Today I did something I’ve never done before. I woke up, possibly still mildly under the influence of the previous evening’s excesses, and decided “I want to fly somewhere. Today.”

Cue a couple of hours of attempting to figure out the best way of seeing where’s good/cheap/available to fly at very short notice (turns out that Google Flights is the best tool) and then deciding where would make sense given my desire to be back in time for an already-booked fancy dinner on Tuesday night – the FWP are strong in this one. In the end it came down to a choice between Nice and Barcelona; I love Barcelona but I’ve never been to Nice so that was decision made. 

Book flights. Book hostel. Get packed (thanks Erin!). Shower. Run for tube. Run for tube connection. Run for train ticket. Mess up first attempt. Run onto platform. Wrong platform. Train arrives on other platform. Run downstairs. Run upstairs. Go go go! Open doors, jump on. Train leaves before I’ve sat down.

That was close; safe now.

The highlight of Gatwick Airport was being complimented on my choice of socks (pink and lime green, thanks for asking) by one of the security guys when he was patting me down.

Landed in Nice.

Found the bus, took just ten minutes to get to the city. Unfortunately it turned out to be the slightly wrong bus – I had asked the ticket seller which bus was the right one to catch based on where the B&B was, but I think she didn’t want to admit she didn’t know and instead gave me a firm-but-incorrect answer. No matter, I had my map and the ~3.5km walk along the seafront and through the city was quite pleasant.

Next challenge: got to the door of the B&B and it’s locked. No one is answering the bell. I can see dogs inside so at least someone has been here at some point, but the dogs won’t open the door. I call the number on the booking, it rings out. Stand there for 10 minutes doing a combination of bell ringing and phone calling, no progress. I decide to walk around the block to see if there’s any other way in; there wasn’t, but when I get back around to the door some other guests are just going in and I tailgate. They tell me the place is nice but very…”casual “. I see. 

Mid-length-boring-story-short, the guy who runs the place eventually shows up and I get my room. The place isn’t the best maintained but it’s clean and functional so no complaints.

I’m now quite hungry so I venture out to forage. However, it’s Sunday night – almost everything is shut, including most supermarkets. I find a couple of places but none of them really float my boat; either they’re
a) too pricey (not unreasonably so but I’m legitimately trying to do this as a backpacker-type holiday),
b) not very interesting or
c) McDonald’s or equivalent.

When I finally found an open supermarket I decided that was good enough for me – ham slices, tortellini, tomato sauce, parmesan, yoghurt, coke. Eating like a king!

And that was mostly the end of day one in Nice. Watched some NFL, ate some food, did a lot of planning for day 2.

Oh, one minor addendum.

My bedroom was on a basement level with a window that could be seen from the street. The window was open for air, I left it open when I moved in.

Some way through the evening I heard someone calling through the window – a taxi driver had a passenger that was supposed to be staying in the hostel but (surprise surprise) no one was answering the door. I think she must have got through on the phone to the guy at the same time though because they didn’t need me after all.

Later in the evening (well after midnight) I had fallen asleep watching football and was woken to someone again calling through the window. This time it was a guy who said he’d been very delayed and now couldn’t get in. I gave him the phone number of the owner but wasn’t willing to take on the responsibility of actually letting him into the building! Not sure how things went for him after that.

I took that as a sign to close the window and curtains.

Sleep.

(There’ll be many more pictures tomorrow!)