Revealing the Riviera

It was my first overnight train experience. It took another train to get to the French border before I was actually able to board the "coche" train (which in some way or another translates to sleeper train). On this preliminary rail trip I met a couple of Americans who'd been travelling for a few weeks and another who'd been in Pamplona and was doing a tour of the festivals of Europe, in essence, chasing each one from town to town.

Reaching the sleeper train, I found my cabin and was a little surprised. I'm not sure what I expected from the outset, I certainly wasn't visualising a hotel room on wheels, but the cabin itself was quite small with three beds on each wall. Sort of ground level, middle of the wall and above. The bed was about a meter wide, and whilst there was a place to put your luggage, my bag was a bit too big to fit there. It went at the end of my little stretcher, and whilst it resulted in me not being able to stretch out the whole way, it was comforting to know where it was the whole time. I'm not saying the train felt dodgy in any way, but when my bag is out of sight, there is always the niggling concern that someone might be screwing with it.

I slept fairly well on the 7 hour trip to Nice, all things considered. The constant movement of the train and the noise from outside were a little distracting, but I'd become so drained from Pamplona and still hadn't really caught up with the sleep debt. As a result my body was starting to rebel, and a run-down cold was setting in. I made a commitment that Nice would be spent relaxing and sleeping, in order to fend off this illness which would only cause me trouble if I allowed it to linger. One of the problems pointed out to me in Europe by Ian, is that you actually need a prescription to get something as simple as cold and flu tablets, so I knew I wouldn't be able to find relief there.

Once I arrived at Nice, I worked out where the hostel was and made my way down. The weather was hot, and by the time I'd made it, I was very sweaty and uncomfortable. Unfortunately I wasn't able to check in until after 3, but was allowed to leave my bag in the luggage room. I did so and went to check out the city in general.

Basically there's not much to see. I'm either starting to become a little jaded at finding a new city, or perhaps I did all the exciting ones first. At any rate, Nice has one fairly bland cathedral, one main shopping strip and quite a nice plaza. I stopped at the plaza for a baguette for lunch, mostly to cool down from the hot sun for a while. There's a pretty cool fountain in the middle that increases and decreases the amount of water and the height at which it is spraying. That was entertaining while I finished my meal, and then headed past it to check out the beaches.

The water of the mediterranean in Nice is very very clean. There's no sign of seaweed anywhere, and the first 30 meters or so are very light blue, darkening significantly as you get further out. The coastline itself is also very spectacular, and there were thousands of people enjoying the sun, sailing, parasailing and the like. I hadn't brought any of my swimming gear, as I'd decided just to do walking around thing, so I made my way back to the hostel to get a towel and change into some shorts. I was also able to put my bag in the room, and with a combination of the heat, the walking around I'd done, and general lack of sleep, I promptly passed out on my bed for half an hour.

I then made my way back to the beach, and found myself a spot on the shore. At this point I'll make clear that when I say beach, I'm actually talking about a short of small rocks and pebbles. Not a grain of sand was to be seen, and whilst this may sound horribly uncomfortable, the rocks aren't jagged, so while not soft and cushy like the sandy beaches back home, it was still able to be lay upon. The water itself is quite chilly, but I think that was primarily due to the heat of the environment outside. The body adapts to the cold water quickly, and swimming about was very refreshing after a couple days without a shower. One interesting thing I did note was how rapidly the rock shelf became deep. It stays shallower than a meter for the first 10 or so meters into the water, and then quickly drops off well below head height beyond.

After letting my body rest here for a couple of hours, I went back to the hostel and grabbed myself a pizza. There wasn't too much open, and I grabbed the first opportunity for food I had. I ordered a pizza of various meat and cheese, including an egg. This isn't like the good ol' Aussie pizza back home. Due to the Italian pizza's being (generally) quite thin, they don't spend nearly as long in the oven as we expect back in Oz. Due to this, the egg they crack in the middle of the thing is essentially raw. Further to this, they don't slice it up for you, as generally over here it is one pizza per person, and it usually eaten with knife and fork, as the thin base is generally not stiff enough to pick up by itself. At any rate, I met a Canadian couple in the hostel kitchen as I was rummaging around for a knife, who finished serving up their gnocci and joined me for dinner. Louis and Whitney, both from the Montreal area were great company, and it was interesting to see how Louis, whose first language was French and Whitney, whose first was English were able to complement each other in conversing with English. They both spoke English perfectly, but occasionally Louis would want to describe something complicated that he only knew in French, and between them they worked out the best way of converting that to English. Even though I'd wanted to get to bed before midnight that night to begin my relaxing mode, through the chatting and general good times I didn't quite make it before 2AM. We made plans to head to Monaco the next day.

Meeting at breakfast, we got our stuff together and headed for the bus station. There are two ways to get to Monaco from Nice, which is only about 20KM's away, and that is either bus or train. We were recommended to use the bus, as you get to see the entire coastline between Nice and Monaco, which was very picturesque. Unfortunately it seemed everyone else had been given the same advice, and it was very cramped standing room only for the hour it took to arrive, as the busy, thin windy roads along the Riviera make for slow going. Honestly I don't know how the bus made it without side swiping several other vehicles, but it seems with a bit of practice these drivers have gotten a good handle on how to manoeuvre their massive machines around the obstacles.

Eventually we made it to the main marina and checked out all of the boats in the harbour. There were all shapes and varieties, but it was quite clear that the majority of these vessels were extremely expensive. Massive yachts with opulent open lounge rooms floated one after the other in a row down the marina, many with several other small marine vessels attached to them. Most had at least one jet ski sitting on the top, most with a couple. Some home several side boats hanging off the edges, but all were very clean and of the highest class imaginable. Most were white, with various names that elude me now, but later in the day we would see a very sleek black cruising yacht pulling into the marina that looked very bad-ass indeed.

We walked up and around the marina now searching for the famous Monte Carlo casino, and we passed a few buildings, Louis querying "Is that it?". We were the only couple of people walking around, and the buildings themselves didn't look that opulent, so in each case I replied "Nah, I don't think so, we'll know it when we see it". We reached the end of this strip of buildings, only to see more apartment and residential areas, and it turned out that this indeed was the casino. We had been walking along the strip behind it, and with the lack of people and general ritziness, I had been convinced that it must be elsewhere. We wandered around to the front, and finally saw the main entrance with its garden and flower arrangement, and I have to admit I was underwhelmed. Being considered the richest, or one of the richest, famous casino in the world, I expected something incredible. I don't know what it would have taken, perhaps hundreds of pure gold fountains spraying crystal water as semi naked super beauties frolicked under them in the sun would have worked, but all I was treated to was a fairly nice building with a flower garden and funky mirror out the front. Either way, photo's were taken appreciative comments were made, and we moved on. Apparently we had the option of entering the place, I found out later, as I'd was under the impression it necessitated a suit to get even through the doors. However, we skipped this part and got some ice cream which consisted of the the biggest two some Haagen Daaz I've seen in my life.

Hiking up the other side of the hill to see the royal palace was hard going, but the result was quite impressive. The palace itself is nice, but nothing incredible, but the view over Monaco city and the coastline in general is quite amazing. The flag was up, which indicated the Prince was at home, however the main gate is roped off in a 20 meter semi circle from the public. Within this circle a lone guard in whites holding a large machine gun paces in a 15 meter line. Foward. Stop. Slowly turn. Back the other way. Repeat..... and repeat.... and repeat. This poor bugger had to do this all day, and it was clear where he was walking, as there was a definite strip of worn asphalt along the path of his pacing. I'm sure it is quite an honour to have this duty, but honestly it looked like the most boring job in the world, and add to that the heat of the place, and there was no shade, I do not envy his position in the slightest.

More photos were taken and we checked out some of the souvenier shops, grabbed a beer and then took the train back to Nice. All in all, Monaco only took about 3-4 hours to see, and then it was done. The whole place is only about 2 square kilometers, and once you've done the marina, the casino and the palace, all that is left is residential areas. There is the occasional Porche or Ferrari that will wizz past on the road, the main road being the same used for the Grand Prix. There are little sections of the road where the red and white edges are visible, but for the most part it just looks like a normal old road, quite thin really, considering the speed at which the F1's go tearing around.

I guess I expected the most extreme opulence, celebrities all over the place, and streets lined with the most expensive of automobiles. All in all, it was still a nice city with an incredible view, and probably the nicest collection of boats you'll ever see. It did indeed re-ignite my desire to own such a vessel, and I'll be sure to start poking Dad about getting his boat when I return. Perhaps I should start the poking earlier, so that it will be there for my arrival. One thing I wasn't sure about is how big a vessel need be before it becomes seafaring. Are all these nice cruising yachts restricted to the mediterranean? Is it possible to take them across the Atlantic to other shores? If anyone has knowledge on this area, please feel free to leave a comment!

Once back at the hostel, I hung out for a while in the bar area. I got chatting to a couple of Americans from South Carolina. We had a few beers and tequilas, I tought them how to play the card game I learnt in Toulouse, and after an hour or so of this, a few Germans on the table behind us talked us over into joining their drinking game. Called "Maya", it was a bluffing based game, where you would shake two dice in a cup and announce your score. The person to your left either has to shake the dice and get a score higher than you, or decide that you're lying and look at your dice. If your dice are not what you proclaimed, you would have to take a drink. There were a few other complications, but that was the jist of the thing. This turned out to be very entertaining, and continued on past midnight at which point the hostel staff decided we'd become too rowdy and told us to leave. Most of the group headed out to continue on at some bars around the city, but I'd again broken my curfew and I knew I was heading out to Turin the next day and again wouldn't get the amount of sleep I was hoping for. I think this turned out to be a good decision, as the two Americans who happened to be in my room got back a couple hours later. One of them, Scott, managed to make it into bed and pass out, however I think shortly after making to his bunk, Matt, wasn't quite able to make it out again and ended up painting his bed with his stomach lining. This was the only time that I didn't curse my blocked nose, and aside from the rather unpleasant sound of the event, the smell which I'm sure was prevalent didn't have a chance to enter my sinus.

The next day I gathered all my stuff, and got on the midday train to Turin, Italy. All in all I thought Nice was a bit boring. There wasn't too much to see, and the beach, though the water was great, was a bit uncomfortable and not very conducive to lounging about due to all the pebbles and rocks. I've heard the other main cities of the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) such as Cannes and Antibes have quite nice, white sandy beaches. Monaco was cool to see, it was one of the places I'd been most excited to check out during this trip. I may have over-hyped it a bit for myself, but was still a very nice view and the yachts were awesome. Also, there's just something kitchy and cool about saying "Yeah I just kinda hung out in Monaco for the day". I'm not sure I'd be running back to either place in a hurry, but I think I should return to the Riviera itself at some point, if nothing else but to see one of the nicer beaches.