Following the Dream

Christian September 14th, 2008

      Arriving in Nice, even after  9 hours on a train and having to switch stations in Paris, was refreshing.  We were greeted by warm weather and sunny skies, something we haven’t had too much of on the trip.  The walk to our hostel was only about five minutes, and upon arriving we were greeted with a private room with it’s own sink, fridge, and microwave.  It had two twin beds instead of one matrimonial, but that was no big deal.  Another great thing that the place had was a good wi-fi connection in all rooms.  We sent out a few emails and noticed something strange.   As I was sitting on the bed, I began to smell something.  I sniffed myself to make sure it wasn’t me, then I asked Casey if she could smell it.  She made sure it wasn’t her or her bag.  After our detective work, we realized that it was my bed that the smell was coming from.  The smell was a terrible butt-crack smell that seemed to take over the room.  Luckily, I have Downy wrinkle releaser with me which smells great.   I loaded it on to the bed that I would be sleeping on and hoped for the best.  Unfortunately, to no avail, the bed still reeked of butt-crack.  It looks like I would be stuck sleeping on the butt-crack bed for a night. 
    
     We made our way to the grocery store to stock up on some things for dinner and breakfast.  We were pleased to find a rather large grocery store.  We bought a bottle of wine and a pizza that would fit in our microwave for dinner.  We enjoyed both very much.  Pretty soon after, we were asleep, me trying to hold my breath on my stinky bed.
  
    The next morning we headed out to explore the town after switching to a different room.  We were supposed to switch to the dorm room, but luckily they had a double room available for the next two nights that we grabbed.  At first sight from the train station the town does not look all that nice.  There are beggars, traffic, and looks a little run down.  However, as you get into the town center, Nice really livens up.  They have a few huge squares with fountains and flowers that are really nice.  Then we made our way to the beach.  Surprisingly the water is a very inviting color of light blue.  We walked along the promenade taking in the view.  This beach is made up of stones instead of sand, but the plethora of sun worshippers seemed not to care.  We walked up to the top of the promenade to have a look back on the beach.  By the time we had reached the point, some cloud cover started to move in.  It didn’t matter, the water was still beautiful.  The peace and tranquility looking out over the water was soon interrupted by a high school tour group of about 50.  We saw a set of stairs that led to a high lookout point over Nice, so we decided to try that out to get away from the kids. There was a very nice view from up top. 

Shortly after, the tour group came barrelling up the stairs all stuffing onto the  lookout that we were at.  We decided to give up hope on getting away from them, so we headed back down and walked back along the Promenade.  We then stopped back to the grocery store on the way back to the hostel to grab some lunch (some sandwiches).  After lunch we went back to the promenade to walk a bit and relax on one of the benches.  On the way back to the hostel, we took a walk through the old town.  It was really nice with the winding cobblestone streets and old buildings.  We wondered about for a bit, stopping for some amazing Gelato.  We then headed back to the hostel and grabbed another microwave pizza for dinner.  While in the grocery store, I saw the manliest beer in the world.  It was made by Faxe beer company and came in a huge 1 liter can.  On the can there was a picture of a viking and the words “Extra Strong Beer”.  If I would ever envision vikings drinking beer from a can, this would certainly be it.  We then ate our lovely microwave pizza and relaxed for a bit.  Casey was feeling a bit sick with a cold, so we headed out in search of Dayquil.  The pharmacy only had  one medicine for each symtom, instead of one pill that would take care of it all.  Not wanting to buy 4 kinds of medicine for a billion dollars, she decided to deal with it.  It was a good night of sleep, not sleeping in a stinky bed.

     We ended up sleeping a little bit later than we had wanted to.  That is one amazing thing that happens when you are backpacking.  You can wake up whenever you want and then plan your day out whenever you decide to wake up.  There are a few exceptions, like trains and buses or museums.  We went to the train station to find a train to Monaco.  Luckily, we only had to wait a few minutes before finding one that stopped there.  It was only a 20 minute train ride.  Once off in the small country of Monaco, we randomly chose a direction to start walking.  With the country only being a little over 1 square mile, it didn’t seem like we could get lost.  We quickly noticed all of the nice cars driving around and the people all well dressed in designer clothing.  We kept going uphill, following a set of stairs that took us up to the royal palace at the top of the hill.  From there you could see a small marina with tons of yachts docked.  We walked along a path on the cliff side to the cathedral.  While touring the cathedral we saw Grace Kelly’s grave.  She was a Hollywood film star that married the Prince of Monaco in the 50s.  We continued alond the path, which led to Monaco’s aquarium.  We spent the money and took a look inside.  We were suprised how good it was.  There was one large tank, complete with sharks, sea turtles, and rays.  Besides the main tank, there were tons of little tanks with quite an impressive variety of sealife.  Upon exiting the aquarium, there is a place that overlooks the sea, with a panaramic view.  We sat there for a while on a bench taking in the view.  Then we walked along the garden path.  Everything along the way was very well put together and taken care of.  We stopped at a viewpoint over Monaco’s Yacht Club.  The size of some of the yachts are insane.  There was one complete with a helipad on it.  From there we made our way back down the hill to walk up another hill to see the famous Monte Carlo Casino.  It was impressive.  There was all nice cars parked out front, Ferraris, Bentleys, and a Rolls Royce.  What surprised me was that a couple of kids, not older than me got out of the Rolls Royce.  It must be a tough life for them.  We went into the casino for a look.  The inside was so fancy.  We did not want to pay the $15 dollars each to enter the card table rooms, so we simply peeked in through the door.  It is hard to believe having that kind of money, taking the yacht to Monaco, driving around in the Rolls Royce.  I guess I have to work on my get rich scheme.  Coming back to our reality, we had to walk back down the hill to catch the next train to Nice.  We went to an internet cafe nearby to print out our reservation for our apartment in the Cinque Terre, in Italy.  The closest internet cafe seemed to be the worst.  There was a kid yelling and slamming the table because he could not get his columns lined up.  When the smelly guy that ran the place walked over and reached overtop of the kid to try and help him out, the kid kept blowing at the smelly guy’s armpits in an attempt to keep the smell away.  After 15 minutes, we were able to print our reservation out, even if it came out in size 6 font, we were out of there.  What did we have for dinner, you guessed it, another microwave pizza.  They only cost about $3, and were easy to cook.  We decided to wait until morning to pack since our train didn’t leave all that early to Italy.

     Nice was a great time.  We were not rushing to see this museum and that sight.  There were not tour groups hoarding the streets (minus the one high school tour group).  We had nice weather and would loved to stay a little longer to enjoy the beach and work on our tans that have dissappeared since Central America.

• France
• Comments(1)