Blogs from Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France, Europe - page 2

Time to leave our lovely Nice. The holiday within the holiday. The tram system has made a huge difference to the city...very efficient with one arriving every three minutes. Jean Medecin with it's beautiful shops with beautiful prices (way too much for us)! Fantastic beaches, charm of the oldtown history, flowers, fruit & veg markets, easy access & frequency to the outer regions by bus or train.....Antibes, Cannes, Biot, Cagnes sur Mer, Grasse, St Paul du Vence, Vence, Entrevaux, Villefranche, Saint Jean cap Ferrat, Beaulieu, Monaco, and Menton on the Ventimigllia border to Italy. Tram to the airport...still no hold luggage so straight to Departure Security with our online boarding passes. Moving the whole time between EU countries, so no checks on arrival, just as you depart. Cuts at least 2 hours off the trip & ... read more

On Friday, October 11, we departed our lovely apartment in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue heading for Nice. We first had to stop at McDonalds to get WiFi since we had been incommunicado overnight and knew our family would be wondering if we were still alive. LOL!! It was a beautiful sunny, warm day and our trip was approximately 250 Km. Again most of the journey was on the motorway and our toll for this trip was 22.10E. We exited the motorway onto the Promenade de Anglais which took us past the modern airport, along the Mediterranean and into the city. The address of our apartment was 10 Rue Centrale in Vieux Nice and we were hoping to drop our belongings at the apartment before returning the car at around 5 PM. We contacted the landlady who was to meet ... read more

They celebrate nationwide here 'Armistice Day' with parades, flag waving, wreath laying and prayer at the memorials. Nice's Memorial sits under Du Chateau hill on the Port Lympia. It can be seen if you are driving into Nice on the high Corniche road and from sea if you are approaching the harbour. In Paris, an unknown soldier was placed in the chapel of the Arc de Triomphe then later buried under the Arc and an eternal flame has burned on the tomb under the Arc since 1920. We stayed away from the gatherings as per advice of 'safetravel.govt.nz'. It is significant that Grandad Stanley served in Ypres (near Belgium) and returned home to start a family. The 'Allblacks' playing France tonight in Paris - wearing the poppy. We can clearly see there is a huge spread ... read more

We didn't step outside the door once today - even though it rained and thundered in the night and then didn't rain again until the afternoon. The annual Nice to Cannes marathon along the water front was at 8am and we decided to stay away. They were lucky with the weather. The thunder is back! St Maurice, the district we are in, housed the Le Ray Stadium until this week as we have watched it being demolished. There is a new OCG Stadium up the Var valley they can continue to host International football games. I remember Le Ray also housed clay tennis courts. Nice is part of the Grand Prix Circuit a build up to the French Open tournament. We have been entertained by the ClayTennis courts we can see from our lounge window. They ... read more

Fabulous to be here...a real mooch around day in Nice We could have trammed our way down Rue Jean Medecin, however we decided to walk... Market day 6 days a week from Place Liberation. Walked right down to Place Messina which became more and more pedestrian orientated. Lovely sunny day and on through Parc Promenade du Paillon and out to the Promenade des Anglais. Some people swimming. School holidays here so lots of people about. Around the promenade to the port and was totally shocked to see a gigantic structure at the base of the port right in front of the beautiful buildings. The tram finishes here and turns around to circut again... I could not believe it! And so I shouldn't have... it is temporary as they dig underground!! It is not their style to ... read more