Chris Boyce and I arrived in Nice in the evening. Unfortunately there are not many hostels in Nice so it made more sense to stay at a budget (two-star - I think) hotel. Luckily on our first night, our room was not ready, so we got a bigger room on the top floor with a pretty decent balcony - no complaints there. Overall the hotel staff was fairly good at pointing us in the right direction especially for day trips.
On the first day we essentially just walked around the city, getting our bearings, seeing the harbour, and walking along the main strip which follows the water. Nice in general is a beautiful city with fairly mountainous scenery. The great thing about Nice is that you are essentially in a tropical environment - palm trees etc - but you also have all the wealth that is concentrated within the French Riveria. There are plenty of great restaurants and shops, it is very clean, and the cars are out of this world.
The next day we went to Eze which is a small village atop one of the "mountains" along the coast, about 15 minutes east of Nice (Bono has a home their). For some crazy reason we decided to climb to the top - bad decision when you're wearing jeans and its an absolute cooker outside. After walking around for a bit and snapping some great pics, we made our way back down (on the bus) to catch a 5 minute train to Monaco. Monaco came exactly as advertised - wealth, wealth, and more wealth. In the parking lot in front of the Monte Carlo Fairmont alone (which maybe had 25 cars) there were 2 Ferrari's, 2 Bentley's, a Rolls Royce, a Porsche, and of course the odd BMW and Benz. As we kept walking the streets you'd see amazing car after amazing car - it was a pretty cool experience. On the main strip of road that runs parallel to the beach, instead of having regular shops, they have a Bentley, Lamborghini, and Mercedes dealership.
After our day trip to Eze and Monaco, we traveled about an hour to Cannes which is west of Nice. Obviously the appeal of Cannes is the fact that it is the home of the Cannes Film Festival. We walked around for a few hours and then decided to relax on the beach for a bit. Overall we got really lucky for our entire time in the French Riveria since everyday was sunny and around 20 degrees.
The next day we had an overnight train that left at 9PM from Nice to Barcelona. To waste time we basically got food from the grocery store and ate on the beach. In the end, it was a bad way to spend the afternoon, or a few days for that matter.
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