Day 15 - Nice ... Getting To Know You

A very slow day ... until about 3:00pm, that is. On the start of our third week in Europe, I spent the morning writing, except for one excursion out for morning tea when the lady came to clean the room. The domestic staff in France get very indifferent about carrying out their duties when you are still in the room so when she arrived, Sue and I went out for coffee.

Maison Auer

Perhaps because we have been focused on being somewhere else each time we have left our room, we seem to have neglected those gems within 300m of our hotel. Up the side alley underneath our windows - giving "that" spot against the wall of the Opera a wide birth - we walked across the Rue St Francois de Paule and straight into Maison Auer, a sweets shop from your dreams. Ornate stands and shelves in the front half of the shop have every manner of sweet or jam and in the alcove off the back of the main showroom is a display case only for chocolate. Unbelievable! Out of good manners and cultural appropriateness, we purchased our share.

Less than 200m away, we found yet another husband and wife run restaurant where we had morning tea. Communication was limited until I commented about his Metalica t-shirt and then two old metal heads went at it with passion. We swapped our favourite tracks from the best of Metal and he was over the moon to realise we were Australian and his ACDC anecdotes held us for an additional ten minutes. His command of English became suddenly very good!

I returned to the room to continue writing, whilst Sue hunted for dinner in the markets, into whose precinct we had wandered looking for a cafe.

I'm afraid my writing and reporting took over and it was mid afternoon before we finally set off to pick up my repaired trousers. In the end, it was only a ten minute walk and the reception we received was so warm and friendly.

We stopped at a small cafe near the hospital for a very late lunch. Ham (jambon) sandwiches in France are foot-long bread rolls with freshly cut ham. In the process of eating lunch, Sue tried to secret her debit card into the zipped pocket of her pants, before discovering that instead of unzipping the pocket, she was removing the lower leg of the trousers instead!

Dinner

Walking on, we found the Museum of Natural History, a small but interesting collection of the flora and fauna of this region of France. We gained only limited information from the written displays but the little birdies and animals on display were interesting.

We walked back to Place Messena, by now our navigation point in all our movements. From here, its only about three minutes to the hotel but we stopped for advice on buying a local bottle of red. Our choice was a bottle Domaine de Toasc Bellet, a product grown less than 8km from the point of sale on less than 80 hectares. The bottle shop even lent us a bottle opener!

Have completed our shopping for dinner, we both - yes both - went across the road to negotiate the rock beach and scantily clad beach goers. Nothing to report other than long, sun-stretched wrinkles and to confirm Sue's reports about the salty, blue Mediterranean. It floats your body like the Aussie dollar under a Labor government but after a while, your eyes sting with the salt. This afternoon, there were waves but they broke like an after thought in the last step taken to leave the water. Still, it was pleasant, floating out beyond the multitude with Sue beside me. It was hard not to reflect on our good fortune at being here as we looked past the Russian and Italian youngsters playing water games among the naked breasts of their grandmothers and looked at the four and five storey old buildings lining the Promenade de Anglais. They called for memory of a bygone age and looked like doing so for some time yet.

Our dinner was a combination of delights gathered from within 300m of the hotel - the chocolates, by the way, lived up to quality of the place they were purchased.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

After dinner, we wandered back down to the Rue St Francis de Paule, to listen to an English saxophonist. He played okay but had no patter beyond "give me your money" and I suspect he was several sheets to the wind.

Returning  to our room, we disregarded the air conditioning in favour of atmosphere and let the sounds of Nice float in through the open windows.

Day 13 - Nice

We made a slow start, perhaps not a smart move when heat was threatening our day but I didn't have the heart to wake Sue before 9:00am. It doesn't matter where we holiday ... the sleep in is the crucial element when Sue isn't working.

After another fabulous French breakfast, we tracked down the Nice tour bus: a hop on, hop off, all day ride, multi-language commentary bus which most cities have now . This one offered a good discount on two days and travels the physical highlights and the museum circuit. It was a pleasant 90 minutes driving around Nice but a tad warm in the open top, double decker and at times, a little dangerous. I was twice hit by branches! Among the many piazzas or places we visited, the Place Messena is the most beautiful. The square is part of a track which has covered the River Paillon in order to use space more effectively. To prevent the Paillon flooding and inundating the city, it was simply buried in tunnels and arrives at the sea unheralded.

Nice is a beautiful city and one of the oldest continuously civilized areas in the world. The ancient Greeks are known to have been here 350BC and named the city Nikaia, in honour of Nike the goddess of either victory or sandshoes. Its a place where everyone has had a go at running the place, including the Romans, the Barbarians, the Russians, Italians and finally France, who claimed it as their own in 1860. There are 350 000 residents and who knows how many tourists every year in August.

A small cafe in a smaller lane

The tourists come for the food and the beach. Its not surprising that Asian food barely features but Italian cuisine is a big favourite in the myriad of cafes that line every street and alley way but French cooking still dominates. Both days here we have had our main meal of the day at lunch and just eaten lightly on nuts and fruit at night. It means we sleep better and rest appropriately with our main meal rather than rushing something down in the middle of the day. There are plenty of restaurants and cafes offering two and three course meals for under 20E and we usually added a half bottle of vin rouge with that and today, three carafes of water. The portions are usually very generous and extremely good value.

I had mentioned that Italians seem to make up a large proportion of the tourists here and there is no doubt theirs is the most dominant voice heard on the streets but the Russians would be third after the French residents of the place. Yanks, Poms and Germans are also present in large numbers and the English are obvious because they almost all wear football kit of some description or another and their women are always complaining. There are others here too - a handful of Asian faces and today a Pakistani family but us Aussies seem pretty thin on the ground.

Nice Beach, becomes crowded early in the day and stays that way until sunset. Actually, to call it a beach is a massive exaggeration. The only common threads with an Australian beach are water and babes in bikinis because their are no waves, let along breakers, just flat, clear blue water which is heavily saline so floating is easy, even for the largest bellies and backsides. There is also no sand ... at all. The beach consists of rocks.

Sue took me to "the beach" this morning, both of us sporting new swimmers and mine purchased here in Nice in a very chic shop. They had a nice pattern but when it was all boiled down, they were still the elastic waistband, drawstring trunks I had as a kid ... the ones with the lining undies sewn in. Sue stone hopped into the cool water but I sat at the back of the beach, looking as uncomfortable as I felt.

Le Petit Train

Our other main activity was catching Le Petit Train, a smaller scale drive around Nice whose highlight was a visit to Fort du Alban, high on the hill to the east of the main part of the city. It was here that Greek sailors built their community BC and here where Louis XIII tore the fort down. We watched sunset as we descended the hill and finished our outing with a slow walk back along the Promenade de Anglais.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Singing drifted into our room as we ate a late dinner and we went to the balcony at the back of the building and watched a female busker go through her paces and eventually build up a crowd. My pictures reminded me of van Gogh's "The Night Cafe".

Museums tomorrow.

Day 12 - Goodbyes and Nice

Honeymooners, Bill & Lori Turnbach

The first stage of our tour of Europe ended this morning when we left Monte Carlo on an airport shuttle to Nice.

It completed an eleven day tour conducted by Insight Tours of Paris, Provence and the Riviera which 24 of us participated in and it has proven to be an invaluable way for us, as virgin overseas travelers, to be broken into routines of hotels, coaches and of course basic things like ordering food. Sure we saw lots of interesting things - some of them quite stunning - ate good food at every turn but there was a more important outcome. With a combination of backgrounds and experiences to share, the members of the group started as strangers but became companions in a short time, to the point of genuine pangs felt last night as our last dinner exhausted its dessert course.

A comment made on the first night by Lori, an accountant from the north east of the USA and wearing the just married tag with her new husband Bill, warned me in a dinner conversation that "we are not CNN". It was important we understood that real Americans weren't like the stereotypes portrayed globally. She wanted us to realise that real Americans, real people who live in neighbourhoods are not like those portrayed on TV or in other media. So it proved to be.

Sue and I changed some of the stereotypes we have held on to for a long time. Its wrong to single individuals out but I was particularly pleased to get to know the playful Janine (an Aussie), my great big Kiwi mate Brian whom I didn't stir until the end as a mark of respect and the gentle and gracious Yank, Bill. He listened patiently, spoke generously when I needed it and never failed to extend me the courtesy to call me "mate" in that awkward but affectionate way his countrymen do.

View from breakfast

This morning, we had one last amazing breakfast on the 7th floor decking overlooking the broad blue of the Mediterranean and the bobbing corks of playboy's dreams. An airport shuttle took us to Nice airport, where we said final farewells to the last of the tour group and caught a taxi to our hotel. It was already hot, even at 9:00am and we couldn't book in for another five hours. The hotel were happy to check our bags so we set off for the old town and some orientation.

It was a few minutes into this excursion that Sue discovered she had left he back support on the shuttle. A call to Gigi, our tour director, gave us the driver's number but I made little headway with him beyond establishing he had found it. The language gap was too broad to close without standing face to face, so I was forced to return to Gigi for additional help, despite the tour being over. Within half an hour a text returned explaining she had organised for the back support to be returned to our hotel in Nice.

Relief! Sue's back has been in great shape so far but its one of the worries that hangs over us.

We spent the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon just wandering. It was bloody hot but the saving grace were the narrow lanes and tall buildings, creating plenty of shade and breezes with flowed down the hill we kept climbing. The language on the streets was predominantly Italian, with its rapid delivery and seemingly exaggerated passion and raised volume. So used now to the fast but gentle lit of French accents, it took a while for us to feel comfortable.

Lunch venue

Lunch was a three course Italian meal with vin rouge: part of our pattern to make the midday meal our main one. Three courses for 18E is typical of the bargains available in the cafes, even in these mega tourist centres. We struck up a conversation over lunch with two PE teachers from Australia - Megan from Tasmania and Erin from Perth - who have been on the European road for six months and had good tips and interesting experiences to share, even though they were in their twenties and we were a couple of old farts. Once you hear the Aussie accent, you just have to strike up a conversation and have a chin wag.

After lunch we booked in to our hotel. There was disappointment that the self-contained apartment we thought we had booked was in fact a room. No complaint, as its a beautiful room and well appointed but it makes overdue washing a little more difficult.

After a rest, we went out in search of food and supplies we needed to make repairs to shoes and other wear and tear. In the process, we discovered yet another big piazza, this one with a large statue of Neptune, complete with a large staff. Light rail runs through town and the main street is made for pedestrians. We had one mishap at the supermarket, not realising we had to have our fruit and vegetables weighed before getting to the checkout but if you stay cool and patient, most of these small things work themselves out.

On the way back to our digs, we were amused by a ferret, on a lead, swimming in Neptune's fountain, watched by a fascinated crowd. The beach crowd were moving from the beach as a tide against which we were now swimming and beautiful girls in bikinis kept passing me, being overly friendly with their big smiles. I squeezed Sue's hand and tried to be brave.

Nice will be home for the next five nights and the days are all forecast to be in the 30C and over range and least some of the time will be spent on the sandless beach. Its surface is all fist sized stones! People lie on mats purchased for 3E and walk to the water in their shoes, kicking them of at the last minute to enter the flat, breakerless sea. For me, aka Moby Dick, the great white whale, I have to face the embarrassment of donning swimming trunks - purchased at Sue's insistence today - and exposing more surface area than any ten of the stunning beach babes who will no doubt tell their children about the day Willy was freed on Nice Beach.