After a big 10 hour stay in Genoa where all I did was walk to the hostel, sleep, and walk back to the train station – I was on my way out of Italy to France!
For whatever reason France holds a romantic notion for me and I couldn’t wait to get there. My original plan had me going from Florence straight to Venice and then onto Eastern Europe (another area I’m excited to get to) and I wasn’t going to visit France until I went to Paris in late September near the end of my trip.
But as you may have read in earlier blogs I’ve had a tug-of-war with myself on whether to include an extra leg over the next two weeks.
Obviously since I’m in Nice I did, in fact, decide to include this leg so here I am – in France!
The most exciting part for me was that I was now in a land where I could somewhat speak and read the language – a nice change after struggling with Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
This leg will take me from Florence to Nice, Marseilles, Bordeaux and then to Bern, Milan and Malta before finally rejoining my original path to Venice and beyond.
Anyway, I headed to Nice early in the morning and the train trip was beautiful. Travelling on rail along the seaside looking out over the crystal blue sea with an equally blue sky was amazing. After a couple of hours I pulled into the Nice rail station and walked to my hostel.
I was booked into a four bed dorm and when I opened my door I was met by three girls from Manchester – Laura, Lucy and Sam. They were on their way out to explore and I couldn’t think of a better way to start my time here in Nice.
We all walked along the beach and then over to the Old Town where we stopped for a fantastic 3 course meal of mussels, mixed seafood plate and, of course, chocolate mousse. We topped it off with some Prosecco. It truly was a genuine French meal and it was so nice to eat some healthy light food after all the heavy pasta and pizza in Italy.
After dinner we actually stopped at a bar and shared another bottle of wine before heading back to the hostel where we shared yet another bottle of wine before finally heading to bed.
It was a great way to start this leg with a lounge about day with no real plan – something I crave and am looking forward to doing much more over the coming days.
As for tomorrow, during the last bottle of wine at the hostel I met Chau, a girl from Melbourne currently living in the UK, and she and I made plans to visit Monaco and Monte Carlo.
Should be a great day – can’t wait!
