BUS 82

Saturday February 19, Day 2

After we got on the local train we continued on to Nice, which a beautiful journey along the coast. It was a gorgeous day – crystal blue skies with wispy white clouds. The Caribbean blue sea reflecting the bright sun and Palm trees blowing gently in the wind. To imagine that we were in Luxembourg 15 hours ago was hard to imagine. The landscape was especially beautiful as it was a unique combination and juxtaposition. Red cliffs along the coast resembled Arizona, the sea looked like the Caribbean the mountains and houses built into them resembled St. Thomas while the white snow capped mountains looked more like Switzerland.

After we arrived we took a tram, which runs down the main street in Nice – after figuring out the ticket machine (it was more challenging that you would think) we smushed onto an incredibly crowded train a difficult and uncomfortable experience exasperated by the fact that we had enormous backpacks strapped to our backs. The hostel that we are staying at has been repeatedly voted one of the best in Europe, is on top of a steel hill in a very tropical setting. I will say that with the exception of our first hostel in Bruges every hostel that we have stayed at has been incredible. I think the “sketchyness” of hostels has diminished significantly with the internet. Hostelword is a website that you can research and book hostels through. Hostels pay and adhere to certain standards in order to be on this website and to be considered a “hostelworld” hostel. For example hostelworld mandates that participating hostels have certain security and cleanliness standards and they have to be non smoking! Hostels participate in this as most people don’t book or research hostels any other way so if you aren’t in Hostelworld you aren’t going to have a very successful business. Also when researching a city if I were to type in “Nice” it lists them in order of Rank… best first. All of this I think has influenced hostels to offer a lot of amenities (free wifi, included breakfast, free walking tours etc).

After dropping off all of our stuff we headed out to go exploring the city. A girl at the hostel recommended that we go to Eze Village and Monaco for the day. She told us where to take the tram to, what bus (#82) to catch and gave us a map – easy enough. After a little confusion we made it to the bus stop 82. It looked like we had a while till the next bus so we went to a café right next to the stop and had a crepe. It was really local places as inside there were about a half dozen men playing backgammon. I had an amazing sugar crepe it was so great (sorry crazy baker). While we were enjoying our crepes outside a carnaval parade passed right in front of us – we serious could not have planned for it I we had tried. The floats reminded me of the rose bowl as they were all covered in different types of flowers. 

Apart of Nice's Carnival celebration. Floats are made out of flowers.

 After a parade and a crepe we went back to the bus stop. However when we finally saw the bus it drove right past us. I still cannot tell you why – but it did. We then wandered through the city trying to find another bus stop. After much aggravation a cal to the hostel and four bus stops later we found it (or more like it finally stopped). 

Finally on Bus 82 and very happy. Left to Right: Megan, Annie & Katie

 While we were waiting for bus 82 we went down to the port – I guess that I never appreciated or understood how incredible the French Riviera (Cote D’Azur) is. I can’t get over how much I love Nice, I never imagined that I would make it to basically st. Thomas on a MUDEC break. 

 Finally at 15:12 (I am not trying to be obnoxious with the military time but I am desperately trying to get better at it / make it more natural as I am constantly afraid that I am going to miss a train as I will have interpret the wrong time) the bus came, and actually stopped – it was really exciting. We were heading to Eze Villae, which is a small 14^th century village on top of a cliff over looking the water. After getting off the bus we went to a little market and bought cheese, salmi and a baguette and cookies for lunch. We then climbed to the top of the hill which ahs the remains of a medieval fortification. The hill is a collection and network of winding narrow cobble stone streets with buildings built into to side of the cliff. It was absolutely amazing – sorry that I don’t have any better adjectives. After eating our picnic lunch we continued up to the top which was a garden which had hundreds of varieties of cacti. 

quaint winding streets of the 14th century Eze Village.

At the top of Eze Village overlooking the French Riviera

Me in Eze Village, Nice France

As the sun was starting to set and it was already around 5 pm we headed back to our favorite bus stop. As it was the end of the day there were a lot of people waiting to go back to Nice – it was at least nice to now that we were at the right bus stop this time. The bus was late and then extremely crowded (at this point we had definitely developed  love hate relationship with Bus 82). We decided to cut Monaco out as we wanted to go back to the hostel to have dinner and wanted to go to carnaval which started at 9 pm.

After showering (very necessary after an overnight train, surviving bus 82 and hiking through an exotic cactus garden) we went downstairs to dinner. As one of the best hostels in Europe there is a legit chef who for 6.50 euro cooked a meal (chicken, potatoes and risotto and absolutely delicious). We ate quickly so that we could go to CARNAVAL!!!!!!!