(Some photos feature in this post, but you can access the full gallery here.)
The school holidays began only three weeks after I started my role here as an English Language Assistant. Between doing prep work for classes and studying for my end of year exams, for my French classes back home, and just generally trying to find my sea legs in a new country… I was not prepared for the holidays.
I made my plans the day before I left, and the only thing I booked was an AirBnB for the next five days.
I couldn’t sleep that night, so I got up early and took the 0609 to Paris, which left at least five minutes before the scheduled time. Hope no one was counting on catching that train!
Then I made my way over to Gare de Lyon, excited to get to Nice earlier than planned. But unfortunately, I have this new but very consistent tradition of getting stuck in Paris. The next train was listed ‘full’, the train I had been aiming for wasn’t even listed, and so I got a ticket for my back-up train and spent two hours waiting at the station.
They say when you travel in Europe, you end up making a bit of a study of trains and stations, and I have found this to be true. But I haven’t found it to be a bad thing. Gare de Lyon is the prettiest so far. I watched the sunrise while I waited. A man played the piano for about forty-five minutes while I was there, and it was lovely – although it was still Paris, which meant getting interrupted by announcements in six languages repeatedly. There were a few pigeons inside the building, but a lot more on the roof and I watched them shuffle around for a while. Read my book, and sent some messages since it was much later in the afternoon in Oz.
Eventually, I made it onto my train – a different kind of train to the one that goes to Normandie. It didn’t have any USB chargers and it was at this point that I discovered I forgot both of my power adapters. This would turn out to be an annoyingly expensive mistake. If it is just your phone you need to charge, you can usually use the TV, if the place where you’re staying has one, because they have USB ports these days. But I had my laptop and uni work to do. Alas. Anyway, I am telling myself it cannot hurt to have a spare universal adapter.
There are two different train options to Nice from Paris. There is a route that takes you over into Italy – this is the fastest route. Not by a lot. But it is kind of hilarious to me that the fastest route is to go from France, to Italy, to come back to France again. I ended up on option number two – a train from Paris to Marseille (the final destination on my trip) and then on to Nice. It’s a very nice train route, and you can watch the weather change basically before your eyes. The landscape changes too, though in a lot of ways pine trees and fields feel like they could be anywhere, and by the time we made it down to Marseille, it looked more like my idea of Italy than my idea of France. Architectural influences and such.
The train stopped for a long time in Marseille. I had a direct ticket so I didn’t think I had to get off but it was there a long time and there weren’t a lot of people still on the train. Eventually, the next travellers got on and we were a bit more crowded in again. Then the train took off back the way we had come. I was uncharacteristically calm at this point, and I supposed that either I had wildly misread my ticket and I was now on a surprise trip to somewhere new (or more unfortunately, a train back to Paris, but I planned to get off before that point), or the train would turn. It took more than a quarter of an hour – but it turned.
After that, it was smooth sailing. Beautiful coastline – so good to see the ocean again – and some very red dirt that I just didn’t expect to see outside of Australia.
The first thing I do when I am somewhere new – after I’ve dumped the pack – is to go for a wander. Walking is how I adjust to a place, how I get a feel for what it’s like. I also like to get a bit of a basic layout in my head that first day so that I don’t have to stare at the dot on my phone all the time. It is not a perfect art, and I do end up walking longer routes than necessary by not staring at my phone. But sometimes I still miss my turn, even with the dot. So it goes.
I walk to the old port first – I had chosen a place near this, wanting to be near the sea. The train line runs right down and along by the end of the port.
I walked some of the main streets – eventually found DARTY, which is a French electrical store, to buy my adapter, and also to buy more polaroid film because I only had a single shot left. I found the Basilisque Notre-Dame de l’Assomption. Decided I needed to get dinner and proceeded to get lost. (Both were resolved eventually).
The next day, I hit my personal list of priority Nice activities. Number one was Castle Hill or Colline du Chateau. There is an elevator somewhere, so the internet tells me. But there was also a veritable rabbit warren of paths and I wanted to know. There may be a time when I will return unable to take the paths, so I take them while I can.
Along the way, I found some great tile work, and a lot of the paths that aren’t cement but stones laid in careful patterns. I found all sort of paths that seem to lead to nowhere, and I am sure some of the clearings are the meeting places and the dancing lawns of elves and the fair folk. Every path upwards seemed to fork into two over and over again. I hoped this was an “all roads lead to Rome” situation, and made my choices at random. It worked out. I think I probably could have got up that hill by a hundred different configurations of the paths.
At the top, you can look out over all of Nice, and the surrounding hill and rock formations. I looked out at the Riviera, also called the Cote d’Azur (the Azur Coast), or the Mediterranean Sea, and I just didn’t understand how anybody could have a favourite colour other than blue. I was sure I had already found my favourite spot in Nice.
On my way back down, I found some ruins, a family park, several other historical sites and viewing points.
On the other side of the hill is the Promenade des Anglais (the Walkway of the English). This is a seven-kilometre walk along the coast, and with the wind kicking up, my face was constantly dusted lightly in salt water.
I didn’t end up walking the whole seven kilometres – I realised at 4pm that I had forgotten lunch, so I bought a chicken salad and the best chocolate croissant I’ve had to date, and had my lunch looking out at the sea. Then I went to a garden, had some macarons (pistachio, and a lychee!), and went to Cathedrale de Saint-Nichloas de Nice, another thing on my list.
I did not stay long here. It feels impolite to linger in churches for tourist reasons. A man was actually sobbing near an altar, and he left shortly after I did, still crying and crossing himself repeatedly in the doorway. It felt wrong to be there with a camera, so I returned to take some more external architectural photos, and of the animals they feed in their garden area.
The next day I went to Monaco, which I will cover in its own post.
I had one more full day in Nice, but I didn’t feel like rushing, since the previous day had been quite a big one. I walked a different section of the Promenade and decided to get gelato – I had a recommendation from a travel planning app I use sometimes, and it seemed like a nice idea. I got a little lost on my way and saw the Palais de Justice, and then re-routed and found Nice Cathedral or Cathedrale Sainte-Reparate de Nice. I scouted a bunch of gelato places before confirming I wanted to go with the recommendation.
For your reference: Fenochio – there are two in Nice, quite close to each other. I went to the one closest to the Promenade, and I got three scoops: lavender, rose, and violet. Highly, highly, highly recommend.
I ate them sitting on the edge of the promenade, alongside a lot of other people. It didn’t feel crowded though, and there were very few people in my line of sight at all. This, in the end, was my favourite time on the whole trip. Not just in Nice even. Eventually, I decided the sloping edge of the beach wasn’t enough for me and I wandered down to a section of the beach with no people in my view at all. And I played with the very smooth rocks that make up the beach instead of having sand. It was a really good day. The next time I want to take a relaxing holiday – not a touristy one, just a peaceful one – I am going to head back to Nice. I could spend days just sitting and looking out at the ocean, reading and writing by the sea… Walk up and around the crest, back over to the old port to look at boats if I felt I needed a change of scenery. It would be fantastic.
It took me until my last night to notice that I was Napolean Boneparte’s neighbour – just several hundred years too late.
I had a train to Marseille the next morning, but me and my pack did over seven thousand steps in Nice that morning. I walked a part of the Promenade again, one more time, and then cut up through town a different way to see Place Massena.
I was able to get the exact train I wanted without any issues at all for the first time in France on a train that wasn’t from my hometown (those tend to go quite well).
Already half my holiday was over! But I had a great time in Nice, and it had been the place that had the smallest number of activities that I was interested in, so I was feeling very hopeful as I took the train onwards to Marseille!
You can head to the photo gallery via this shortcut to see more pictures from this leg of the journey. The next post will cover my Monaco day trip. See you then!
