Sunday 3rd September

The drive from Avignon to Nice went smoothly and we found the location to collect our apartment keys and, then, the apartment with relative ease. Our accommodation for the next week was Limoncello, a 2 bedroom / 2 bathroom + powder room apartment sourced through Nice Pebbles. We had used this rental company back in 2007 when they were brand new and only had a few rentals on their books but now they were huge!

It was a significant relief to find that both the area where the apartment was located and the apartment itself were very nice. It can be quite a risk putting faith in the rental description and the online photos but this place seemed to match the agency description rather well. The apartment was large, modern and clean and looked to be a great place to base ourselves for further exploration of Nice.

Mark and I had a few hours before Tom arrived so we spent this doing some unpacking and grocery shopping. We noticed Cafe Fino, just downstairs from our apartment, and stopped off there to have a coffee where Mark said he had the best coffee since leaving Australia all those months ago! This was shaping up to be a positive experience and it was nice to be located in a very clean and upscale residential part of Nice and not right in the touristy Old Town where we were located all those years ago.

Our son, Thomas, wasn’t arriving until 6.30 pm so we went for a stroll down to the beach and to check out the Promenade and Old Town. As you could imagine a 30⁰ Celcius Sunday would be here on the coast; it was VERY busy. We were pleased to find it was just a 10 minute stroll to get down to the beach as we planned to spend a bit of time there this week given the forecast for each day was ‘hot and sunny’.

The trip to the airport to collect Tom went smoothly and we made it back to Nice just in time for our 7.30 pm reservation at Le Boudoir. It was a lovely evening catching up with Tom and finding out about his his time visiting a school mate, Will, in Zurich. Mark and I have both been a bit home sick and so it was a lovely antidote, especially considering it was Father’s Day.

 

Monday 4th September

It was a glorious morning so Mark and I set off for a walk along the beach. Our route took us down through the flower markets but there were no flowers to be seen, nor food, it was just junk. Apparently Monday is now antique / junk / car boot day. We both loved being back by the water and having a beach promenade to stroll and, also, seeing loads of other people out early at the cafes, markets, exercising and swimming.

Our main activity for today was a free 2 ¹/2 hr walking tour at 11 am hosted by Free Walking Tours Nice. Our guide, Marcin, was a friendly guy who was originally from Canada but has been a resident of Nice for the last 3 years. Marcin was originally a photographer which may go some way to explaining his lack of suitability as a tour guide. He had all the confidence and bravado suitable to the task it just lacked the content. One of his first claims, by way of introduction, was that he had beaten the person who developed Trivial Pursuit at their own game. He had this unfortunate habit though of getting our enormous group in a semi-circle and, then, advancing forward to talk to about 1/4 of the group. Mark and I gave up trying to hear anything about half way through the tour but he didn’t really cover much of the history of the city anyway, which was was what we were hoping to hear. Geoff and Lorraine take note: Forrest was much better than this guy!

We did pick up a few bits of interesting information (see below) but we will likely take one of the Voice Map tours on Nice to try and fill in the bits of history we missed out on today.

• The area was settled by the Greeks from around 350 BCE and they named the location after Greek god Nike.
• Marcin said the population was 340,000 but it is actually closer to 1 million.
• Nice receives around 5 million visitors per year but that data might be incorrect too!
• Nice traditionally was a poor region with no real industry and just humble fishing.
• It was visits by Queen Victoria that brought increased interest to the area
• The beach front promenade, Promenade des Anglais, was named for the English as they financed its original development that was just 550 m in length but it was later extended and is now around 7.8 km long.
• Nice was a fortified city but the walls, and Castle, were torn down by Louis XIV and much of this material was later incorporated into building the promenade.

Our walk finished at around 12.30 pm and we headed back to Cafe Fino for some lunch and then on back to the apartment for a bit of a rest. It was rather hot and the sun had been biting down on us for a fair bit of the tour which was rather draining. I had hoped to drag the boys out shopping but, surprisingly, they both bailed!

It was just after 6 pm before we headed back out and went to a bar for an aperitif before dinner at 7 pm at Chez Acchiardo in the Old Town. The restaurant was set in what had once been a Palace and so offered a wonderful ambience for our meal which was quite delicious. We had some burrata cheese with the entree, a cheese I’ve never found to be that tasty or to be fond of but the one they served here was absolutely amazing and noteworthy. There were even some Melbourne folk, ex Collingwood supporters at the table beside us to add a little spice to the evening. All in all, it was a fitting end to our day.

 

 

 

Tuesday 5th September

It was another glorious morning and shaping up to be a scorcher so Mark set out early for a bike ride and I headed down to walk the Promenade des Anglais. There were already quite a few on the beach and swimming in the water which made me think of home.

Our plan for the day was to take a Voice Map walking tour of Nice in the morning and then head down for a few hours at the beach. The tour was excellent and so much better than yesterday’s live-guided event. It covered some similar ground as yesterday but added much more historical context and even took us to an area of the Old Town that we hadn’t been to before so this is a tour I would highly recommend.

The afternoon was spent at one of the beach clubs, Opera Plage, and we were a little underwhelmed by the level of service that the €30 per / bed fee guaranteed. We had great fun though trying to get in and out of the water without looking like complete fools and we all relished in the cooling waves of the beautiful azure water of the Mediterranean. It was a most relaxing way to spend a few hours on a beautifully hot and sunny day. We were back home by around 4 pm for an afternoon and evening spent at home, dining in and watching some Netflix.