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Published: July 24th 2017
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Our 5:45 alarm roused us, our brains and bodies complained but we dragged ourselves out of bed and made our way across town to catch our 07:10 train out of Milan and on to Nice. The train journey was 4h 50m which we utilised in a few ways, napping, playing cards and trying to plan out our 23 hours in Nice, which was harder said than done over 4G when there are that many tunnels on the route along the south coast of France! We are finding it quite difficult to keep up with our planning and research at the moment and on occasion we are boarding trains on to our next destination without any idea where we are staying or what we can do in the next city!
We plotted a number of points of interest on Google maps in both Monaco and Nice and decided that we wanted to start in Monaco in the early afternoon and then attack Nice in the early evening. We then realised that our train actually stopped in Monaco, which is about 25 mins by train from Nice. Rather than complete the journey, walk to our hostel, drop our bags and then retrace
our steps and catch another train back to Monaco, we decided to just get off early and drop our bags in Monaco station, explore and hen collect them and head on to Nice. Great plan right, except that Monaco does not have any left luggage service! (At least not any,Lee, there were signs that lead to nowhere and this was later confirmed by the ticket office). According to the tourism office there was no left luggage in Monaco full stop! Rage mode activated, we waited another 40 mins for the next train on to Nice and finally arrived in Nice, having wasted over an hour of our already limited 23h, at about 13:15.
We found our hostel, which was very close to the station, with ease and checked in. Unfortunately, when we trudged up the 3 flights of stairs to our room, we found it to be a private double, not a private twin! As you can imagine after this mornings antics we weren't really in the mood for this and I think the poor receptionist got that message pretty fast :-s She was initially a bit flummoxed and apologised for the mistake (which was hostel worlds mistake really
as they don't pass on enough info to the hostel) but said that they were fully booked and it was all they could offer us. Not long after that she came up to our room to suggest that she could move us to a private triple room instead and was again vey apologetic. We accepted the offer and insisted that it was not a problem and that any anger we had previously demonstrated was just frustration at the scenario and not aimed at her. I felt a bit guilty that we had given her too much of a grilling before!
Thankfully, this was the last real cock up of the day. Once creamed up, we headed across to the Russian Orthadox Cathedral, a beautiful building which looks like it has been air lifted straight out of Red Square in Moscow. Whilst I was heading up to another smaller out building to take a picture of it, I found a lone white rabbit, cleaning him self on the grass under a tree. I approached him very slowly to take a few pics and found he was not shy at all and perfectly happy letting me get writhing a few inches
of him with the GoPro! Then it was back to the station and off to Monaco, bag free, where we explored for 4 hours.
It was another beautiful day which meant good views, good pictures but sweaty backs and lots of sun cream. We walked along most of the F1 route starting near the pits and the finish line and up the hill where we found some good views of the marina. It took about 30 seconds for us to see a handful of Ferraris, Maclarens and Mercs and there were many more once we walked past Hotel de Paris and found Monaco Casino. It was quite the spectical to see the high rollers all parked up out front. From here we continued along the route down through the hairpin corners and made a stop in Starbucks to cool down with an iced coffee, then it was down to the sea for a lap around the little promenade lined with famous footballers feet imprints, a bit like the walk of fame. We also saw a pair of young guys we had seen driving mirror finish Mercedes AMG brute earlier in the day finish heir test drive of a new
Ferrari...it's a tough life for some! We then walked through the tunnel on he F1 route and around the marina admiring the many super yachts and I went on the hunt for a patch, which eventually we found, before heading back to Nice in the train.
We popped back to the hostel to freshen up and Dan made a call to Mette, then we were off out again on the hunt for 'Tandoori Flame', our chosen dinner venue, via the seafront. We passed through a large square which was hosting a little jazz music festival, there was a park with some water jets in the floor, filled with kids playing in the water and a well decorated fountain called 'Fountain Du Soleil'. Just before the beach we found a large rusty metal statue called 'Neuf Lignes Obliques' which I had seen on TripAdvisor as being one of the things to see, though I wouldn't have made a special effort to get to it, what was worth it however, was the view of the never ending south coast of France from the Promenade des Anglaise. We then made our way through the narrow streets off the promenade to Tandoori Flame
for dinner, the food was good but the service was extremely slow and they seemed heavily understaffed, we spent over two hours in there to get our shared starter and mains in the end. After dinner we made our way back via a differ t route and found some nicely lit and regal looking buildings to take pictures of, before returning to the hostel for bed.
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