Day in Nice + departing Nice - June 29th & 30th

---

This entry by Tom.

Slept in but not a lot. Even though I covered a lot of distance yesterday and it was the 14th day of the last 15 that I was on the bike, I was still in the habit of waking up early.

Still, we missed the breakfast service at the hotel which I heard was very good. So we headed out on a neighbourhood walkabout to find food. We picked up some flat peaches at a corner grocer but ended up at the big supermarket down on the main road for the real stuff. Found some very good sausage and cheese for cheap, plus juice, waffles and fruit salad which we brought back to the hotel.

After what amounted to brunch we got down to the business of packing the bikes. It took a while, probably over an hour since there are two, but it was straightforward. Good to go tomorrow morning when the vans arrive at 7:30am to take us to the airport.

After cleaning up and an afternoon snooze I headed down to the hotel pool, which was very pleasant, just like everything else about the ANIS hotel. Linda was there and after a dip we talked for a while with a young woman from the UK. You often come across interesting people in places like this and it’s a big part of the fun of travelling.

We’d talked about heading into Vieux Nice for dinner for at least one night while we were in town but the hotel is just so cozy and comfortable that we had dinner again tonight at the hotel restaurant with Donna and Henry one table over and Dave, who had just arrived this evening from his business travels, and Linda at another adjacent table. We had pasta and the serving sizes were substantial. I helped Caroline finish her seafood spaghetti after I cleaned up my gnocchi with four cheese sauce.

Realizing that our group would be departing at about the same time as the normal start of breakfast service, the innkeepers will roll things out an hour earlier than usual, at 6:30am, for us tomorrow morning. I love this hotel!

Not much to say after that. Early to bed, early to rise, early to breakfast even though I didn’t see how I’d be the least bit hungry after a big feed late the night before but I was, and early to the airport. Check-in, security and passport control were routine and our flight’s departure was delayed but only 10-15 minutes or so. The 30-minute wait in line for a totally unnecessary second passport check was way more annoying.

It was slow going on account of stronger than anticipated headwind and we arrived back in Montreal about an hour later than scheduled but it seemed we had noticeably more space in our seats on the plane than on our flight to Paris nearly three weeks ago.

---