Think We May Have Over Packed

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Issy decides to skip breakfast so I eat on my own. She does however ask me to bring her back some bread. I wait until there are no waiters around and wrap some rolls in paper serviettes and sneak them into my pockets. I feel like I've just robbed a bank. I wait for the local constabulary to descend and cart me off to jail. I'm not quite sure why I feel so guilty; we've paid for breakfast. The hotel probably doesn't mind where we eat it, in fact they'd probably prefer it if we ate it in our room off a serviette so they'd have fewer dishes to wash.

We're told that there will be a half hour wait for a taxi to the station. I wanted to get to the station early, because although I’ve booked the train tickets, we don't actually have them yet. The instructions that came with them said to print them out at a self service machine at stations that have them, but Monterosso isn't one of those, and the instructions were suspiciously silent on what to do in that eventuality. There's a long and very slow moving queue at the ticket office, and I'm now worried that we might miss our train and get stuck in this spectacularly beautiful village. Now that I think about it I’m not quite sure why I'm so worried.

There are no lifts at the station, and the platforms are all elevated. Our bags must weigh about 100 kilograms all up. I tell Issy that now we know that they have kitchen sinks in Europe we can pack a bit less next time we come here. I struggle to get the bags up the stairs. Just before the train's about to arrive they announce a change of platform. I now have to carry the bags back down the stairs, along the subway, and up the stairs on the other side. I think I can feel my shoulders popping out of their sockets.

We share our carriage with two other couples, one from America and the other from Canada. The Canadian couple, Jamie and Michelle, are also going to Nice. Jamie says he's revisiting his youth. He only looks about 30, which leaves me suddenly feeling very old. He says that the last time he came to Europe he did the running with the bulls in Pamplona. This sounds insanely dangerous. He says that the bulls can run much faster than the runners, and the streets are watered, which tends to make the bulls slip over at sharp corners. Perhaps unsurprisingly they then tend to get a bit angry, and keen to extract revenge on whoever happens to be nearby at the time. I wonder why they water the streets. Don't they think it's dangerous enough as it is? Jamie says he spent some time in Sydney a few years ago visiting a friend, and one of his most vivid memories is of the rules against drunkenness being very strict. He tells us that he got kicked out of bars twice after a security guard saw him stagger while he was dancing. Michelle says that he always staggers when he dances, even when he hasn't had anything to drink. He tells us that they're going to Scotland after Nice and have arranged to stay in the same backpacker hostel he stayed in when he was there as a student. He says that in Scotland you're more likely to get kicked out of a bar for being too sober. I'd never really been able to pick a Canadian accent before, but his is really obvious. He says "oot" instead of "out", and "hoose" instead of "house".

We change trains at Genoa. At one stage we thought about staying here, but it just looks like a massive shipping terminal, so I'm not sure we're missing too much. Thankfully we don't need to change platforms as my shoulders haven't had a chance to reinsert themselves into their sockets quite yet.

We need to change trains again at Ventrimiglia at the French border, and this time we do need to change platforms. Again there are no lifts. My shoulders are still not happy, and my knees and back are starting to lose their senses of humour as well. I suggest to Issy that maybe we should think about selling some of our luggage.

The train line runs right next to the water and even seems to be over it in some places. We pass seemingly endless kilometres of heavily populated beaches. The scenery is spectacular with steep hills coming right down to the water's edge. We arrive at Monte Carlo. It seems that the Principality's reputation for luxury even extends to its humble train stop, which makes all the others we've passed through look third world by comparison.

We arrive in Nice and say our farewells to the delightful Jamie and Michelle. They give us their contact details and tell us to come and stay with them if we're ever in Toronto. We stand on a taxi rank for what feels like a long time, but there's a notable lack of taxis. We begin to wonder whether "taxi" might mean something else in French. The hotel receptionist opens the conversation by asking me whether I speak French. This is a bit worrying. No one in Italy ever asked us whether we spoke Italian, and we've only been in France for about an hour. I get the impression that we're going to need to at least try to speak a bit of the local language or we may not be able to go anywhere. We might starve as well. I say "we", but then remember that I'm supposed to be the one who knows French. Issy was responsible for the Italian. She seemed to get off really lightly; everyone in Italy seemed to speak at least a little bit of English.

Our hotel's on a hill, and our room has a great view of the water from a few hundred metres away. Issy undertakes her customary inspection of the minibar. She asks me why it has small sachets of black pepper in it, and whether it's maybe a thing in France to put pepper in drinks. If it was I think it would probably make you sneeze a lot, which could get a bit messy.

We walk down towards the old town to get dinner and settle on a restaurant in Garibaldi Square. I try to speak to the waitress in French, but she responds in English. Why do they always do that? Surely they could at least pretend that I sound a little bit French. The bread is very tasty and crusty. The pizzas in Italy were to die for as expected, but they certainly needed to work on their bread.

Issy concedes over dinner that she may have brought too much luggage. She tells me that she's yet to use quite a few of the things in her suitcase, including her hair dryer and curler. I don't think she's used her set of lead weights yet either.

We make the fatal mistake of trying to walk back to the hotel along a different route. It's now dark, and we get lost. I tell Issy to turn her phone on so we can use its GPS to guide us, but it seems that its battery's about to die. Just as we're beginning to contemplate the not so appealing thought of sleeping rough on the streets of a strange city, the hotel miraculously comes into view. Disaster averted.

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