We're out of Italy...
Monday, August 15, 2005
I wouldn’t ever recommend Italian Red wine at $2.30 per 1.5lt to anyone wanting to have a nice drink or two the night before a long journey by train. Needless to say I was a little hung over as we got up at a daring 6.30 to catch a train one hour in the opposite direction of Nice before getting on another train only to come back on those very same tracks and frustratingly stopping at the station that we had left just two and a bit hours earlier - As it was a public holiday we had no idea what the timetable of the trains and it wasn’t meant to stop there, but it must have been all stops to Nice, Dam, could have had a sleep in! Anyway we arrived in Nice three hours later and walked out of the train station feeling quite uneasy about being in France yet so dam happy to be out of Italy. Within two minutes I had seen over four internet cafes and several dairies, instantly making us smile and suppressing any bad feelings about being in France – at least for a while. The hotel that we had booked looked very nice from the front, almost a little too nice but in we went feeling very pleased with ourselves as it had been less than 100 metres from the train station and one street over form the main shopping street as well. We walked in and got a fully blank look when we said who we were and that we had booked over the internet - apparently they had no record of our booking but it didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem and after filling in our details we were prompted to follow the lady to our room. She walked out the door, and turned onto the street and around the corner and into another hotel, at this stage we turned to each other as in what the hell is going on? It seems that the hotels around here are in some sort of agreement to take the extras that our first hotel couldn’t handle, or at least that’s what it appears but the room was really quite good and we got a four bed room not the six bed dorm that we had booked so we weren’t going to complain. Jakub and Candace had got off at Monaco for a little look around as they were leaving early in the morning, so we waited around for a couple of hours chilling out and organising ourselves before getting hungry and heading out leaving a note for our travel buddies. We have found Asian food to be very popular here and soon discovered a small local restaurant to have a little something to fill the gap until dinner. As we walked out of the restaurant, we almost walk into two tourist with huge packs and would you believe it but it was Jakub and Candace on their way to the hotel! We showed them to the room and after a little organisation headed out to the beach. We thought that our little issue with the national public holiday would be over in France, only to find out that actually they share the same public holiday with most of Europe. This was a good thing though as it meant festivities including a fireworks show on the beach later that night. We filled in the three hours we had before the fireworks just wandering around the old city and Wharf area – this town has a stunning waterfront! They have made the most of it too, by putting seating along a huge section, so you can just sit and look at the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. After a lovely walk, we got a seat on the beach in a prime spot for the show. It was really nice - they even turned out the street lighting along the waterfront. After the fireworks we took the long way home to a comfy bed.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
