Day 20- Nice to meet you?

Beach in Nice, France

We woke up early, to be honest anytime is early when you don’t go to sleep until 4:30 am. We had our free breakfast, which was just as exciting the second time as the first time. Then said our goodbye to Italy and hello to Nice, France.

The station was about 15 blocks from the beach, if we didn’t have all of our luggage with us we would have explored the town a little more but for us getting straight to the beach seemed like a much better idea. So we lugged our items 15 blocks, and jumped into the crystal clear water. The beach in Nice was all rocks, not even half rock and half sand the way it was in Ventimille. Lying on our towels was incredibly uncomfortable, how do the Europeans do it? Maybe they know where the good beaches are and they are sitting laughing at the silly visitors on the rocks.

After a short time at the beach, I decided I was way to dehydrated, so we made our way to a Chinese buffet. The selection was small, but we had been craving Chinese the whole time we have been here in France so it felt like heaven for us. We indulged in many different items, all slightly different from American Chinese. Our favorite was the make your own wok, which tasted almost exactly the same as home, and we didn’t have any mysteries about the food we were about to consume. We wanted to sit and relax at our table before heading back to the train station but as we were finishing our ice cream an old woman pulled up a chair and sat down, right at our table! We were at a fairly large table for the two of us, but there were about 7 other open tables she could have chosen from.

She said something in a thick Italian accent, I keep replaying it in my head and I cannot tell if she was trying to speak French, or thought that everyone in Nice, France should know Italian. She sat staring at us, no attempt to make small talk, only a small wrinkled smile when we would look over to her. After about 5 minutes we started to feel a bit awkward and decided to head out. As we were picking up our stuff, a flock of older women came to our table all speaking in the Italian, French gibberish. Jill and I had no idea where they came from but it must be their spot, and we were intruding. Most certainly one of the most interesting situations we have been put in so far.

Nice Train Station

What the train normally looks like

The train ride home felt overly long, there was no air conditioning for the longer train that we had to take, which ended up feeling like a sauna. Luckily the last half started calm and peaceful, until a few drunken French men got on the train with a boom box and beers and tried to make a party, any other day I might have thought that was cool, not today. 

Tired faces on the train

We got back to our apartment safe and on time. When i opened the door the scent was comforting. it wasn't the same scent as my home in Glassboro, or anyoneelses' home I have ever walked into, it was the smell of Jill and my home. Italy was definitely one of our best decisions so far, now we start our last week of classes, hard to believe.