Walking Amongst the Stars

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Hello my fellow travellers!

Today me and Andreas headed out together with François to continue the tour of the old town that was interrupted a couple of days ago. François is very knowledgeable about this area and the tour he gave us was really good. We got a great deal of good information and visited some of the most beautiful churches in Nice.

Some of them was truly breathtaking such as the Cathedral of Saint Reparata and the Church of Saint Rita! However, the most beautiful of them all was the Chapel of Mercy which is beyond words or picture in how vividly decorated it is inside. We also stopped by the Lascaris Palace but we didn't actually visit it, it seemed quite nice though but we didn't quite have the time for it now. François also showed us the best ice cream in Nice at a place called Fennochio, it was really well made and delicious and if you're in the part of France you should definitely check it out and try an ice cream there.

After the tour was finished we parted ways with François and went to the train station to take a train to Cannes. I'll give you a word of advice here though to be out in good time because if you want to take a train from here you need to use some really crappy ticket machines. This is no easy feat, they are slow as hell and tend to malfunction in our experience. Also the queues to even get to them are humongous! There was an open register right behind us but they didn't sell tickets there, just told us to use the machines.

Just as I expected also the terror threat is very noticeable here as the train station was swarming with both police officers and armed security guards. All over the city today I've seen police officers and even soldiers patrolling the streets, ever watchful for lunatics with a death wish.

Anyway, we managed to get to Cannes, although we were a few minutes late due to some work on the tracks and the ride was quite uncomfortable as the train was packed to bursting with people. Cannes however was worth the trip as it is an absolutely gorgeous town with a very laid back feeling. First we walked down to the beach where Andreas tried his luck in the water again while I remained on dry land. It was as cold here as in Nice, which is what I expected, but at least it was a sandy beach here instead of those blasted rocks in Nice.

Afterwards we walked up to the old town to visit the Cannes Castle. The castle is quite beautiful, as is the view from it and I really enjoyed myself up there, fit me well. We didn't go inside the castle museum but just remained outside.

On the way up there we stopped at a really good restaurant, Le Saint Antoine, where I ate the best bouillabaisse I've ever had in my life! It was hands down the best meal so far on this trip and to make it even sweeter the staff was very attentive and super nice. Even better the prices was also really cheap, man what a catch! I highly recommend this restaurant and it was a great comfort considering our misfortune in dining establishment yesterday. It's easy to find, just across from the very cool bus station.

When we returned down from the Cannes Castle we walked the Walk of Fame which is filled to the brim with the hand prints of a whole lot of stars that are embedded in concrete around the tourist centre. I touched the prints of Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jean-Claude Van Damme, there was a lot of talented actors represented here! Being an avid fan of Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa I of course bowed in reverence before the hand print of said director when we came upon his hand print.

Amongst the Walk of Fame there are also a few photo opportunities available where you can pose as the characters from famous movies and both me and Andreas highly enjoyed that! We shared many good laughs while messing up our faces in the photographs.

Returning home though we hit a slight mishap as we didn't manage to book the same train which meant that I left before Andreas and ended up waiting for him on the station in Cannes. It wasn't so bad though, the weather was very nice and a lot of interesting people passed by. Especially this beautiful woman with this muscular dog that pooped on the walkway. At first I thought she just left the poop but she came back after a while and cleaned it up, kudos.

Tomorrow we're talking about going to Marseilles as I've heard it's a beautiful city and we have an day extra in France that we don't really know what to do with otherwise, it is a bit of a way there so we'll need to get started early tomorrow but at least now we know how the ticket machines work and we should be able to handle it better tomorrow. I'm guessing that since Marseilles is bigger and with a very diverse population there will be a very noticeable military presence there.

Until tomorrow I wish you all peace and happy travels!

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