Nice Day 1: Antibes

Well, everyone, it's a week and a day late, but here's all about my trip to Nice (which ended up including Antibes and Monaco).

Thursday Night

The start of the trip!  We're all excited about our first real night train, and anxious about how it's going to go.  I booked my reservations at a different time than everyone else, so I was a car ahead of everyone and didn't know anyone in my compartment.  When I got there, the door is pitch black, and the door wouldn't budge (turns out that nothing on a train budges unless you throw your body weight into it).

When I opened up, it's pitch black for a moment, then I look down at my expected bunk, and there's a bald guy in it!  He kinda looks at me, and mumbles something in French, so I step in the car and attempt to say "I don't speak French well", at which point he realizes I'm an American and turns on my reading light for me.  So after I shut the door, and then comes a few minutes of eating my sandwich for dinner and wondering what comes next, all sitting Quasimodo style under the bunk above me.

Turns out next locking my bag to the ladder in the room and then leave to go hang out with everyone else.  We had a good time, even asking a few of the French people if they'd like to switch with few people. so we ended up with one compartment of all GTL students, so we could hang out and not disturb people.

Going clockwise from me: Gregg, Julie, Amanda,
Curtis, Whitney's shoulder, and Kayla

We had lots of fun, and some good bonding time.  We all were there until the power in the car went out, at about 11.  I ended up trying to get in bed at about 11:30, and slept off and on until about 7 in the morning.

Friday

The train arrived at 8, so I packed up and left the compartment so I could get some light without disturbing my compartment mate.  I walked down to the other groups car and bummed around there for a little, watching the beautiful landscapes go by.  After we passed through Marseilles, the train ran right by the coastline for 90% of the remaining run into Nice.  The French Riviera is absolutely beautiful along the route we took.  Gregg, the guy next to me in the photo above, was blown away that the railroad got such great land to run train lines.

We arrived in Nice maybe 30 minutes late, and then went to a small diner for breakfast.  I had my first real cafe creme there, and it was amazing!!! Nothing like the coffee I drank all summer long.  It's understandable that everybody sits at a cafe and drinks coffee for hours a day when it tastes like that.  After breakfast, we went to the hostel we were staying at and dropped our bags off.  Christina, Amanda, Katrina, Gregg, Eric and I were all sharing one 6 person room, which was really convenient.

A view from Fort Carre of the Antibes Port

Eric split off to go to the beach and meet up with Mark and Chad (two other GTL students) there, while the other 5 of us went to Antibes for most of the day.  We got there and were greeted with a beautiful waterfront as we oriented ourselves and walked around.  The pictures I have can't to it justice because my camera can't really capture the amount that you can see from wherever you are.  One of the first things we spotted Fort Carre on the biggest hill around.  It was a fort from the Napoleonic era (I think) that was built in the shape of a 4 pointed ninja star.  It's organized so that the artillery could cover nearly any land or water within a kilometer of the fort.  We paid for a small tour of the fort that was in French, unfortunately, but we still enjoyed being able to walk around the fort some and see the beautiful vistas.

After the fort, we walked to through the old town of Antibes, where we had lunch at a small Lebanese place.  We wandered around and enjoyed the views, then stopped at the Picasso Museum, which was fairly interesting.  Once we were done with that, everyone was feeling pretty tired, so we made our way back to the train station and caught the next train back to Nice.  Once we got there, we went back to the hostel and made our first trip to the beach for the weekend.  The water was absolutely beautiful, even though it was quite a bit saltier than at Virginia Beach like I'm used to.  I also kinda liked the pebble beach instead of a sand beach because I didn't get sand everywhere! :)

Dinner on Friday night was in Old Town Nice, where I got the three course menu.  It's always a combo that has an appetizer, entree and dessert.  My appetizer (or entree in French) was mussels with oil and garlic, which were great.  The entree (plat in French) was lots of little squid topped with a tomato sauce and rice, and then I got an apple tart for dessert.  After dinner, we tried to organize with the group at the other hostel to go clubbing, but I was having some intense leg pain, and a bunch of people had already gone to sleep, so nothing came of those plans.