NICE

No wonder so many young French people aspire to live in Nice, whilst the tourists, including Anna and myself, keep flooding in.  Shimmering shores, the very best of Mediterranean food, a charming and historical old town and great shopping!

We stayed at the elegant and very sociable Hostel Villa Saint Exupery Gardens, which I later found out is where Willboss Benjamin worked when he lived in Nice for a while.  The hostel is a converted monastery and is situated in a private garden about 4km from the centre of town.  It has been voted in the top 10 hostels in the world 5 out of the last 5 years, and you could see why.  

there are so many Aussies working at the Saint Exupery, they even have an arrow pointing to Sydney!

The hostel had a great communal area, both inside and outside, plenty of activities on offer, a great breakfast and bar area and although it was 4km from the town centre, they had a free shuttle bus every 20 minutes that would drop you at the nearest tram stop.  Nice's tram system was so good.  Literally every 6 minutes a tram would arrive, so we had no qualms about staying so far away.

We unpacked and had a short rest and after getting the shuttle bus and tram, made a beeline for the Promenade des Anglais, Nice's curvaceous palm-lines seafront that follows its busy pebble beach for 6km from the city centre to the airport.

The beach was not the nicest as it was chock-a-block full of people, chairs, umbrellas, restaurants and even a little rubbish, however the water was a beautiful blue and there were plenty of great looking buildings on the other side of the road.

Nice's most famous Hotel Negresco

With Nice's airport being so close, literally every 5-10 minutes there was a new plane coming into land.  A lot of these looked like they were private jets, but there were also plenty of passenger airlines that made heaps of noise and added to the great atmosphere. It was really cool having these huge planes looking like they were going to land in the water and we thought about trying to find a place where we could get right up close to them ala Wayne's World in the coming days.

After walking around the beach for a while, we headed for, and lost ourselves in the old town's tangle of 18th-century pedestrian passages and alleyways, historic churches and hole-in-the-wall joints selling Nicois specialties.  We ended up in Cours Saleya, running parallel to the seafront, it hosts one of France's most vibrant food markets, but at nighttime it turns into an atmospheric area of diners and drinkers.

Anna saw a bar/pub that she recognised from last time she was in Nice, so we thought it a good idea to stop for a beer before finding a spot for dinner.  The cider tap had run dry so I ordered Anna a "Monaco" which was beer, lemonade and grenadine syrup.  It was so good, I wish I had ordered one for myself as well.

Cours Saleya to the left

Cours Saleya to the right

Certainly not your typical French meal, we came across a burger and steak joint and couldn't resist.  My burger was the biggest thing I have ever seen and as hard as I tried, I couldn't finish it!  Anna polished off a beautiful piece of steak, but by the end of it, she was almost as full as I was.

Lonely Planet had suggested Nice's "most fabulous" glacier (ice-cream maker) and although there was no way that either of us had any room for once, it was worth seeing.  Your classic predictable flavours were there, but you also had the chance to indulge in taste sensations such as tomato-basil, black tomato, rosemary, jasmine, rhubarb, lavender, ginger and my top choice, avocado!

Nice's main square, Place Massena, is surrounded by 3-4 storey buildings all painted in the same red/orange colour and all decorated with green window shutters.  It is a huge area and a real sight at night time when it is all lit up.  There was also some sort of art display on where there were these buddha type figures on top of these poles that would change colour every few minutes, it was pretty cool.

Temperature may have still been warm enough to get around in shorts and a singlet, but you could tell that summer was coming to an end as it was the first time in ages where the sky had been well and truly overcast.  There's not a whole lot to do in Nice in terms of sightseeing, which was fine by us as we were very happy to just wander around and do some shopping.

the view from our corm-room window

We had already had a decent breakfast provided by the hostel, but we came across a great cafe and hadn't had a coffee yet, so in we went.  The coffee was superb, but the apple pastry was where it was at, probably the best one we have had on tour.......and we've had a lot!

We spent a fair bit of time in "Gallaries Layfayette" which is France's version of Myer or David Jones.  Anna was on level three and I was on level two and usually the away it goes is that after I look at the men's section, I go and try to find Anna who is invariably taking much longer than I am.  

Not this time!  

I was having a ball going through all the fantastic stuff they had on level 2 and when Anna came to find me I was making my first purchase of the day, a beautiful canary yellow Ralph Lauren polo shirt (that will go perfectly with my green pants on the golf course haha).

I didn't buy anything from Vilebrequin (way too expensive), but I love their sign when they are closed - gone tanning!

Not more than half an hour later and I was making my second and third purchases of the day, a couple of really sweet t-shirts from a pretty trendy store.  After this day and my big purchase in Monaco, I was on fire and Anna was supremely jealous, but I was just making up for lost ground after all the stuff she bought in Italy!

We found a great salad and sandwich joint for lunch which also had free internet, so we were able to check the usual  Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/email and the footy scores and then head out for the second half of the day.

There were a couple of beach volleyball matches going on which we stopped to watch for a while, before we headed towards the eastern end of the beach and then around the corner and into the port.

It was a great walk as we were able to watch the planes coming in as they were literally flying right over our heads and because they only had 6km to go before landing, they were really low.

The port was nice, but nothing special compared to the ones in Antibes and Monaco that we had visited  during the past week, so we didn't spend much time there, however it was a fairly decent walk to get back into the centre of town and by the time we got there it was close to 5pm and we were ready to call it a day.

Chilling at the hostel for a while gave us the chance to catch up on some blogging (Lachie) and watching Sons of Anarchy (Anna - her new favourite show) and with beers so cheap from the hostel bar, I was even able to indulge in some nice ales before showering and then heading off to dinner.

Anna was impressed with the grass tram track area!

Another shuttle bus and another tram into town and we were back at Cours Saleya where we had been the night before.  When we saw the size of the pasta dishes being served at "La Favola" (not Fevola!), not even a half an hour wait was to deter us from going anywhere else.

Being so hungry, we foolishly loaded up on bread whilst we were waiting which was to seriously hamper our effort to actually finish our meals....will we ever learn!

Anna's pasta with clams was possibly the biggest bowl of pasta for one person I have ever seen and my rigatoni al forne, whilst not as big, felt equally as filling.

what a waste of food!

We both put in really piss weak efforts at finishing our meals to the point where we were almost embarrassed when the waiter took the meals away.  We had to reassure him that we really enjoyed the meals haha!

Our bellies were so full that we needed at least an hour of walking around before we felt like hopping on the tram and heading home.

Our dorm-room stank the next morning as there were a couple of Brazilian lads who had burnt the candle at both ends, having a huge night on the town, but then having to leave early in the morning.  I remember those days well haha.

Luckily we were up early enough the next day to get down to the Cours Saleya food market.  As the Lonely Planet book suggested, it is France's largest fruit market and we weren't questioning that when we arrived, it was huge!

olives almost as far as the eye can see!

different flavoured sugars

plenty of spices and salts, including one from the Murray River

weird looking eggplant

After spending a solid hour or two at the market, including devouring a punnett of delicious raspberries and strawberries, we went back to the same salad and sandwich shop as we had been the day before to get some take-away lunch.  I also called home and spoke to the whole McDonald clan who were all at 36a Drake Street for Grandmothers and Dads birthday dinner, it was great to speak to them all, but hard work with so many people shouting at the same time haha!

High up on the hill on the eastern point of the beach promenade is Parc du Chateau, which affords great views over Vieux Nice (old town), the port, the beachfront and the planes coming in overhead.

After getting the lift up to the top of the park (we both cbf'd walking!), we gawked at the sensational views and then set-up shop on a cozy little grassy spot and laid down to watch the comings and goings, read our books and have lunch.

For the rest of the afternoon we had planned to hire bikes and ride to the end of the 6km Promenade des Anglais, hoping that we could secure a spot to watch the planes coming rolling in.

there was some nasty Byron Pickett like clouds approaching!

As it was August 31, it was the last day of summer and almost like clockwork, the weather started to change and by the time we had reached the airport, the wind had picked up and there were some nasty looking clouds coming our way.  We also noticed that the planes had stopped flying in and were either being re-directed to another airport, or coming into Nice from a different angle.

Giving up on the idea of seeing any planes up close, we stopped to watch a few of the locals battle it out on the petanque fields and then headed for the bike shop, hoping to make it back in time before the heavens opened up.

Immediately awe noticed a change in the riding conditions.  We had gone from riding at an easy going pace with the wind behind us, to a butt clenching snail pace, battling it out in the teeth of the wind.  Luckily it was on 6km though and before long we were handing back the bikes with dry clothes.

Surprisingly, it didn't start bucketing down until we had got back to the hostel.  However, once it started it didn't let up and we made the right call that night to stay in and have dinner prepared by the hostel kitchen.

Milanese style pork with spaghetti was the meal on offer and for 7.50 euro, it was great value and accompanied with a few "ottweiler pils" beers, it was a great feast.

We met a couple of American blokes, who although a little nerdy, were decent blokes and it was interesting to chat about the differences between our countries.  We had to laugh when one of them asked us if we had heard of Facebook, seriously, how far away do they think Australia is??!!

Ottweiler Pils beer - sounds like a dog

We had a 3-4 hour trip to Lyon the next day, so we called it quits around midnight and went to bed listening to the torrential rain outside.