Journal Entry: Chewable Aspirin

I’ve had dinner, I just ate pizza here and had a Hoegaarden beer. Cost me €10. That’s not too bad. 

It’s not even 9 and I’m whooped. All the walking has just about done me in. I had originally planned to take it easy in Nice. Hah! So much for that. 

Oh! A funny story. This morning. I had run out of Aspirin yesterday so I had bought some at the Pharmacy by the train station. I opened them last night and they were very big. I thought they were dissolvable tablets, like the “Goody’s” at home. That you drop them in a glass and then drink it. Well so, this morning I get a glass at breakfast and put them in some water, but they don’t dissolve. So I mixed them up with a knife, but they didn’t really dissolve. I thought wth? Am I supposed to swallow these things as big as they are? Well I licked the knife, and it was sweet. They were chewable tablets. LOL!

Anyway, I am going to read some Rick Steves. I hope Andy is feeling better. He was having a rough time of it with me being away.

Journal Entry: Nice Day One

I have had a pretty good day. I got up and had breakfast. Toast with a lot of butter, was probably a bad idea but I was hungry. Tomorrow I bought food to cook. Actually, I cooked my own dinner tonight. Steak with grilled peppers and a glass of sweet white wine. The food at the store, enough for dinner tonight and two breakfasts, cost €8 and some odd cents. The glass of wine was €2.50.

So, first thing this morning I went down to the train station. Villa St. Exupery Hostel is far from everything, and the shuttle down to the tram stop doesn’t start running until 8a so there was no point in getting up really early. Anyway, I picked up my tickets to Marseille, and then from Carcassonne to Paris. The machine would not take my card even though it has a chip in it. The machine did take it though for selling me tickets! Anyway, I had to stand in line for a bit, but then the nice lady at the counter, she printed my tickets for me. I said “merci beaucoup!”

 

Nice Flower Market

I then got back on the tram and got off at Place Massena and walked over to the old town. I went to the market. They have some wonderful stuff but it is really impossible to buy any of it while backpacking. There are nice public restrooms in the market area. Costs €.50 and there is an attendant and they are very clean. 

After I browsed the market, I walked up Castle Hill. Unfortunately there’s no castle any more. One of the Louis something-or-others had it torn down in I think the 17^th century. There were the remains of a church, a series of small walls. Very nice views of Nice from up there.

 

View from Castle Hill

There were also two cemeteries, a Jewish and a Christian one. Also a neat waterfall. I wonder if it is man-made or from a spring? 

Jewish Cemetery - the Christian one requested no pictures taken

Waterfall

After that I went and perused the old town, Vielle Ville, for a place to eat. I ate at a kebab place, cost €7.50 for a kebab, really like a taco, in a tortilla, filled with meat, a side of fries and a soda water. 

Old Nice - Vieille Ville

Then, after I ate, I walked back to the train station (a long walk) and did some window shopping along the way. I bought a ticket and return ticket to Antibes. I should have just bought the return ticket in Antibes, because I didn’t allow myself however much time I needed. A lesson learned!**

I went to the Picasso museum. Since they were working on installing some art, one floor was closed so admission was half price, €3. Very nice works by Picasso. And clean bathrooms.

 

Antibes - Picasso Museum

I then tried walking to the fort, but my leg started hurting me, I had a bad muscle cramp in my right calf, so I actually headed back to the train station early. It was good people watching at the train station. People were smoking in the waiting area, despite a sign that said “no smoking”.

I also had some gelato in the old town of Antibes. It was quite good, chocolate and mint chip. It was a bit pricey at €3.50 but not every place can be as cheap and good as Portici!

On the way back to the hostel, I stopped at the Casino market and bought my aforementioned dinner. I’m not sure what I am going to do tomorrow. I am going to read some of Rick Steve’s guide book and see if anything jumps out at me.

Oh, and here, there are not purse/umbrella sellers, Not one! There was a black man that tried talking to me on Castle Hill, he was like “excusez moi,” and I just shook my head and kept walking. He made this disgruntled noise. Maybe he was nice and not one of those scammers, but I don’t speak enough French to have a conversation. Maybe it was rude, but that’s life. [And I'm a girl traveling by myself. Mother taught me not to talk to strangers.]

**Everything works out the way it does for a reason. 

Journal Entry: Hostel Room Mix-up

I made it to the hostel. They mixed up my room reservation, and I am not in the room I requested. There is no ensuite bath. They said they would move me to the right room for the next two nights. I had pizza and beer for dinner. I probably shouldn’t have, but I didn’t feel like anything else, and certainly didn’t feel like looking for something and wind up eating pizza in the end anyway. 

 

Nice in the Evening - from Hostel St. Exupery

I got a sim card for my phone. It was €15 for the sim card and €5 worth of time. It is €.80 to call home but I can receive incoming calls for free, and the rate for Jan’s calling card is less than it was for the Italian one. Apparently the rates vary by city. 

What am I doing tomorrow? I’m not entirely sure. I guess I’ll go to the market and maybe to the castle hill. The shuttle doesn’t run to and from the hostel between noon and five so I better come up with something entertaining.

Journal Entry: A Tale from Nice

We had pizza again for dinner from the hostel because it's cheap and good at only €5.50. I also had a beer, called Hoegaarden, made in Belgium.

Today we started out by going down to the grocery store on the hostel's shuttle. I found some body wash for a €1 and decided that I'd pick it up on the way back. Little did I know that it was a bank holiday and that the grocery store would only be open in the morning.
We went first to the old town and walked around it for a couple of hours. We went to the flower market where they had fish, vegetables, candy and pastries too.


Then we took the tram back up the street to the train station and picked up our tickets for the train to Carcassonne and the train to Paris. Then we walked up hill to the Matisse museum, I bought Andy a postcard because I know he likes Matisse a lot. Then we went next door to the Archaeological museum. The entrance is through an old amphitheater/coliseum. I suppose it's a coliseum because it was completely circular.

Inside the museum they have a ton of artifacts. On the other side you can exit and look at the ruins of a Roman town. It's pretty cool. There are the remains of a bath, and I saw the little stone pillars under the floor like the ones at the Roman Baths in Bath, England.
Then we walked back down to the main street where the tram runs so that V. could look in a store called “Hm”. A little ways down from that I bought a brioche pastry topped with sugar and chocolate chips. It was delicious.

Oh, and I picked my laundry up this morning, before we left and it was finished. We went back to the room after breakfast so I could make sure it was all there and found I was missing a sock. I went back and they checked the driers for me but no luck. I decided to check back when we got back in the evening. They showed me to the baskets with lost-and-found laundry in them and I actually found it! I was very happy because those socks were about $6.00 a pair.
The tram here is very crowded in the evenings at about 5pm, it's like being on any public transport in a big city during rush hour.


There are mosquitos here, and no AC, so we have to leave the door open. That is the only problem with this hostel. Otherwise it's fantastic. The staff are great, it's clean. The dinners are very good, the soda and water are pretty cheat at only €1.

A mosquito bit me on my foot. That's going to be fun. Not. My feet are already really rashy from being in hiking boots all day every day.

V.'s finally out of the shower so I'm going to go take one now.

After my shower

The shower felt great. I must be allergic to something because I was sneezing like mad.
Speaking of V., she keeps wanting to eat fast food like McDonald's or Burger King. I was fine with that the first night because we were exhausted, but now?! It's like you're in France and Italy for godsake, you can eat McDonald's at home. So today for lunch she wanted McDonald's I got a hot dog from a pastry shop down the street. It wasn't like the hotdogs at home. This was inside a long piece of French bread with cheese melted on top. And boy was it good. We went to McDonald's and V. got something to eat and I ordered a soda and we ate upstairs. I was not going to eat American Fast food in France (if I could help it). Sheesh! The one cool thing about the McDonald's is that they have a key code for the bathroom on your receipt. It's cool because then the bathrooms are clean. So far we haven't had any missing toilet seats like in Italy. I still don't know what's up with that. And the quote for the day, there are actually two of them because one I forgot to write down the other day.

“Ciao! Ciao! I'll give you €20 to jump in the canal!” said by V.'s drunk friend in Venice on the way back to the hostel at 3am. The girl kept asking everyone on the street. She told one Venetian she was American, and he said “I guessed so.” I don't suppose that makes us look very good. Of course the Germans are just as bad.

Second quote for today. “You can be a whore, but don't be a dirty whore.” V. told this to a friend to exhort her to use a condom when having sex. Hysterical, V. can be a lot of fun to travel with. Bed time now.

Journal Entry: Villa St. Exupery in Nice

My head hurts from a lack of caffeine. We arrived about 5:30pm at the Villa St. Exupery, a former monastery, currently a party hostel of sorts. They have a nice bar and to our delight the bar serves pizza or dinner-of-the-day starting at 7pm. Rather than go anywhere because we were so tired we had a brownie for €2 to tide us over. The thing was huge and very delicious. At seven pm we ordered pizza. I got chorizo, red peppers and onions on mine. I handed the ticket to the chef as I was told to do and he kept saying “dix” which my tired head forgot was “ten” and a girl sitting there had to tell me “ten minutes”. I was like “Duh!” He asked me if I spoke French and I told him a “little”, but that I'd been on a train all day and my brain was tired.


The staff was really nice. I'm paying €5 to have my laundry done. One of the guys came over and said hi to us. He was from London but his mother was from New England. I like it when the staff are friendly like that.

The tram was convenient to the hostel. It didn't take very long to get from the train station up here. Our room is very nice, four beds and an ensuite bath. The shower is quite good. The only drawback is the people sharing our room have stuff everywhere. We haven't met them yet, but we're betting they're girls. One of them has a teletubby towel…



I'm so tired, I'm going to sleep now.