Nice is nice ...

Once again, Al is way behind at the blog, so I'm doing a few small "fill ins" to help him on his way!

So after the week taking it easy at the Villa, we made our way to Nice ... couldn't give you one good reason that we went to Nice, pretty much we knew that the Villa was in the middle of no where and that we would have to ask very nicely for a lift to the nearest train station of people that we had never met before, so we just chose somewhere that was easy to get to from most places in the south of France! Although the reasoning for going was perhaps not exactly thought through, our two nights in Nice were some of the best we've had on our trip so far. There is nothing really to see, and nothing in particular to do in Nice, it's just a wonderful little sea side town right next to Monaco!

So the first night we got to Nice, we decided to go for a walk along the sea to see what we could see see see!! The first thing we noticed, was that Nice had a pebble beach, not sand as we would have assumed. At first, we thought this was a bad thing, but after one swim the next day, and the COMPLETE lack of sand anywhere, we were sold. The difference while you're at the beach is not so much, but when you get home and there's no sand in your underwear, no sand all over your towel and no sand through your hair, you realise that the pebble beach is the greatest thing since sliced bread! The other strange thing about the beach is that you literally only have to go out about 2 metres before you're up to your neck in water, and at 3 metres you can't touch. It was kind of like being at a really salty swimming pool!! Right next to where we were swimming they were doing that thing where you have a parachute and a sort of swing that gets pulled along by a boat. They were actually taking off from the beach and then bringing them back in about 5 metres from shore. The water was so deep that it was ok for someone to take a plunge from the air to the sea without hurting themselves. Every time we were closing our eyes thinking someone was going to lose their legs.

Anyhow, I'm off track. The beach at Nice has a massive boardwalk that goes the entire length of the beach (kilometers and kilometers) and is probably about 6 or 7 meters wide. There were thousands of people walking, riding, jogging and roller blading up and down the beach, it was kind of like those American teen movies ... complete with the scantily clad girls ... so we decided that the next day we would hire some roller blades. It cost us about $10 to hire a set for 24 hours, which meant we could pretty much use them all day and night and take them back before we got on the train the next day. (We thought this was an absolute bargain! Especially after being in Paris where a coffee costs you $7 or 8) We were watching all these obvious tourists with their helmets and knee and elbow pads looking like absolute idiots trying to use the roller blades that they'd hired. Now for anyone who went through the roller blades craze as a kid, like we both did, I bet you're thinking like we did, that roller blading is just like riding a bike, we'd be able to hire a pair, and we'd be as good as we were when we were kids ... right?? We ticked the "no helmet and padding" option when we hired the roller-blades with that exact thought in mind ... we definitely didn't want to look like amateurs! So we put on the roller blades, and confidently stood up, only to fall straight back down on the ground ... no worries, just teething problems ... two hours later, I still hadn't worked out how exactly the brakes worked, so was literally going from flower bed to flower bed and Al, a little more confident was trying to learn how to not look like an idiot on wheels!! After a few hours, we'd had enough, so decided to make our way home through the main shopping street, I obviously had no where near enough confidence to wear the roller blades home, however Allan decided he was that good. Amusingly, the first pedestrian that we saw, Al thought it would be a great idea to get off of the footpath and onto the road, completely misjudged the jump off of the curb and literally face planted onto the road. The poor guy that we were passing didn't know where to look and whether to help him up, I, on the other hand was almost rolling around on the ground I was laughing so much, at which point the other guy realised that it was o.k. to laugh and we both stood there laughing at poor Al trying to drag himself out of the gutter ... Al then admitted defeat, took the blades off and we walked home!! Over the next day, Al definitely got much better at the sport of roller blading and was certainly confident enough not to look like an idiot. I on the other hand, not so much, but at least could turn corners, break to a certain degree as well as do a nice turning trick :) We're definitely hiring roller-blades again the next time we see them!! Maybe we'll even buy some when we get home!!

There really isn't much else to tell about Nice ... it's absolutely beautiful, we had a great time and I think would definitely go back next time we're in Europe. Seeing as we had the roller-blades on the majority of the time we were there, we didn't take a single photo of Nice ... how very clever of us!!