NICE, FRANCE

I boarded the train in the mostly desolate border town and found my couchette. The car was a bit more than half full so I was relieved when I only had two other people in my 6-bed compartment. It was an older hippy-type couple from Australia that occupied the bottom two beds on one side and my reserved bunk was the top one on the other side so no one had to stare at someone else directly across from them. The man’s name was Chris and he seemed to be in his late forties. He said this European trip they were on was the first time he had ever left Australia as he kept rolling and smoking cigarettes in the vestibule. His wife seemed very nice, but she didn’t talk anywhere near as much as Chris did.

The train left a bit before midnight and was due to arrive in Nice at 7:40 a.m. and this enabled me to actually get a bit of sleep, or try anyway. If the train were due in at, say, 5 a.m. then I would have a hard time sleeping. I crawled up to the top bunk and tried to get some shut-eye. There was a loud group of American backpackers in the next car playing music from the 1970s and 1980s on a CD player, but eventually I drifted off to sleep. The bunk was shorter than I am, but was comfortable enough that I slept decently until around 5 a.m. At that point Chris got up and started pacing up and down the aisle and occasionally smoking cigarettes and I knew I was up for good. Nice wasn’t the final stop of the train so oversleeping would not be good.

At one point just after the sun was coming up on the gorgeous Mediterranean coastline, it might have been in Marseilles, the train pulled into a station for a few minutes, then pulled out the way it came in. It was obvious that the train was now looping around a corner, but Chris was stunned. He mentioned it to me about five different times and then anytime anyone would come walking down the aisle he said it to them too. He wasn’t worried that we were going in the wrong direction, but he was just amazed a train car that had been facing the mountains while going east could now be facing the water while still going east.

We pulled in to the Nice Ville train station only a couple minutes late and I hopped off as did about half the people on the train. Since I had gotten about 3 or 4 hours sleep I didn’t feel too bad although my hair definitely made me look like someone who had just woken up. I followed the map in the Let’s Go – Western Europe book that I traded for at a bar in Barcelona and walked toward the beach. The main street that leads from the station to the beach was completely under construction in the center all the way down and the sidewalks were even tinier than usual due to a construction wall. This made the entire one-kilometer walk a single file affair. There wasn’t much foot traffic at that time, but it would haunt me several times before I left town.

I found the Felix Hotel (where I had reserved a room for 3-nights) conveniently located on a pedestrian street one block off the beach. I arrived a little after 8 a.m. so I was hoping my room would be ready, but the friendly, fluent-in-English French man that runs the place said it would be ready no earlier than 10:30. I put my bags in the laundry room and went to get some breakfast. A place on the corner, which he had recommended, was just opening, but they were not making hot breakfasts yet. I had two rolls that were sitting in a basket on the table and a Café Americaino. In most places that means a large cup of filtered coffee, but in France it means a cup of espresso diluted with hot water. The rolls were good, but I was already worrying that the coffee situation would not meet my needs.

I walked around the beach area for a bit and found the tourist information office, but it was closed all day on Sunday. It was still quite cold from the freakish cold snap that was dumping snow on most of the rest of Europe so I optimistically went back to the hotel early. My room was ready so I checked in and found a large and very comfortable bed. There were also 2.5 channels of English-language TV available (DW, a German channel rebroadcasts every show in English so half the day is English). This was an extremely comfortable room and the timing could not have been better. I was still a bit road-weary so a nice place to relax went along perfectly with my modest sightseeing goals for Nice. I crawled into the bed and slept until noon, by which time it was raining.

My plan for Nice was to get the general vibe of the city as I came and went, but mainly use it as a staging area for daytrips to the far more expensive areas of Cannes and Monaco, both nearby. Since it was raining I cut my exploration short for the day and just bought some stuff at a local market to make sandwiches for lunch and dinner. I had some computer work to catch up on so I did that and had a very pleasant afternoon and evening in my 4th floor room that had a nice view of some nearby buildings.

The next morning I finished a few more computer things and found an Internet place to hook up my laptop around the corner and took care of my work. Everything in France seems more expensive than Spain (not surprisingly) and Internet usage was no exception. Prices were more than double what I had become used to.

With that complete I put my computer away and took advantage of the clear skies to tour around Nice on foot for a while before I headed to the train station for my trip to Cannes. I stopped in at the TI office to find out about city tours, but they were too expensive and I really wasn’t very interested in the sights of Nice, but I was still interested what Nice (the largest city on the French Riviera) looked like. The beach itself in Nice is anything, but nice. It’s nothing but rather large rocks so I am sure even a beach towel would be uncomfortable to lie on, you’d definitely need a mat of some kind. The water, however, was a beautiful blue for the first 20 meters or so, which must be the reason they call this the Cot d’Azur. The city itself is also very nice. This surprised me a bit since this is known as the budget town on the Riviera. It was still quite cold so it was another tease really seeing this very nice warm-weather city during some very cold weather.

I eventually made my way up to the train station again and bought a round-trip ticket to Cannes for €10. The trains in France are very nice and smooth, but this seemed pretty expensive for a 40-minute ride each way. The train glided back down the beautiful coast and I was soon getting off in Cannes. I didn’t have any kind of map and I didn’t find the TI office until just before I left so I just wandered around randomly. It’s not a big city and it’s very obvious which direction the beach is in so it wasn’t much trouble to find my way around. It was still only around 40 degrees, but the wind wasn’t bad so I was comfortable enough as long as I kept moving. Sitting on a bench on the beach would have been out of the question though. Cannes looked about how I expected. The only thing that resembled a landmark to me is the very grand and photogenic Carlton Hotel on the beach (now part of the luxurious Inter Continental chain).

I walked all the way to the end of the main part of the beach and then went inland a couple blocks in search of an affordable restaurant. The only thing that is even close to reasonably priced in France is the Menu du Jour, which is usually a 3-course meal for about the price of a normal entrée. Conveniently enough, most places advertise the price of their special outside and I was seeing everything from €10 up to €30 or so. I found a modest place, which seemed to specialize in Pizza and went in. It was a salad, a pizza, and a coffee for €11 and I chose a 4-cheese pizza and a cappuccino, although I later found out the included coffee is only served afterward so the large cappuccino cost me an extra €4.

The salad came and I was shocked. I have never been disappointed with any food I’ve ever gotten in France, but even still I am not used to it. It was a rather large and very fancy salad with the expensive salad greens and an incredible creamy dressing. If I ordered that for $10 at a fancy place in the States I would be raving about it. It was excellent. The pizza arrived and was also large and laden with nearly a half inch of melted gourmet cheeses. The cappuccino was also great, but it’s still shocking how good all the food is in France. This was more of a working class hangout than a fancy restaurant and yet I was blown away by the food. It’s a shame it cost so much, but I don’t regret it at all.

I then went back down to the beach and noticed it had warmed up a little. I strolled all the way down to the port and into the harbor. I passed a very long row of fancy yachts that all had signs from banking and investment firms on them. Cannes is a convention town and the film festival is just one week in a packed schedule. Evidently they were setting up for a finance convention of some sort. I didn’t see any yachts that were too amazing, but still you could see this was a playground for people with lots of cash, and also convention-goers with lots of cash.

After a while down there I wound my way back through town and back to the train station. I only passed one small Cineplex so I guess the films are screened in hotel ballrooms or somewhere else. It was very interesting to finally see in person the place that is always in the news each May during the festival. The beach is also normal sand instead of rocks, so they must import it like the do so many other places. I jumped on the train and was shortly back in Nice.

It was getting late and I had done a lot of walking so I decided to buy more picnic stuff for dinner later and just go back to my hotel. Nice is supposedly famous for its nightlife, but it was pretty dead in early March, unsurprisingly. I walked by a few bars in my area and saw that some had beers for around €3 but I am sure they were pretty dead on that Monday night. It’s also a bit intimidating since I was surprised by how little English is understood there. In Paris it’s not hard to get by on mostly English and I’ve read that the entire French Riviera is packed with Anglophones during the summer while the French folks vacation on the Atlantic, but nevertheless, the people I was encountering spoke little or no English in most cases. I could feel bad or guilty about not speaking their language, but you can’t only travel to places where you speak the language, especially on an epic trip like this.

The next day was my trip to Monaco. Cannes is about 20 miles south of Nice and Monaco (population 7,000) is about 10 miles north. The roundtrip train fare was only €6 and the journey takes just 20 minutes each way. I was there before I knew it. I had a window seat and was able to see the coastline north of Nice for the first time. The French Riviera definitely exceeded my expectations looks-wise. The water has that azure color along the shore all the way up and down, not unlike the coast of Miami Beach, but the jagged coastline itself reminded me of the nicer parts of the coast on Central California, although here every large cove has a beautiful and exclusive city built into the hills overlooking the water.

I hopped off the train in Monaco (which is a separate country, as you probably know) and could immediately notice this was no ordinary place. The train station is built into one of the numerous tunnels that were blasted out of the coastal mountains in order to build the railway all those years ago, so there are long corridors leading into the city itself. You can go in three different directions, depending on where you want to go, and I headed toward the port. The long hall was completely done up in fine marble for its entire duration of about 100 meters. This felt like you were walking into a 5-star hotel and this was just the train station.

Once outside I used my rudimentary guidebook map to navigate. Once again, I mainly just walked around and soaked in the atmosphere. I wanted to go to a bookstore I read about that had only English language books, but it was closed for a 90-minute lunch break just after I found it. I went to a small restaurant just down the pedestrian street from the bookstore for lunch. I ordered the set lunch and got a good, but not exceptional veal stew with rice and a salad. I noticed that just about everyone in the place was English. I’m sure it’s ridiculously expensive to live there, but I think Monaco is home to some British companies that might set up there for tax reasons. For the first time on my trip I also was able to listen to a radio station that broadcast completely in English. It’s called Riviera Radio and is based in Monaco, but comes in loud and clear in Nice. The announcers and all the commercials sound exactly like they do in London.

After lunch I walked the other way through the port. There were a few enormous yachts in the harbor and I am pretty sure they are private. This area, in particular, attracts the “old money crowd” so you can’t help but imagining that lifestyle of people whose descendants were part of the 1 or 2% that had money while everyone else was extremely poor. Even though the famous Monte-Carlo Casino was slightly off my map I was able to find it with no problem. Monte-Carlo, by the way, is one of 5 districts that make up the tiny country of Monaco. As I walked up the hill that Monte-Carlo sits on I almost took a picture of this gorgeous building with a distinctive green copper roof, but I didn’t know what it was so I didn’t. When I got to the top I realized it was the casino itself. I already knew there is a €10 cover just to get in and I knew I wasn’t going to pay that, but it was still a very worthwhile sight.

Right next door there is a far less glamorous casino called Café de Paris with no cover charge. The table gaming doesn’t really get going until the evening and the casinos themselves only open around noon, still there was quite a bit of action at the slot machines. I cruised around a while and almost left, but thought to myself that I really have to gamble in Monte-Carlo on my only trip there, especially since gambling winnings have provided much of the funding for this trip.

I bought €10 worth of €2 tokens that fit into the Royal Ascot racing game and sat down. About 6 other punters were already in action and I jumped right in. It’s a minimum of €2 per race so I bet that much to win on each race. I hit the 4th race and also 3 of the next 4 after that finding myself with €18. I bet one more and lost, then decided that leaving Monte-Carlo with a profit was a feat unto itself so I cashed out and left.

I went back to the bookstore as it was reopening, but they didn’t have the travel book I was looking for. I walked around for a little while and then back to the train station to catch the next available train to Nice. Monaco is definitely worth a visit. It’s much smaller and much more exclusive than Cannes. It also has an unimaginably beautiful setting in a natural harbor on the Mediterranean. It’s an old money town, but seems to be surprisingly welcoming to the shoestring traveler just passing through to see it.

Back in Nice I decided to picnic for dinner again. One meal out in the area taxes my budget and the sandwiches one can make from cheap ingredients there are also very tasty. I had planned on going out that night and trying a bar or two, but it was cold on that Tuesday evening and I just really wasn’t motivated to make new friends in this off-season beach resort where I don’t know the language. There didn’t seem to be many tourists in town at all and the bars I saw were all large institutional places that didn’t have a friendly feeling at all. I really hope to enjoy the nightlife along the French Riviera at some point, but this trip just wasn’t the time. I went to bed early so I would be fresh for my train ride to Milan the next day.