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One of the best purchases I made while in Europe was my Eurail pass. I paid €700 for 10 separate days of rail travel in any European country over a two month period, and with the New Zealand dollar in … Continue reading
I decided to broaden my southern France horizons by venturing to the west. I decided upon Cannes as my venue of choice, so bought a train ticket and jumped aboard. The train took a tediously long time, mainly because a chap decided he would transport his motorbike by train in one of the main entrance gangways.
This is obviously not the done thing; a bunch of officials then turned up and decided to discuss the issue on the platform. Around 20 mins later we got going again (avec moto) but it was so late I thought, “stuff Cannes, I’ll jump off early”. Hence began my afternoon in Antibes.
First stop was a fort. It was bloody shut. If you want to visit a tourist site that is shut just go with me; I seem to have the worst luck with opening hours.
So I u-turned and wandered back in the sweltering heat, observing intriguing sights such as a floating syringe in the marina and a lady walking a cat on a leash.
Next stop was the Picasso Museum. Also shut.
In lieu of entering tourist sites I wandered around the streets, took a few snaps and was convinced I saw Gwyneth Paltrow, however on further reflection realized this was highly unlikely.
I got on the wrong train to go home. I paid for a crap train but got on a fast train, then spent the majority if my journey worrying that I might get busted and fined. Luckily this didn’t happen.
Monday 14th was checkout day in Nice. Emily the Aussie was also checking out that day, so we got a lift down to the tram together and went into town. I was due at the train station at midday, she was due at the airport by 2PM, so we were on a tight timeframe for our speed shop. I tried on many a pair of sparkly shoes but bought nothing. This whole lark of having a smallish pack and needing to be physically capable of carrying it on your back is a great anti-purchase incentive for me. I’m sure I saved heaps of money because I imagined how I’d fit it in my pack with all the other potential purchases, so everything got filtered through a prepurchase inspection. While this wasn’t exactly an official process the following list of questions provides some insight into my mind’s inner workings:
Any item scoring over +3 can be tried on. Seriously, it’s saved me hundereds. Continue reading
We left the hostel for Monaco at around 9:30 AM.
There were about four options for how to get there, we kept changing our plans as we missed each bus. It turns out we were standing at the wrong stop – the one time we did manage to jump on a Monaco bus the driver barked at us that the service had finished, and we had to wait around the corner. With Supernanny’s ‘naughty corner’ in the forefront of both our minds, and complete lack of comprehension about most of her shouting, we wandered hopelessly for a while, before seeing another bus and chasing it down the road. Found the stop, eventually jumped on the bus to Monaco. When we got on it was packed to the brim – all the seats were taken, so us and another 15 people had to stand. At every stop along the road to Monaco we picked up more people, until nobody standing had to hold a rail because we were packed in so tightly that there was no way anyone would fall over even if we rolled upside down. There were at least 75 people on the bus, I think it was built for 40. We disembussed at Villefranche-sur-Mer, a very very pretty wee seaside town on the way. Continue reading
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