Day 3 - Train to Nice

For a day that was to be taken up mostly with travel again, it’s turned out to be quite eventful……..

We made our way down to the train station early this morning to catch the bullet train to Nice and unfortunately Christine’s luggage caused her more problems (much to the amusement of the rest of us). After getting her large bag caught in the ticket gate, it seemed that the only way to get it free was to just pull the handle harder until it came free…….…or until the handle suddenly breaks launching her back onto her bum in the middle of rush hour (guess which one actually happened). Al then got his bag caught as well which meant that the ticket gate became angry and started making loud grinding sounds. After kicking, pulling and swearing we managed to get everything free and exited quickly to find some breakfast (croissant and coffee).

Onto the train for a very scenic journey through to Nice (so much better than travelling by plane) and then on to pick up our Peugot. After a bit of guidance with operating the GPS, we braved the French traffic (rush hour again) and managed to find the hotel where we’ll be staying for the next couple of nights. However, getting into the super-tight parking building in the monster-sized van meant a large amount of forward, backward, easy does it, go, stop, clutch riding (resulting in an awful smell which stayed around for a while). I hope we haven’t broken it already.

And yes, more pieces of Christine’s luggage fell to bits when I tried to get it out of the van - I think that ‘new luggage’ has been added to the shopping list while we’re over here.

Of course, we couldn’t arrive in Nice and not try exploring a bit so we found a café where we could have dinner outside in the sun and feel very French for a while (more of an adventure when we found we couldn’t understand what was on the menu). Barb – who is better at French than the rest of us – asked the waiter what was in one of the dishes. ‘It is erm, very good’ the waiter replied. No problems though – the translations made the whole experience more entertaining, we managed to pull out enough French to understand most of what was happening, and the meal was fantastic.

One final thing to do for the day is to catch up on the laundry. Barb and Christine have disappeared off to the local laundromat with dirty clothes and some toenail polish. Al and I have decided not to go………