Day 7 - Nice Weather (pour les canards)

Let's slip back a day to the train journey from Paris to Nice.  As Annie described in yesterday's blog, the train made the journey to the south in no time and then spent hours meandering along the Cote d'Azur to Nice via Cannes, Antibes and a whole lot of other little towns.  I took a few snaps from the train window at some of the boring scenery we were subjected to.

So you can see from these shots that this train is sort of like the one that goes to Frankston, but they speak French.  It's a long journey and eventually, we arrive at Nice Ville Gare.  Not a patch on the grand stations of Paris, but marginally better than Watsonia station (where I cut my teeth on train travel).

We dragged our bags through the streets of Nice (now remember, you have to say "Niece" in your mind whenever I type Nice.  It's a nice place but you can't call it that. It's like the biscuits.

Strangely from a biscuit point of view, we will soon be visiting Monte Carlo.  We will eat neither type of these biscuits on our trip.

Let's jump forward to the next day - Lundi, 8 Mai.

I woke up knowing that I had an errand to run.  The day before I realised that I had left one of my iPads on the train, and while I knew there was a similar chance of ever seeing it again, as there was of seeing the Blues play finals soon, I decided to go through the motions.  So I headed up the station to register my loss at the Trouves objets desk (found objects).  On my way, I noticed that while this place was not as beautiful as Paris, some of the streetscapes weren't too bad.  Here are a couple of examples.

 I arrived at the station, found the right place, and dutifully waited in line. I then explained my predicament in French, which was going particularly well, until the lady behind the desk asked me whether we wouldn't be better off speaking English. Fair enough.  She explained to me that Carlton had a better chance of playing finals soon than I had of ever seeing that iPad again.  

So back to the apartment.  Except, while I was inside, it had started pleurant trop fort (pissing down). I waited for a while and it didn't look like stopping so I headed bravely (stupidly) into the rain.  Suffice to say by the time I made it back to the apartment, I was soaked to the skin. At which time, Annie said words to the effect of "We can't wait around in here - we have to go and see things, even if it is raining".  Yeah. 

We consulted our tour guide (the internet) and found there was a hop on hop off bus in Nice.  This had been a lot of fun, and very informative in Paris, so we thought we'd give it a go. We donned our waterproof gear and made our wet way to the first stop.  Not long after, our ride showed up.  

We took our seat in the undercover section and plugged in our cheap earbuds to listen to the commentary.  It turns out that there are not very many interesting facts about Nice.  Or at least, none that our recorded commentator was familiar with. There was something about a pink Castle that was built by someone or other, but it didn't grab my attention and I'm not able to recount any of the details.  Wikipedia might help if you really want to know.

Here is a random assortment of shots taken from the bus.

The second stop we came to was the port of Nice.  We disembarked and wandered through the streets looking for a suitable lunch venue.  On the way we passed by the Nice office of MDB, but it appeared to be closed. 

We found a suitable restaurant and rdered a couple of calzones, which turned out to be larger than expected.  I am reminded of the advice I was once give to never eat anything alrger than your head.  Bearing this in mind, we didn't eat them all.

From there, we walked around the port and back through the "old town" towards our apartment, which I knew to be dry and warm.  Here's Annie standing in the rain at the port.

Here's me standing in the rain at the war memorial

Here's Annie at the Nice sign (sort of like the Hollywood sign, but Nicer)

She is peeping from behind the E. 

Parking space is limited in these French cities.  Tiny little smart cars abound.  Here's one I quite liked the look of. 

We made it back to the apartment and I suggested that watching a replay of the North game against Adelaide (which had finished earlier that morning) might be in order.  In fact, Nice had been buzzing with the news that the young Kangas had held the competion leader scoreless in the first term while piling on ten goals.  I am not making this up - here's proof.

Two very happy hours passed quickly and then it was time to go to dinner.  We popped out to 11eme where I started with the salmon carpaccio

and Annie had something which she didn't photograph and so I can't remember.

For mains, I had the duck (canard), which was good

and Annie the tuna, which was not so good. Annie was not happy with the grey colour.

So you would have to say that I won dinner that night.

Bed.