Today was a travel day - these are always pretty rough. Our train to Nice was quite early and we still had to buy tickets, which we had a bit of trouble doing. We learnt later that this was because - while the machine had the option of going through to Nice, we actually had to go to the border and get the next tickets there. It would have been helpful to have that explained there.
So we split the trip up, and bought Manarola - Genoa, Genoa - Vermiglia (French border), and then Vermiglia - Nice.
The first train was pretty uneventful.At the station we bought a sandwich and drink combo and ended up having to race a bit to the train. The second train was simply AWFUL. Someone smelt really bad. The train kept juddering (Dan said something about the brakes coming on and off) and because the seats have these strange plastic sideways headrests, I kept smashing my head against it. I also started to feel motion sick, and my hay fever wasn’t happy. It was super noisy. In all, just awful.
Finally got to get off the damn train at the French border, where we had to buy a ticket from a man. This train thankfully was quite uneventful, and we could see Monaco out the window. Dan and I were totally hangry by now, and couldn’t agree on the plan for what to do next.
Originally for Monaco, I had researched lunch places as I thought we would get in to Nice earlier and then head straight to Monaco. But we had caught a later train in the end, and the weather wasn’t looking very good, and I just didn’t want to rush straight to Monaco any more (but I didn’t want to have lunch in Nice, and then go to Monaco). In the end, we decided to stay in Nice today, and go to Monaco the next day. We found a place which did burgers - they were delicious! The man behind the counter was hilarious too, I got to choose sauces for my burger and my chips and I had some trouble, so he suggested putting the two together which was the BEST suggestion. He also pretended to sneeze in our chips.
After eating we went down to the waterfront where I sat under an umbrella while it spat rain around us. I felt a bit silly but others were doing it. The weather was warm but I didn’t feel like having rain splotches on my face. We were totally tired and it was super muggy - I could have gone to sleep here. We had to move though, and we could see a fountain up on the hill to our right. We wandered up here (which was a bit tough on our legs after all the hiking!) and checked out the fountain, standing in its spray. People were above the fountain, so we found the path up there and took lots of photos overlooking Nice. There was a busker up here on a piano accordion but he wasn’t actually playing. Occasionally we could hear him try to pick out the tunes and generally play the wrong notes, so he’d go back to just pretending and the backing track.
On our walk down, we detoured through the cemetery, and found a tram stop that would take us back to the accommodation. On the way we went to the supermarket - bought a massive wheel of cheese for €2 (yes, back to proper prices for cheese!), some ham and a baguette as well as wine and chocolate crackers for a dinner picnic back at our accommodation. Oh! I’ve been forgetting to mention the limoncello. At every opportunity we have packed a shotty full of limoncello, but seriously this 500ml bottle isn’t getting any less. We drank a little bit of it tonight as we won’t be able to fly with it in two days time, but why is there still so much left?
A new country on the morrow, so it’s sleepy time!
Til next time,
xx
So we split the trip up, and bought Manarola - Genoa, Genoa - Vermiglia (French border), and then Vermiglia - Nice.
The first train was pretty uneventful.At the station we bought a sandwich and drink combo and ended up having to race a bit to the train. The second train was simply AWFUL. Someone smelt really bad. The train kept juddering (Dan said something about the brakes coming on and off) and because the seats have these strange plastic sideways headrests, I kept smashing my head against it. I also started to feel motion sick, and my hay fever wasn’t happy. It was super noisy. In all, just awful.
Finally got to get off the damn train at the French border, where we had to buy a ticket from a man. This train thankfully was quite uneventful, and we could see Monaco out the window. Dan and I were totally hangry by now, and couldn’t agree on the plan for what to do next.
Originally for Monaco, I had researched lunch places as I thought we would get in to Nice earlier and then head straight to Monaco. But we had caught a later train in the end, and the weather wasn’t looking very good, and I just didn’t want to rush straight to Monaco any more (but I didn’t want to have lunch in Nice, and then go to Monaco). In the end, we decided to stay in Nice today, and go to Monaco the next day. We found a place which did burgers - they were delicious! The man behind the counter was hilarious too, I got to choose sauces for my burger and my chips and I had some trouble, so he suggested putting the two together which was the BEST suggestion. He also pretended to sneeze in our chips.
After eating we went down to the waterfront where I sat under an umbrella while it spat rain around us. I felt a bit silly but others were doing it. The weather was warm but I didn’t feel like having rain splotches on my face. We were totally tired and it was super muggy - I could have gone to sleep here. We had to move though, and we could see a fountain up on the hill to our right. We wandered up here (which was a bit tough on our legs after all the hiking!) and checked out the fountain, standing in its spray. People were above the fountain, so we found the path up there and took lots of photos overlooking Nice. There was a busker up here on a piano accordion but he wasn’t actually playing. Occasionally we could hear him try to pick out the tunes and generally play the wrong notes, so he’d go back to just pretending and the backing track.
On our walk down, we detoured through the cemetery, and found a tram stop that would take us back to the accommodation. On the way we went to the supermarket - bought a massive wheel of cheese for €2 (yes, back to proper prices for cheese!), some ham and a baguette as well as wine and chocolate crackers for a dinner picnic back at our accommodation. Oh! I’ve been forgetting to mention the limoncello. At every opportunity we have packed a shotty full of limoncello, but seriously this 500ml bottle isn’t getting any less. We drank a little bit of it tonight as we won’t be able to fly with it in two days time, but why is there still so much left?
A new country on the morrow, so it’s sleepy time!
Til next time,
xx
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