Nice, oh Nice… you stole my heart at first glance!! I am
going to go on and on in this blog about how much I loved this trip so I
apologize for bragging and all but this was my favorite trip that we have taken
since being in Europe and I ABSOLUTLY LOVED THE WATER, THE BEACH, AND
NICE!!!!!! Also Pictures do not do it justice, the beautiful places and things
we saw could not be captured by my camera! And I don’t have as many pictures as
I would have liked because of all the water… L
This is a map of the Nice and surrounding areas. The Red star was where our Hotel was, the Blue was Villefranche beach where we went one day and the purple was where I went scuba diving. The yellow circle is the main Port!
This is a map of our train schedule to Nice, an 11 hour adventure! :) The next few pictures I got from Google, but they are good pictures of aerial view of the city and the beach! So absolutely beautiful!
View of the port with Nice beach in the back ground
Nice Beach
Port again looking the other way
Nice beach
Port
So it all started Thursday night. We got on a train in Trier
at midnight and took it an hour over to Luxembourg. This is where things get
interesting right from the start. We were only able to get tickets to Nice from
Luxembourg Friday morning at 5 am. So we needed to take the last train to
Luxembourg from Trier and then we had to literally sit outside the train
station for 4 hours and wait till our train left. So for a while we were
homeless people with lots of baggage wandering around Luxembourg. We tried to
find a bar we could just walk into and sit and play cards but they were all
closed. So we sat on the sidewalk outside of the train station and played Uno
and talked!
We finally got on the train at 5 am and went an hour to Metz
France where we caught a train to Nice. This train ride was 10 hours long and
man was it long!!!! None of us had slept so as soon as we got seated on that
train we were all dead asleep!
I was awakened many hours later by Audrey poking me saying
“Whitney Look, Look!!” We had finally made it to the coast and we could see the
beautiful Ocean!!! I had seen the ocean when I was little once but don’t
remember it. Then last spring break when we all went to visit Granny and Papa
in Yuma we went to San Diego for a day and we got to go to the beach but it was
like 40 degrees outside and kind of miserable, but this view was breath taking!
I was wide awake instantly and couldn’t take my eyes of the beautiful sight!
We traveled for an hour of 2, right along the coast from
Nimes to Nice and it was Beautiful!!! When we got to Nice we were not awake and
all VERY hungry. I was Hangry (angry because I am hungrey) for sure, but we
made it to our hostel and got all settled in. This time we chose a little nicer
and more expensive hostel but still had a 6 bed mixed style. It was so hot in
there at night, which was the only thing that sucked. But they did give us
cereal and toast for breakfast!
The hostel offered different tours and things we could do
from Parasailing, scuba diving, cannoning, sailing, and more. We decieded we
would sign up to do the Sailing and I signed up to Scuba dive. The other girls
didn’t want to do that and that has been a huge dream of mine to actually dive
in the ocean, not just a muddy mid-west lake J
We walked and found a simple dinner then slipped into our
swim suits and quickly made our way to the closest beach! This was the main
beach in Nice and stretched for miles! It was very different than what I was
expecting. Instead of sand it was large rocks, the size of golf balls to
baseballs and you laid on them! At first I thought they were annoying then I
realized it was just like getting a hot rock massage. I would lay on them and
if I moved around on them they massaged my back. J
We napped and swam a little until the sun went down and we got cold.
Water fountain in the middle of the main city area
View of the Nice beach!
The rocks left marks all over our bodies :)
Chocolate cake with ice cream, YUMMY!!
Funny looking colored me on poles. I do not know the significance but they were cool.
We walked and found the main eating and bar area and got
dessert then hit the hay for an early night. I was going scuba diving in the
morning and needed to get some good sleep!
I was super nervous just waking up in the morning to go
diving. Plus the girls were not going with me so I needed to find my way all by
myself and then pray that the spot all of us decided to meet was easy for me to
find. I went down stairs to the lobby and got lucky when I overheard 3 boys
talk about going to Dive also so I asked them to tag along cuz I was going
there too. They were really nice, a set of identical twins and then another boy,
all from New York and had just graduated college, taking a month long Europe
tour since none of them had jobs! But we found our way to the port and filled
out all the paper work. Got to show my diving card and they put me with an
advanced group (which was a mistake I was super nervous I couldn’t even
remember how to assemble all my gear correctly) We were given all the gear and
we went out on a very small boat all the way up the coast almost to Monaco!
boats docked in port
this is one of the 2 boats that took us out to dive, pretty tacky!
part of my gear!
This old guy is living the dream... a beautiful sail boat and no pants :) that's how I wanna live my life!!
We anchored just off the coast and they instructor guy was
going to take the 3 boys who had never dove before down one at a time first
then the advanced group of 3 would all go together. I was also very scared for
the water and the boat, I usually get really motion sick and was not sure how I
would handle a boat, I haven’t been on one very much or that at all, especially
in the ocean!! So I had to sit on the boat for about an hour and a half just
soaking in the sun before it was my turn to go.
Huge one docked out side of the port
an even bigger ship!
Looking at the coast
Main Nice area
Ok well before I talk about it too much let’s mention that
where we were diving was full of Jellyfish!!! Hundreds of them, not the deadly
kind but the little purple kind! They are still very dangerous, getting stung
but one of them is super painful! I was scared to death when I heard this, I though
oh man, I’m going to explode from the pressure then get stung by a jellyfish
and try to surface to fast and die… I was being a little dramatic, but that was
about how scared I was at this point!
really cool condos and places on the coast!
this is where we anchored to Dive!!!
JELLYFISH!!!!!! right beside the boat
So we had to wear a fully body wet suit with a hood and face
cover so protect us from the jellyfish. The suit was so tight and it was so
hot, I thought I was going to be sick before i even made it into the water! I
got all geared up and flipped over the side of the boat backwards like you see
all the time in the movies, got adjusted to the water and was off! As soon as I
got under the water my attitude changed completely! It was
AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything was so clear and beautiful, it wasn’t as colorful
as I was anticipating, but that’s because we weren’t on a coral reef or
anything. Lots of blue and tan and green sea weed everywhere at the bottom! We
went to a depth of 20 meters (approximately 65 feet), and swam through ravines
and flat areas, lots of fish, LOTs of schools of fish and lots of different
types of fish. And of course the jellyfish were everywhere closer to the
surface. Then there were a few funny creatures I don’t even know what they are
called but I found a few images on Google to show you guy’s kind of what I got
to experience. Of course NOTHING can compare to actually doing it! J it was the coolest and
greatest thing I have gotten to do in Europe!!!!! the next few pictures I Googled but they are exactly what I saw on my dive!!!
Jellyfish
this guy was my favorite! saw him a couple different times
lots and lots of schools of fish!
After I dove the skipper opened a bottle of wine and we all
drank and made our way slowly back to port! From here I was on my own trying to
get to Villafranache, a cove area just up the coast closer to Monaco where
Kenra and Audrey were on the beach. I was able to make it there and wander
around the town to get to the beach and randomly found Kenra at a shop as I
passed through town. We sat on the beach all afternoon!
Villafranche port
This beach wasn’t a sand beach either but it was all little
rocks, from quarter sized to tiny tiny ball point pen sized. No sand. Soooo I
picked out a ton of them to keep ( I take after my mother who is always
stealing rocks) I came home with an extra 5 pounds of rocks lol I don’t know if
they all will make it back to the states or not. J
We laid around soaking in the sun, sat with our feet in the water and even got
out a ways in it and swam around for a while! There were a few jellyfish but if
you stayed far away you were fine. As we
laid around one little boy wouldn’t leave a jelly fish alone and ended up
getting stung by it. He screamed bloody murder for half an hour or so before he
slowly calmed down and when he did the huge welts on his are were clearly
visible from a long way away, poor kid!
So everywhere you look there are beautiful and fancy sail
boats and yachts and large ships. I couldn’t get enough of them, so a LOT of my
pictures is of them because they are just so cool! For my senior capstone
project I will have to do this year I am thinking about focusing on ship or
camper design! And after spending a day on one it defiantly helped me make up
my mind!
This one here was the coolest and most amazing ship we saw!!! it has a helicopter on it and inside there is another large speed boat and some jet skis, this guy has to be loaded!!!
After a long day on the beach and me scuba diving, we were
all exhausted! We made our way back into town and found a cute little
restaurant and ate dinner. I was so excited because being by the ocean there
was going to be LOTs of sea food, And man was I right! I ordered a huge pot of
steamed mussels in a white wine sauce and fries! It was
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! We then stopped at a grocery store
to pick up food for the next day on the sail boat and headed to bed!
The next morning we were up early and off to the full day of
sailing! We had to take the train half an hour the opposite direction we went
the day before down near the town of Cannes to the Juan Port. There were tons
of ships and yachts in this port but we easily found our ship “Candy” but the
captain was nowhere to be found. Eventually we found him and he introduced
himself “my name is Juan Pierre your skipper” He was about as French as you
could get and when you think of a crazy captain, that would be him. He made the
trip so fun but he was so crazy. Kept telling us rules and would say if you do
this I kill you! J
he was great. We pinned him about 50 although he looked like he was mid 60s due
to the sun and probably smoking.
We waited around for the rest of the group to get there. 9
of us total, us three girls, 2 19 year old girls from England, a boy and a girl
best friends from Canada, and then a couple from California. All were about our
age and most had just graduated and were taking a month or so to tour Europe!
We all became good friends right at once which made the trip even more fun!
our sail boat for the day!! Candy
Flags from the counties of the people on the boat for the day. England, Australia, USA, and Canada.
We took off from port and just went all around the coast; he
swerved in and out of sail boats and huge yachts so we could look at all of
them! There were some intense and amazing ones!!!!!!!!!!!!! We went for an hour
or so until we came to a little cove where we anchored and Juan Pierre said ok,
jump in! J
so I was the first one to take a dive in and man it was cold, but once we got
used to it, it was super nice! The waters here were a little rocky and wavy so
swimming wasn’t as fun as later when we stopped for a second time. But here we
got to get fins, masks and snorkels and we did some snorkeling! The water was
about 30 feet deep and we could see all the way to the bottom! There were no
jellyfish but lots of fish!! We swam over to a rocky cliff and climbed out and
looked around at lots of pools and saw a bunch of little black crabs!
another giant yacht!
When we got back on we took off and went all around looking
at the ships and the land for another 2 hours, tanned and even took a little
nap. We went the opposite way down the coast and anchored at another little
cove with tons of boats anchored every 50 feet or so where people just sat and
swam, fished and chilled. It was neat and here the water was much warmer,
shallower and calmer. So swimming was awesome! We swam for a long time before
we got back on and ate lunch then headed out back to port. While we were here
the girls wanted to swim to shore and walk along the beach, it was about a half
mile swim so we decided to do it. We got all the way up, almost there and they
both felt the seaweed on the bottom of the ocean floor and freaked out and
wouldn’t go any farther so we turned around and went back to the boat!
Also like the cities have the ice cream truck, they have an
ice cream ship. It came around and honked a horn and tried to sell ice cream.
Except instead of a creepy guy driving the truck, it was a hot girl in a
bikini; I would assume they sell a lot more ice cream that way J
This is one of the top 5 most amazing and the most expensive resorts in the world. a hotel and restaurant and little cabin looking things that you could rent for 1,000 euros a day.
the first place we docked to swim and snorkle
lol a funny picture of Skipper Juan Pierre! him and his sexy short short! ha haaaa
Looking up the sail boat, there was a big table at the back that was covered and could seat 6 people
a view down into the cabin. There was another large table to seat 10 + and a full nice kitchen. directly below where i was standing was the master bed room and bath. the other side there was another 3 bed rooms and one more bath! all was super nice!!
Blue clear amazing water!
Me setting on the very front seat of the ship!
parasailing, we really wanted to do this too but chose to just do the sail boat!! maybe next time!!!
this is my favorite picture of the whole trip!!!
After this we all
caught the train back into the city. We were so tired and hot, by now we were
pretty much burnt to a crisp! But Man I had already turned a couple shades
darker!!! We walked down and chose a restaurant that was playing the Germany
Football game on a tv outside and sat out and ate. I’m sure no one follows European
Football, but it is a HUGE thing here! The Euro cup is bigger than the Super
bowl and American football. We have watched all of Germany’s games. They have
played 3 and have won them all so far! WHoo hoo!
So we watched the game and sat and ate for 3 hours. I had
spaghetti with sauce then swordfish! Which was delicious, and a creamed caramel
for dessert! It was SUPER good!! J
We then went back and crashed hard, got up the next morning
and had a few hours to burn before we needed to catch our train so we walked
through the shops and looked around. I ended up buying a memento that I
couldn’t resist. It’s a little 2 inch square cube of clear plexiglass. The
artist has a mold and pours this stuff in it layer by layer then puts objects
inside of it, or writes on it in different layers. All the objects he puts
inside he makes himself by hand out of metal or paper. The one I bought was a
little scuba diver diving down with bubbles coming out of his tank. Super cute
and I loved it, I really wanted to buy the bigger one that has the diver, a
shark, and a sunken ship but that one was WAY out of my price range! He had a
ton of different one and they were really cool!
We got back on the train and came home the same way we came
here, so we had a LONG journey. And when we got ready to hit our last
connection it was almost midnight and the train was running 25 min late, we
were so scared we were going to miss our next train but we didn’t, just barely
made it! When we got to Luxembourg we needed to get a taxi to take us back to
Trier and we knew that was going to be expensive, but it was either that or
wait again for another 4 hours till we could catch the 5 am train. We got a
taxi and rode until the driver realized that the main bridge to get to Trier
was closed. We knew this but I guess he didn’t, so then he drove around for
another half hour trying to get across and couldn’t. There are only 3 main
bridges close to Trier to get across the river and the only one available was
way down south. He was confused and felt so bad but we had suddenly realized
where we were and we told him to just drop us off where we were and we would
walk. We were by the main college on the hill and it was a 3 mile walk home
from there. But that is nothing to us anymore. We easily walk 10 miles a day.
So we walked home at about 3 am!
It was the most exciting and awesome trip that we have taken
here in Europe; I did NOT want to leave the beach and the ocean. Someday I will
go back, but I have a new dream in life and that’s to someday own a boat and be
able to do that! It was so awesome! I am home for 3 days now and will head to
Munich and Vienna, Austria this weekend! Next Friday is my last test and I will
be completely done with school, that next weekend I will post a nice blog on
Munich and then another on all my school projects, they have been weird and
different! It won’t be long after that and mom and dad will be here then I will
be HOME! J I
am ready for that!!
oh and some of the kids on the Sail boat took some good pictures of us and even some under water ones. I will be posting them as soon as they email them to me!!! :)
