Day 18 (Monday, September 14, 2009)
After checking out of the hotel in Arles, I left the city and began the long two hour drive towards the Riviera. Along the way, I ended up having to pay three separate tolls, which totaled to a whopping 18 Euro (about $27.50 USD). Luckily, I didn’t have to purchase gas that day, so it didn’t take a huge dent out of my daily budget.
I drove directly to the hotel, which was located in the town of
Antibes. I had chosen to stay at a place called
Hotel de l’Etoile based on the positive recommendations it had received on Tripadvisor.com, plus the fact that it had parking and Wi-Fi. Although I arrived shortly before noon, they had a room available for me, which was great considering that I was going to spend most of the day in the city of Nice and didn't want to worry about keeping the luggage in the car. When I entered the room for the first time, I said something like “holy cow!” in response to its massive size. While the room was nothing fancy or particularly nice, it was quite large, with two beds and tons of space to move around. It was actually one of the largest hotel rooms I had ever stayed in, and that is saying a lot, considering it was a European one. I was also delighted to find out that the hotel beds were soft and comfortable; a very nice change from all of the hard and stiff mattresses I had been sleeping on for the two weeks prior.
From my hotel, I walked to the nearby train station in order to take a train ride into
Nice. The round-trip tickets I purchased to Nice cost a hefty 8.4 Euros ($11.50 USD), but when taking into account that I would have to pay for parking in Nice, use gas (which is quite expensive on its own), and deal with the stress of driving into a large city, the train fare didn’t sound so bad after all.
I arrived in Nice about 30 minutes later. Once off the train, I walked into the chaos of the Nice train station, which wasn’t the most pleasant way to enter a new city. I immediately went to grab the itinerary from the travel book; however, I soon realized that the itinerary was not inside the book. Considering that I work long and hard on those itineraries and that I consider them to be my bible for the day, I began freaking out as I had no idea what I had originally planned to do within the city. At least I still had the guidebook with me, so I was able to somewhat reconstruct what my plans had been. My first stop was to the nearby tourist information office, where I grabbed a free detailed map of the city. Next, I walked down the street a short ways until I reached the Gare Thiers tram stop. I purchased a 1 Euro ticket, and then waited for the new and sleek tram to arrive. The tram saved me lots of walking time, and took me directly into the old part of the city.
I got off the tram at Place Messena, which was a massive pedestrian-only square that was surrounded by gloriously renovated buildings, all painted in bright and beautiful colors.
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| Architecture in Place Messena. |
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| Place Messena |
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| Place Messena |
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| Architecture along Place Messena |
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| Nice |
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| Nice |
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