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| The Beaches of Nice |
Final stop: France. Or should I say, Freedom…are we still doing that? You know, like Freedom Fries. Ah, for the days when conservative silliness was restricted to the naming of junk foods and such trivialities rather than threatening to bring down the entire world economy (e.g., the “highly serious and substantive” debt ceiling debate…what a farce).
Anyway, as for the travel, France was once again a great vacation spot. You might remember that we loved Paris…it remains the top European city I’ve been to. Nice and Marseille were also quite nice (no pun intended).
- Our journey from Fribourg to Nice turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for. The relatively direct train that we wanted to take was booked, so we had to do a 3 connection alternative. Fribourg to Zurich (no problem). Zurich to Lyon (pretty easy). Lyon to Aix-en-Provence (greatly delayed). Aix to Nice (missed connection…arrived around midnight). All in all, it was about a 12 hour travel day. But hey, that’s what you’re supposed to do on Eurotrips anyway. Can’t say I remember too much about the train rides. Other than that the Aix-en-Provence train station looks like it’s situated in the center of Kuwait (did not expect the desert-like feel). And when Michelle went to ask the Asian restaurant worker at the train station in Aix where the bathrooms were, she asked him if he spoke English…he said, “of course.” Classic.
- After arriving in Nice around midnight we made the short walk to the Hotel Oasis (yes, it was as spectacular as it sounds). Now, I can’t remember for sure if this was the place with the tiny 2 feet by 2 feet shower with a shower curtain, but I’m going to pretend it was because I need to mention it. Showering in this thing was one of the more awkward things I’ve ever done. Not only was there no room for movement, but because of the shower curtain a dropped bar of soap was a potential death sentence. I could see the headline, “Cambridge student found dead in hotel shower…suffocated by shower curtain while attempting to retrieve dropped soap.”
- The main attractions in Nice are the beaches, so we hit those up in a big way the next day. After a cloudy and sprinkly morning, the afternoon brought a break in the clouds and the sun made an appearance. And with the sun, came the people. And with the people, came the tiny bathing suits. As Michelle noted, there is no size limit on bathing suits in the French Riviera, as evidenced by the somewhat portly Australian lady next to us who was representing her country in fine style, with an eye-patch sized Australian flag string bikini (no pictures available…this is a good thing).
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| A Variety of Beach Pictures from Nice |
- Interesting note on the Nice beaches, they’re all pebbles and rocks rather than sand. This is both good and bad. Good in that there’s no nasty sand to track around everywhere. Bad in that the stones really hurt your feet and make getting in and out of the water a real challenge. Of course it’s also quite entertaining to watch the ridiculously undercovered women trying to get in and out without falling over or losing their suits. Also, body surfing is probably not recommended.
- From Nice, we headed over to our point of departure from the mainland, Marseille. The cool thing about Marseille is that it has a palpable realness and grittiness. As you know, I love keeping it real. On top of that, it’s a much prettier port city than we expected. We only had a day there, so we didn’t do much.
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| Marseille |
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| Marseille Train Station |
- Our Marseille day was July 14. We were out on the town that evening, walking around the port area, which was ridiculously crowded with people. And we couldn’t help but notice that there was an insane police presence, like rows of 10 police vehicles parked on the street and that type of thing. We were like, “huh, this place doesn’t seem dangerous enough for this amount of security to be necessary?” At dinner it dawned on me…Bastille Day. So yeah, we were lucky enough to stumble upon the Bastille Day firework celebration in the port after dinner. It was actually very impressive and elaborate, although the music soundtrack was confusing (featuring among others, songs from Mamma Mia and Pavarotti). Of course, I didn’t participate in the festivities, because we hate the French, their second rate French Revolution, their Enlightenment ideals that we co-opted, and their decisive support during our Revolution!
- And with that we were done. What a great trip! All that was left was the flight back to London. Interesting note, a couple in their late-40s, maybe older, got on the plane late and couldn’t get seats together. This apparently was quite traumatic for them as, after we took off and the seat belt sign was turned off, the woman proceeded to sit in the guy’s lap the entire flight. Let me emphasize…they were not under 21, which might make it only marginally less unacceptable. For all of the readers out there, if Michelle and I ever pull something like that, I implore you to beat us both over the heads with shovels…seriously.
- Next on the agenda, graduation on Saturday and home on Tuesday. And the blog will have to transition and adapt once again…I know you all can’t wait.
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