France - Nice

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Wednesday 20th April - Did our tour of Nice today using the hop-on hop-off bus. We did a complete lap of the city to decide where we would jump off and explore a little. Nice is the 5th largest city in France and the capital of the French Riviera. Was settled originally by the Phoenicians and subjected to various 'take-overs' by the Greeks, Romans before finally being declared a French city around 150 years ago. Until fairly recently the language of nice was a mix of Italian and French but now is purely French.

As you can see, the boats in the old harbour caught our attention so a few pics here.

On Thursday (today) we are heading to Avignon by train but encountered some delays due to an accident somewhere along the train line. We were due to leave Nice at 10:26 but finally got away at 12:36 - 2 hours late!!!!(check out the picture of the departures board at Nice station).

Creating this blog offline and we have now finally left Nice Ville station and just passed thru Antibes. Road and train follow the Meditteranean and less than a metre above sea level. A bit choppy out there today but still quite a few of those oversized boats out there. A guy that Gail was taling to while waiting at the station said that the big boats are staffed by South Africans and Aussies and that they earn around $200,000 a year to cook, clean, sail and look after the owners and their guests - where do I sign-up?

More another day, hopefully from Avignon (if we ever get there).

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