Nice, Monaco and the French Riviera

We took a bit of a different approach for deciding where to go after Paris. Googling ‘best hostel in France” pointed us to Villa Saint Exupery Gardens in Nice. Nice also worked well as an easy connection into Italy - our next destination.

The train from Paris to Nice was amazingly fast - it went up to 300kph. A nice way to travel.

The hostel was really cool. It’s a converted monastery and the common area is a large space with a mezzanine and stained glass windows. It’s the most social hostel we’ve stayed in too (the 1 euro beers probably helped!). Being in such a big full of travellers from around the world was fun, but it meant that sometimes we hardly felt like we were in France!

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Nice itself, mainly because it’s so close to lots of day trip destinations with better beaches.

One day we visited Monaco with a couple of people from the hostel. Monaco is the second smallest state in the world (after the Vatican) and it has the highest proportion of millionaires and billionaires in the world. The city is full of luxury yachts and fancy cars - Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Bentley, etc. High-end Mercedes Benzes and BMWs started seeming like very ordinary cars with so many Ferraris driving around!

Despite its reputation for glitz and glamour, Monte Carlo isn’t exactly a beautiful city - full of stark concrete apartment blocks. It’s obvious there’s lots of money splashing around though! Monaco isn’t really our kind of place, but it was interesting to see.

Another day we went on a short coastal walk to Cap d’Ail beach (thanks to information from another travel blog). We’ve been interested to see how beaches in Europe differ from those back home. They’re more crowded of course - you have to pick a spot between people. They’re also more developed and commercialised. For example, there are private sections of the beach where you can hire a lounger. Also, they often have fancy restaurants and bars right on the beach. One nice difference is the water temperature! Being in the Mediterranean, there are no waves, so people just stand in the water cooling down.

Our last moments in Nice were not so relaxing. Despite having left plenty of time to pick up our tickets, a machine fault meant we only got our tickets just before the train was due to depart. We sprinted to the platform with our packs on and jumped on the train just as the doors closed. Phew!

Leaving France behind, we crossed into Italy and arrived in Moneglia, a place you probably haven’t heard of. We will be just 20 minutes from the Cinque Terre, however, which is a lot more famous. We picked Moneglia as a place to chill-out for a week - it’s a small village with a beach on the Mediterranean coast. Bring on the wine, pasta and gelato!

Comments from WordPress

• Robbie Lane 2012-09-11T11:10:27Z

  Craig - are you still speaking Spanish to the Italians???? … Volare, wo o o oh … Keep enjoying the enjoying!

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson