Day 7

Today was our free day in Nice, although speaking to the others in the group; people didn’t really spend all that much time here.

Matt and I were up at 8:45 for getting ready to leave and having some breakfast. We headed out by shuttle bus to catch the tram to catch the train to a beach near Monaco. The shuttle and tram ran frequently enough to zip around without too much trouble, but the train was delayed about 50 minutes. When it finally started moving, it was incredible crowded! The last 2 people on really should have waited for the next train, because no one could move a muscle. Matt was nailed against a wall, using all his strength not to be pushed over on top of a young kid in a seat. We did manage to get there with enough time to check out the beach.

This was a pebble beach rather than a sandy one. Walking around we saw fast moving water crashing against the rocks, fancy restaurants and drinks and not all that many people. Eventually we came across the beach section which was marked by barriers and had a few more people (still not a crowd). We jumped right in and spent a good couple hours swimming, floating and just relaxing.

Our next stop was back to the train to Monaco. After walking 15-20 min, we caught the train and within 10 minutes, we were there. We wandered over to the Jarden Exotique and then half way back where we came from to get a better priced lunch of cold pizza. Over lunch, we looked over the schedule again and realized that if we wanted to get to the medieval village in Nice before busses finished running, we didn’t really have time for the garden. We took 2 more busses and went for the village instead. The structures were unchanged for a very long time, only the vendors made it look modern. I was tired and had burned under-eyes, burned shoulders and just felt like sleeping. Matt decided he would really like to climb up this gigantic hill with a fortress on the top, so we went for it. (How often are we going to be in Monaco? May as well see it all). The top was gorgeous. We had a view of the water, the whole city and there was also an exotic garden at the top. It was almost all we had intended to see at the other garden (just missing a cave). Eventually we made our way slowly down the hill in order to catch our bus to the hostel. The bus had 3 different schedules, and the one we needed didn’t show up in accordance to any of them. It was alright though because a different bus that eventually came by went to the same place anyways. We again took the tram to the shuttle area, waited for the shuttle about 10 minutes and decided that it may have stopped running and instead walked over the hostel.

We had dinner at the hostel, chicken curry with rice and had our showers. Right now we are waiting to see if we will have a couple drinks with anyone tonight (yesterday we ended up just going to sleep instead) or if we will just get some sleep again. It’s already 11:12pm so we will see.