Our Easyjet flight from London Gatwick was at the fairly reasonable Saturday morning time of 10am. The scenery from the flight was very picturesque, as the plane flew over the city and then out into the Mediterranean Sea for a couple of kilometres before doing a sharp half turn and approaching low over the beach to the airport. The turquoise blue sea, mega yachts, tanned sunbathing locals with striped beach umbrellas completed the picture of what we had expected the Cote D'Azur / French Riviera to be.
And even better, we were here for our Honeymoon!
Promenade des Anglais
After leaving the arrivals hall at Nice Airport, we bought shuttle bus tickets and made our way to the Promenade des Anglais, near where our hotel (Hotel Dante) was located. The millionaire glamour of Monte Carlo soon put the price of accommodation within the principality beyond our budget and we opted to stay further west along the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera) coast in Nice and take the train into Monaco on race day.
The hotelier spoke English fairly well, told us that his daughter was working in Sydney (upon learning that we were Australian) and gave us directions to the Old Town and main train station - Gare de Nice, about 10 minutes away by foot.
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| Main square near Old Town |
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| The path of our trip this weekend |
Our first action was to pick up the train tickets from Nice to Monaco, as travel forums had warned us of the long queues on race day. The tickets were bought online as a lot of the French ticket machines only accept card or coins - a frustrating experience that we had learnt in Paris. From the train station, we caught a tram down to the seaside where a hop on/ hop off style bus was waiting - Le Grand Tour of Nice.
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| Beach umbrellas and blue sea |
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| Promenade des Anglais |
Le Grand Tour of Nice
The tour commentary taught us a lot about Nice's history, including its links with the Romans and the conflict of whether the city was ever part of Italy or France. We noted that throughout the city, both French and Italian were commonly spoken; and the city had a long list of pizza, pasta and gelati shops. We loved the ice-cream so much that we ate gelati on four separate occasions.
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| Cruising through the streets of Nice in an open-top bus |
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| War memorial |
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| Acropolis events centre |
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| Library |
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| Nice Carnival King |
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| Lots of pizza places |
Luxury Life
On the bus tour, we passed by the harbour that was already full of super sized luxury yachts that had likely arrived in port for the Formula 1 race or the nearby Cannes Film Festival; the war memorial; a number of beautiful old buildings and statues. One loop of the bus took approximately 75 minutes and we finished up back on the beach and near our hotel.
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| Garibaldi Square |
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| Beautiful old statues |
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| Interesting architecture |
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| A grand hotel |
Dinner in Town
Dinner that night was spent in the company of friends from Melbourne, Huy and Jacqui who were also in town for the race. Our dinner options in the Old Town focused around the Cours Saleya district. We were soon limited to restaurants with decent rain-proof canopies, as the skies opened up and soaked everyone. The food was average - with us debating whether if the waiter asks 'are you enjoying your meal', should you be polite and say 'yes' or do you tell them the truth even though you have finished all the food on your plate?
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| Mei and Jaqui |
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| Seafood pasta |
Pinocchio Gelati
After dinner we walked back to the shopping Massena area where the highlight was ice-cream at the Pinocchio chain - quality was both better than Harrods and in Italy. It even had macaroon flavour on the menu.
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| Pinocchio ice-cream |
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| Fountain in the main square |
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| So pretty at night |
Village of Eze
Our adventures at the Monaco Grand Prix are contained in a separate blog post. So skipping forward a day, we took a day trip to the hilltop village of Eze. Our friends had recommended this place as one of the things to do on our last day. The village consisted of an area by the beach where the Nice-Monaco train passes through. It also has a medieval fortress village higher on the mountain range that was accessible by bus. With our flight not until the late afternoon, we had the morning to explore. We took a train to Eze station (after almost 45 minutes of delays - must have been a post GP hangover), then a very scenic bus ride up the hill.
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| Sunshine at Eze |
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| The town of Eze from the bus |
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| Map of the medieval village |
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| The village is surrounded by amazing views of the mountains |
Eze - Things to Do
In terms of things to do in Eze, the highlight was just enjoying the amazing view of the Cote d'Azur. We also occupied our time by getting lost within the winding cobblestone pathways, visiting local craft stalls and learning the history of the village - which according to Wikipedia was first populated around 2000 BC and has been home to the Romans, Moors and other invading civilisations.
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| Narrow cobblestone streets |
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| Mei and garden friends |
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| One of the fountains at a hotel garden |
Nice Beaches
We caught a bus back to Nice where we picked up our bags from the hotel and there was nothing else to do but kill time lying on the beach - which is actually a foreshore of rocks. The beach was in no way as good as the beaches in Australia. However, the atmosphere (including elderly men with dark orange tans and topless girlfriends that looked a third of their age) had everything we expected the French Riviera to be and we finally got a decent dose of sunshine and Vitamin D.
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| Rocky beach, but beautiful weather |
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| Goodbye Nice |
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