NICE, FRANCE
8th May 2002 to 9th May 2002
Short but Nice...
Rob on the Nice beach front
Hi Guys...:)
Map of France - (Nice is lower right of map or south eastern corner)
The last time you heard from us we were on our way to the South of France, Nice to be exact. We left on Wednesday the 8 May and had booked 5 days in Nice in advance. aahhhhhhhh ....really looking forward to the Azure waters of the south and a bit of a flutter at Monte Carlo.
The train ride to Nice revealed some beautiful countryside, even though Rob will swear I was asleep for most of it:) Most of our trip was through the country but as we got closer to our destination the rail went right next to the coast and revealed some spectacular ocean views.
As we got closer to the Azure Coast, we past the towns of St. Tropez, St. Raphaelle, Cannes, Antibes and finally Nice. I started getting very excited. There is something about the thought of mingling in the areas of the filthy rich that definitely appeals to me. :)
We arrived in Nice late afternoon and after walking to our hotel, in a constant drizzle we decided to do what we always do when we first enter a new city... Yip, find the nearest internet cafe and orientate ourselves.
On first impression Nice was your typical holiday town with the exception of some very expensive shops in place of kitchy touristy places. Our hotel, "The Little Massena", overlooked a "piazza" type area that was full of restaurants, coffee shops etc - Our hotel in Nice and we were just a street away from the "Bay of angels" coast and the Promenade of Angels runs along the Bay of Angles
Kat in Messana Rue. Our hotel is just above her on the left.
It took us a few hours to walk around and after it started raining in earnest we gave it up for the night.
The next day was amazing, blue skies and an even bluer ocean. The Azure coast stays true to it's name and you can understand why it would be the playground of the rich and famous. Most of the taxis here are Mercs and BMs...:)
Our first job was to book our train to Geneva for Monday. Unfortunately, Thursday turned out to be a public holiday in Nice so the train information and ticketing bureau was working on skeleton staff. We waited around for about 2hrs before we finally got to see someone. We have to reserve train tickets even though we are traveling on Europass. We told the gentleman what we wanted in broken French, and he proceeded to book our ticket. Easy........ off to enjoy our first day of sunshine in 3 weeks....woooo hoooo
After checking our ticket we realised that instead of booking us for the 13th May, he had booked us for the 10th...the very next day. So we went back to make changes. He pondered his computer for a while, punched some keys and proceeded to tell us, that the next available train out of Nice was the 19th May. We just stared at him incredulously. We asked him about any other routes and he sternly told us that it was impossible, even in 2nd class.
Rob and I were just shocked, so we walked away and couldn't believe our rotten luck. I said to Rob that there was no way in hell that that was possible, I mean, it's not even tourist season yet. I could understand the trains being full TO nice (Cannes film festival starting 15th May) but not FROM Nice! So we took another 3 tickets and waited for a further 3 hours to speak to somebody else.
Unfortunately we didn't have much luck there either. Not speaking French was a huge obstacle as the French will not speak English to you. We found them extremely rude and unhelpful, so it wasn't even worth trying to figure out why because nobody would help us, so we resigned ourselves to trying to get in as much as possible in our last few hours here.
We did our touristy thing and took some photos and then went back to our hotel to drop off our backpack and get ready for some dinner. On the way we stopped at a supermarket and bought a bottle of wine to drown away our sorrows in :)
Being a beautiful day and a public holiday, there were hundreds of people in the streets below us, as mentioned before our hotel, "The Little Massena", overlooked the Plaza de Massena, so Rob and I sat by the window and watched the world go by whilst sipping on some nice vino.
Just below us was this guy who was doing a gambling racket... similar to having 3 cards with one being a Queen, the cards get whipped around and then you have to chose where the Queen is... well this was similar, only he had 3 black circles with a white piece of paper stuck under one of them....he whips them around and then asks people in the crowd to guess where the white paper is...obviously for a price... if you guess correctly you double your money, if not.. you loose
Con Artists in Action. They've just set up. The guy north is the main dealer and the guys looking on are pretending to play to try draw new people in to play. Over a few hours we gave them pet names..."Big Nose" is on the right, "Lee Cooper" on the left, "The Glasses" is bottom. There are another 3-4 people involved but not in the action yet. One is standing directly below our window as a lookout for police, then there is a young lady and an elderly man whom come in later and act as gamblers.
We had a great aerial view so we sat there watching how many people won or lost... after a while we realised that it was actually a scam and that there were a few of them working together to pull the crowd in.... Rob even took a photo so that he could study it better at a later stage. All of a sudden we heard a call and they all scattered whilst this other guy took this box that they were using as a table and hid it behind a flower box... the Cops were coming. They are just sooooo well organise.
About 10 minutes later the Con Artists are in full action. Every time police are spotted they disperse in seconds only to set up again 10 minutes later and it all starts over again.
So what do you think Rob and I did for the next two hours, sat and watched and tried to spot who was in on the whole thing. Rob took another photo.. kinda like a before and after shot.. so that he could compare and see if we could spot "the group" as we now fondly called them. There was "Big nose" and "Lee Cooper", "The glasses", "The jacket", the "Old man" and "The Lookout" in the green shirt. It was definitely very interesting and they where just so quick to disappear when the fuzz made an appearance. After about the 6th time that they scattered, they did not come back, so we decided to go and find them.
As we were walking along the streets, we quite flukily bumped into the Ozzies that we had met at the train station in Madrid; Barney, Cat and Andy... Howdy dudes:).. (Rob suckered them into being part of the group that receives our emails).. you don't know what you have got yourselves into!
We caught up with them for a drink and ended up at each others places finishing off what booze was available. 3 bottles of red, 1 white and 2 litres of Kahlua later, proved to be an excellent evening...Thanks guys:) Definitely helped us get over the blues of leaving the next day.
Left to Right, our Ozzie mates we found in Nice, Cat, Barney and Andrew. Having a few drinks in our hotel room ;)
A bit of brief info on Nice and more..
Rob and I crawled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7.30 and made our way to the train station by 9.00.. our train left at 10.00. We were sitting at the platform having a good ole chat and talking about our new found friends and what an excellent evening we had, when we realised that the next train to arrive was not for a few hours yet...we looked up and to our horror confirmed that our train had come and gone without us..... not a good way to start the day.
Luckily Rob was suffering from a hangover otherwise he would have been mightily pissed off. What happened was they changed the platform number that the train was arriving at 5 minutes before and did not announce the change. Or they might have announced it in French only and definitely not where we were sitting. So.. we trudged back down the stairs.. as escalators do not work in France, and went to the ticket office to see what they could do. They were very apologetic and put us on the next possible connection to Geneva which was at 3 that afternoon with 3 different connections. Having no choice we took it.
So we sat at the train station till then. What we found a bit interesting was how easily this person could find us seats on the train when were told yesterday that there was nothing available. The real test would be on the train, then we would see if it was full or not.... guess what.. it wasn't!!!!
From Nice to Vallence, 1st class was empty, we changed at Valence and went to Lyon... empty, from Lyon changed to Geneva... yip.. again empty.. so what actually happened on Thursday in Nice is a bit of a mystery. It was very disappointing because we would have had a great time in Nice. We didn't even get a chance to go to Monte Carlo:(
Oh well....next time.. we'll do it in style and fly there! If you go Easyjet u can get there for €22 (about A$40)from Paris.
Our train trip was rather tiring due to all the waiting and changes that we had and we only arrived in Switzerland close to midnight, so we missed all the sights getting here, but here, in Switzerland, they have the perfect remedy for disappointments and tiredness...it's called....... CHOCOLATE!!!!
So ... I'm off guys.... try and catch me Rooooooooooooooob..........