France, Days 0-1 - Arriving in France & Nice

Day 0: Welcome to travel purgatory, also known as Stansted airport.

They do airports differently in Europe, apparently: instead of placing giant video screens with every flight and every gate assignment of the next few hours right after security, you are corralled into a shopping-mall type space where everyone is forced to wait until they post gate assignments, only about 45 minutes before the departure time. The US airports are large open gate concourses with people milling about at or around their gate hours early, and this allows plenty of time to roam around while always knowing where you'll need to return to. Stansted forces passengers to cluster near small video screens for hours until revealing the precious number of the gate where passengers get to wait for another hour with positively nothing to do (satellite gate halls in this case are completely devoid of activity - there is simply no need for another newsstand).

So, after hours of listening to the same annoying "watch your bags" announcement (really, I get it - I don't need to be told 147 times) preceded by a highly irritating your-attention-please tone, I got on my easyJet flight to Nice's Cote d'Azur airport.

And stepping off the plane to salty Mediterranean sea air and bright sunshine, I was very happy.

Nice is beautiful, really. 50 miles or so east of the Italian border on the southern coast of France, this town has long been known in company with its absurdly rich eastern neighbor Monaco (actually an independent state along the lines of the relationship the Vatican City has with Italy), and its absurdly crowded and no less rich western neighbor, Cannes. And walking out to the miles-long beach at the end of town shows why.

Crystal-blue water surrounded by luxury hotels and casinos surrounded by the foothills of the French Alps surrounded by the French Alps themselves. It truly is something to see. But it was nothing compared to the magical Veille Ville, or Old City of Nice.

It was late afternoon by then, so I went to my hostel (clean, well-run, great location 10 minutes from everything and 50 yards off the main drag of the city), went out to find some food, and went to sleep.

Day 1: Exploring Nice

The Old City is the most amazing place. A tangle of streets on the southern end of town, I discovered my new favorite street on the entire planet, the Rue Pairoliere. Narrow, cobblestoned, crowded, and filled with food shops sending the most fantastic aromas out onto the streets, this was positively thrilling. People everywhere were milling about, doing the double-cheek-kiss French greeting all over the place, sipping espresso (which I've grown quite fond of). I sat down in a lovely little cafe and ordered the best cappuccino I've ever had, and for 2.30 EUR, cheap too.

That afternoon, I decided to take some beach time. Good call. It was still high summer, with temperatures ranging well into the 80's. A word of caution for potential beachgoers, though: the beaches of the French Riviera are almost exclusively surfaced by large pebbles, some the side of a tennis ball or a cell phone. Those that are sand either require a paid admission (sometimes worth it, but this can be rather pricey) or seeking out, as these beaches are out of town (which is exactly what I did the next day...).

I met a few people in Nice. A British girl on the beach (I forgot entirely to give her my email address and kicked myself for it for the rest of the trip) my age, a 28-year old Canadian from Toronto (who worked in the same office that my mother worked in many, many years ago - IBM in Somers) on a 5 week backpacking trip to simply get away from it all after years without a real vacation, and two blokes from Australia, on the very end of a three-week journey, who I spent a fun night at the bar with. (Oh right, you can do that under the age of 21 here. And pretty much everywhere else in the world.)

Nice is one of the most wonderful places on the planet. I managed to survive off of 4- and 5-Euro street sandwiches (so good) and Orangina, with the occasional coffee-related boisson thrown in. I based out of Nice for three nights, but took a day trip to Antibes on the 3rd day. Stay tuned...

Up next, day 2: Antibes.

Pictures