Nice is nice

To start with I’m a horrible backpacker. My half-empty backpack soon became filled and barely made the 40lb limit at the airport, I actually think it was over by a pound and the lady was just being nice, or didn’t want a hassle at 4:30am.

So I have too much stuff, except how can it be too much when I’m still going to have to wear everything twice. I’d say that I regret bringing my computer but I know that isn’t true, I’m going to love having it to get online whenever and watch movies on my hours long train rides.

Besides all the stuff it’s off to a good start. Nice is a beautiful ocean city nestled in between the mountains. My hostel is up an incredibly steep hill but seems pretty nice and the tram is quick and easy into the city, the place is run by aussies, kiwis and americans with just a few other randoms thrown in, no real surprise with that.

Since I arrived before check-in the first day I threw my stuff in storage and headed down the hill to begin exploring. I walked straight to the beach first passing through the lovely Place Massena along the way. The ocean looks amazing and I walked down it a ways, saw a crazy lady who kept walking up and down the beach yelling something, it really made me wish I know French because everyone seemed fairly fascinated by her.

Cool fountain in the town square

Part of the beach

My beach view

Me being artsy with a shirt and what resembles a dress on a mattress on the rocks

In front of the bay

The bay of Nice

More artsy

While I was walking I noticed this stone structure of sorts in the hills and decided my mission for the day was to go see what it was.
I walked down the coast a bit and found some stairs that led me up, and up and up some more. The views made it completely worth it making me go a little photo happy.

Artsy view

On the way up

For Dad

From the top

It turns out the while hill is a park that used to be the medieval town, what I saw was this: part of the waterfall landscape installed on the grounds 100-200 years ago.

Once I made it back down the hill and caught my breath I walked through a flea market and then into Old Town Nice which is winding streets full of all sorts of different shops, even one dedicated just to spices with an untold number of colors and flavors of large crystal salt, Dad would be in heaven. When I got tired of all that, after 4.5 hours of wandering who wouldn’t be tired. I decided to sit for a while and rest since this is my holiday and I can do what I want. My only complaint is that the airport is just on the other side of the beach so every few minutes a plane is flying along the beach disrupting the sound and landscape.

I had a quiet night Monday night eating pizza and drinking beer at the hostel bar chatting with the staff and various other people as they moved through. I called it an early night round 10:30 and was pleased that I wasn’t the only one, made me feel less old. I crashed hard and woke early ready for my second day.

Day 2 in Nice began with a trip to the ocean where I saw 3 different groups of sailing schools, I could have watched the sailboats all day but figured I should be more productive. So I wandered through the fruit and flower market on the site of the flea market from the day before. It wasn’t as nice as the guides had made it out to be but interesting none-the-less.

From there I went to the photography museum where they had an extensive collection of older cameras

and a very nice exhibition by Peter Knapp, not someone I know of but it was very interesting.

I had decided to hit some costal towns for the day so I hopped the bus to Eze, which is a medieval town on top of a hill, the Prince of Sweden used to hold a villa there. After getting lost on the winding streets I managed to make it to the gardens at the top that used to be the old castle. A lovely set of gardens with a great view of the Mediterranean.

Eze from below

The meditation spot

Relaxing

Top of Eze

Looking down from the top

Sweet little streets

After relaxing for a bit by the water meditation area I headed down to get the bus to Monaco.

The hills between Nice and Monaco are lined with breath taking villas, I wouldn’t mind taking up residence. Anyhow, I started in Monaco by walking towards the casino. When I overheard two girls taking pictures speak English I asked if they’d take a photo for me. We struck up a conversation and it turns out they were both traveling alone and staying at my hostel. It went without saying that I would join them and away we went. We wandered all over the main bits of the city/country (it’s hard to tell where Monte-Carlo begins and ends), there was a good deal of hiking involved to arrive at the palace but it was very nice. And a definite plus to have people around to take my photo, we all took advantage.

The cathedral Princess Grace was married in

The palace

All the yachts, sickening

Reflection of the casino in the sculpture/fountain out front

We got back to Nice around 6:30 and went to sit on the beach for a bit since the sun was still very much shining. I had a quick swim since that would be my only chance in the Mediterranean the water looks very blue but is in fact very murky from the waves hitting the beach, it felt wonderful though.

Amy and Stephanie were going to have dinner in town and I opted to make some of the food with me to save money and get rid of some of the weight of my pack. I made friends with a Swedish girl on the way back to the hostel and she invited me to have drinks with her and her friends. I fell into bed exhausted yet again.

Today has been a day of travel and nothing else. My train left Nice for Milan at 10am. It was so crowded that people and bags were in the hall, we were all in compartments, and so hot at times that my eyelids were even sweating. But we were traveling next to the coast for half the trip so it was nice to watch, and the others in my compartment were very nice.

Getting from Milan to my hostel was horrible though, I had to practically run from the end of one platform through the station and down another platform in less than 5 minutes to change trains in Milan, then I had to wait ages for the bus to my hostel which was beyond crowded, I was standing and couldn’t even move, ended up getting yelled by an Italian woman who wanted to get off the bus and needed me to move right away even though we weren’t anywhere near the stop and she kept trying to shove me into this area where there was nothing for me to hold on to and I already was having problems standing up, not fun at all. At least after that the rest of the bus took pity on me, one man helping me take my pack off and maneuver around so I didn’t go flying all the time and a nice lady told me where to get off for my hostel. So it worked out ok. We’re more then a bit in the middle of no where at this hostel but it seems ok, the people seem nice so far, apparently there isn’t much to do besides sitting by the lake, hiking and such which doesn’t seem bad to me at all. We’ll see how it goes.