Nice to be in Nice

This place is spectacular!  It's no wonder Bono and Elton John have set up homes here.  We arrived in Nice last night and found our little apartment, despite the fact that the tram stopped half-way and turned around on us.  It seemed there was some kind of celebration happening in the main square that stopped us from moving forward - and by some kind of celebration I mean CARNAVAL!!!!!!!

One of the many,many parade floats.

Nobody can really tell us what this festival is about (other than a way to bring money to the economy and to party) but it doesn't much matter because it's so much fun.  We happened to arrive on the last evening, just in time to catch the closing ceremonies.  These involved a gathering of thousands of people along the bay's shoreline, all coming to watch the burning of the king (a large paper mache-like chef holding a cake) and a magnificent fireworks show.  We got there early to grab a seat on the pebble beach, front and centre.  At 9:00 pm they lit the large floating man on fire and towed him across the bay for all to see.  And then, the fireworks began - all of them exploding from rafts out in the ocean set against a black sky, with thousands of people watching in awe.  They were the best Jim and I had ever seen, without a doubt.

One of the streets decorated for Carnaval.

The King, the King, the King is on fire!

Prior to all this, Jim and I got settled into our rental place.  It was advertised as a three-bedroom apartment with kitchenette and living room.  What we walked into was a fully occupied apartment with up to four other people walking around at any given time.  Jim was pissed, I was surprised.  The bedroom was like a college boy's dorm room, complete with old, ratty pillows and mismatched sheets, blankets and towels.  It didn't take long for us to meet our roommates: Vincent the overweight, 50-something year-old man from Northern Ireland who runs a caravan camp,  Marcello the young student from El Salvador, John the young and well traveled Chilean who loves to ski despite being raised mostly in Vietnam, and Jimmy the old, grumpy Austrian artist.  All of these guys lived here in this apartment, somewhere, and the manager Jack was around all day working in the kitchen on his computer.  Let's just say, we worked very hard to occupy ourselves outside of the apartment.

Today was a busy one.  We woke early and caught a bus to the medieval village of Eze, high on a mountainous cliff that overlooks the ocean.  It was quaint, but we only spent maybe half and hour there.  We then hiked down the Neitzsche trail (the trail he walked enough to help inspire his book Zarthustra) back down to the highway.  There, we caught another bus into Monaco. Ok, ok, we missed the bus because we didn't wave to the driver (rookie mistake).  But we did manage to catch another one a bit later. 

Some of the medieval village.

The village of Eze.

On the trail.

Monaco was pretty unimpressive.  We visited the Monte Carlo Casino from the James Bond movies and Jim even gambled away five Euros!  Then we wen to a beach and laid in the sand for a while enjoying the sun.  Pretty boring really.  By 5:00 pm we were tired and beaten by the sun so we caught a bust back home and ate the best damn naan donair I have ever had.  Seriously though, magical.

The Monte Carlo Casino.

And that was/is Nice. It turns out the whole French Riviera hype is totally justified.  It is absolutely beautiful here and Nice is the nicest city we've come across so far.  Even the people are friendly.  And I have to admit it was pretty awesome to stumble into Carnaval like we did.  I hope our hike in the Cinque Terre in Italy is as equally as rewarding.  We head out tomorrow.

A bit of Nice.

P.S. We haven't given ourselves our rest day for quite some time and it's starting to take a toll.  Hopefully we will find some time in La Spezia, Italy.