Day 11 - French Riviera

Saturday May 22 - Around 5:45am I came down to the hotel lobby and ran into Suk, Jas and a few others who were just getting in. I thought I had a late night out! We boarded the coach complete with our picnic breakfast - basically a cheese sandwich, a pear and some pastry. I ate exactly none of it. I sat with Brad on the bus and I was finally able to grab a bit of a rest. At the first service stop I ended up grabbing not one but two cappuccinos so I was quite wired after this. I haven't mentioned how great the coffee is all over Europe - it doesn't matter where you are the coffee is almost guaranteed to be great. Honestly it could be the most dodgy service station but the coffee will be fabulous, I have yet to find anything nearly as great back home. Brad was pretty awake as well so we ended up chatting for a while and then I told him I had been downloading "24" episodes onto Sandra's Ipod so he caught up on that for a while and I was able to catch up on a bit more sleep.

The drive into Nice was beautiful! The water was a spectacular greenish blue colour with a gorgeous shoreline. We arrived in Nice around 5pm and got to our hotel only to find out there had been a mix-up and there wasn't any room for us. We had to drag our luggage through the busy streets of Nice to our new hotel only to find out it was pretty small with a tiny lift. I got impatient waiting for the lift so I decided to just carry my luggage up 4 flights of stairs to my room, it was a struggle but I was able to do it. The room was quite nice although a bit dated, quite large - 3 beds and a cot for just Sandra and I. We had a nice view of the city streets, I was pretty happy with it. Turns out we got lucky, most people had tiny rooms without any view to speak of.

We then went for a tour dinner at a nearby restaurant, again the food was just alright. Quiche to start, chicken schnitzel and veggies. Definitely not very French and by now most of us were getting pretty sick of chicken. After dinner Sian had organized a night out at an Irish pub and about half the people on the tour came out for it. Even though I had slept a bit on the bus I was beyond exhausted - I probably hadn't had more than 12 hours of sleep in 5 days. I managed to go for one beer but I decided to head home after that and get some much needed sleep.

Trekking along the streets of Nice

Paradise (Nice Shoreline)

Streets of Nice