Travel another way

Still from Joan’s diary D. from San Jose, California, one of our guests on our trip to Provence.

It was with mixed emotions that we said our goodbyes at the train station in Avignon. We had such a wonderful time and have stored away so many fun memories of Provence.

Thanks again Jackie and Valerie for everything. Check their site to travel to France at www.frenchescapade.com

Now we leave Provence and travel east through the Cote du Azur to Nice. Nice (pronounced Neece) is 3 hours east of Avignon by train – we traveled through Marseilles, Toulon, Cannes and Antibes to name a few. We followed the shore most of the way once we hit Marseille, so the views were great. When we arrived in Nice we could tell immediately that we were back in a big city. What a crowd! We grabbed a cab to our hotel ( Le Meridian) which, to our delight, is across the street from the Mediterranean. We learned to our extreme dismay that cabs to Monaco, which is about 13 miles away, cost 80€, which = $120.00. I’m not sure how to say HOLY CRAP in French, but I was ready to look it up. Since it was already 4:30 pm we decided to stay in Nice for the evening and take a train to Monaco/Monte-Carlo for 4€ the next day. And I’m so glad we did.

We strolled down the promenade (you do that in France, stroll. In San Jose you walk, in New York you hustle, in Texas you mosey, in France – you stroll ) So we stroll past some high-end shops and then some not-so-high-end shops until we arrived in an area that was clearly gearing up for a busy Saturday night. It was like a pedestrian boulevard with many restaurants and sidewalk cafes. We ate early by european standards-7:30 is usually the earliest restaurants begin serving. But that is when the staff is charming and friendly and takes time to describe things. Its been my observation that usually each waiter has about 12 tables, so after 8:30 when the place fills up you rarely see them.

So while we’re sitting at this cafe having dinner we can see vendors and shoppers and people walking their dogs all filling up the street. By the time it 9:00 the place is beginning to bustle. Eppie and I started to walk (strolling doesn’t work off your dinner, but walking does) all around without paying particular attention to where we were as long as there was a lot of light and lots of people. We end up hiking up into an old section of town, up a hill on very narrow streets with a lot of young people hanging out in these hole in the wall pubs and bars. It reminded me of Monmartre. We followed someone who was walking his dog as far up as we could go, there was either a castle or a church up at the top but whatever it was it was closed. We got a little nervous – the streets became as narrow as hallways and they were crowded with pub crawlers.

We finally made our way back to a very large plaza that had a crowd standing around one end. We sauntered over and discover a young man, probably mid 20’s, had rolled a piano onto the plaza and was playing these concertos and sonatas beautifully. It was awesome. Of course people were filling his tip jar. It was very nice – here we were watching the result of thousands of euros worth of piano lessons for the amount of a small tip. Soon after this concert was over we headed back to the hotel and called it a day. Tomorrow – Monaco