to see all these people with millions of dollars and know that we didn't even have one of those millions. The wind picked up and it started to drizzle so we left Monaco. A neat place to see, but I wouldn't want to stay there unless my bank account had more zeros behind it. Back in Nice, we relaxed and had some dinner. Karla wanted to have a night in but I coaxed her to walk around with me through old Nice. "Just 20 minutes of walking around. If we find a café we'll stop in it," I said. The walk started off romantic enough but after an hour of walking, I realized I had no idea where I was and there were no cafes to be seen.
Cinema and Karla
We were in a dark part of town and it was starting to rain. This was NOT the romantic walk that I had intended. Thank God I had fed Karla before we left. At Karla's insistence, I asked a pizza boy who didn't speak English where we were and how to get home. Somehow I had thought we were going parallel to the coast, but a road turn and changed names and we ended up going perpendicular way off into nowhere. Luckily I did have a map with me so once we were pointed in the right direction we navigated home just fine. The 20 minute walk turned in to a 3 hour walk but we did enjoy ourselves and we did get to see lots of the city. Day 75 - Today we would finally send the Beast of Burden Box. This thing has haunted us for four days. After waiting in line for an hour at the post office, Karla got the package sent. The French post office was about as efficient as the Oregon DMV just to give you a reference. Next we walked along the beach toward the chateau in the middle of the Nice beach. The ruins on the hill above Nice provide some of the best panoramic views of Nice and many artists pictures from this vantage point have made it on to postcards. The sun decided to come out at this point so we went back, grabbed towels and reed mats and laid out all afternoon. The sun was very hot but the water was ice cold. I've been spoiled in the Caribbean so I expected the water to be 80 degrees. On French beaches sunbathing topless is apparently no big deal. Karla enjoyed not having to deal with tan lines. After sun bathing, we washed the sand off and went out on the town.
Cinema de Plage
We bought crepes and walked in the park. Karla got a citrus crepe and I got a sugar crepe, which I put Nutella on. They were very good. We sat on the beach and drank a bottle of wine while we watched the waves. It was very enjoyable just sitting on the beach doing nothing. Our trip has been so full of doing things that we sometimes forget to take time to just enjoy each others company. Day 76 - This morning and went to Cannes after breakfast. This was the first day of the film festival and we wanted to see what was going on, even if we couldn't go to any of the screenings. Karla and I had heard about the Cinema de la Plage, the free cinema on the beach, so we wanted to check it out and see if we could get tickets for that. We wandered aimlessly looking for the tourist information booth. There were people and barricades and expensive cars lined everywhere. The festival was in a giant convention center with the Cannes festival logo's on them. Karla made me ask somebody because we'd been wandering now for 10 or so minutes. After being misguided twice we arrived at the Tourist Information center. Apparently Cinema de la Plage is now doing entry on a first come first serve basis. Anyone with a festival pass would be let in first, then at 9:15 the general public would be allowed in. The movie selection tomorrow night was a cannes classic "Bonnie and Clyde". Other evenings the festival would be showing some new films that weren't entered into the festival. And also more classics like The Matrix, and Blazing Saddles.
Hotel Marathon
Walking back through the beach cinema, we decided that we wouldn't stress ourselves out to try to get into a movie at 9:15. Perhaps we'd see a movie back in Nice instead. Continuing down the sandy beaches my eyes were drawn to the very nice boats parked in the bay. These people were living big. This part of the French Riviera is not really any nicer than Barbados or the Bahamas or any other sunny beach getaway spot. But, its proximity to the rest of Europe makes it a hot target for the wealthiest of the wealthy Europeans. Because of that reputation, there is a little bit of a desire to show off exactly how much money you have when you're on the French Riviera. It's a good place to visit, but I don't think I could afford to live here. After walking around Cannes for a half day we returned to Nice. There was still plenty of sun left in the day so we went back down to the beach and sunbathed a little more. Sitting in the sun made me feel like writing postcards to all my friends who couldn't be sitting in the sun with me. I think these are the last postcards I'm going to send since it takes about two weeks to get home and it's pointless to arrive before the postcard does.That night we went to a French theatre that showed movies in English and saw "Battle in Seattle" a film about the 1998 riots when the WTO held their sessions in Downtown and were overrun by protesters. That night we had soup and salad back at the hotel. Outside all around us people were being charged 15 Euros for one plain pizza, meanwhile Karla and I were having a delicious meal for 10 Euros total.
Hotel Paradis
I'm very happy for the grocery store and mini fridge in our room. They've helped to offset the high cost of the private room here in Nice.Day 77 - This private room is so nice, we decided to stay in and enjoy it. Earlier on this trip I would have felt bad sitting inside with the weather being ok outside. But in traveling for so long we have learned that you must take a day every so often and not do anything. I don't feel guilty, the weather's not good enough to sunbathe. And I've been out enough in Nice, I feel like I've seen all I need to see to be happy. We did venture out a little bit today. But most of the time we packed our bags and rested because we knew we had one crazy train ride ahead of us. I sent another round of postcards home and did some shopping for food to take on the train. Karla and I walked around a little and I found myself a linen shirt for a reasonable price. Karla said that she wanted to go to another movie tonight because she enjoyed last night's so much. We had seen the only movie I wanted to see last night so I told her to go ahead and go while I updated some pictures on my travel blog and be lazy. It's a good thing I didn't go to the movie, Karla saw "Teeth". It won a bunch of film awards and is now in theatres all over. If you haven't seen this movie, just read one review about it. I wouldn't suggest renting it. It's definitely not a date movie, that's for sure. Late night we made soup again, this time with sandwiches. Nice has been a great experience, But I don't think I'll need to come back. I can get the same experience somewhere in the Caribbean or Mexico for a lot fewer dollars.
