But unlike say Italy, or the countries we'd already visited but were revisiting to do more of because we wanted to, France was not like that for us. We were going there because it was a logical place to go to after our Italian travels, in particular Nice (which is said "Neece"). It was the nearest major city with convenient links to the UK after our Italian adventures, but also the Principality of Monaco was nearby - yet another country we could visit and one I wanted to visit if we could. For Sasha, there was an added element - she actually wanted to visit Nice for Nice, whereas I just wanted to go there to get somewhere. I didn't know much about Nice other than it was a popular beach city on France's Mediterranean coast, and although I tried to have a glance at what might be there, I didn't really come up with anything.
At one point, our visit to Nice was a bit in doubt - when we'd originally considered Nice as the logical place to then travel onwards to the UK, flights to the UK from there had been quite cheap. When we went to go book them, they were no longer cheap and caused us a bit of consternation trying to figure out when was the best flights and on what dates, whether to try shorten parts of our trip in order to get the earlier cheaper flights, whether to fly out of somewhere else in order to get cheaper flights, or bypass Nice at all. Not helping things was the fact that accommodation in Nice also wasn't that cheap.
In the end, while it was cheaper to fly out of other neighbouring cities, the cost of getting to those cities basically put the costs on par or were overall more, plus reduced the time we had; despite having a widespread high-speed rail network, France's high speed trains are not so high speed around Nice and also any long distance train travel would cost as much as the expensive airfares. Sasha found reasonably priced accommodation in Nice, we settled upon a set of indirect flights to the UK, and locked it all in.
Getting to Nice from Cinque Terre was a bit of a schlep, partly because we wanted to try and maximise our time in France which dictated when we'd leave Italy, but also because of the nature of the journey over Italian Rails. Very early one morning we caught a local stopper train from Manarola all the way to Genoa, where we changed trains to another similar train to Ventimiglia. Italian trains that are not the high-speed ones always seem to be a bit tired, and this second train was very much so - the bogie wheels at our end of the carriage would "hunt" when braking creating a very uncomfortable jerking motion which wasn't pleasant. At Ventimiglia, which is still in Italy we had to buy tickets for a French train which would take us to Nice. It was quite a relief actually to arrive in Nice at the end of the journey.
A private room with a private bathroom in a hostel a few blocks walk from the train station, so not too far to lug our belongings. It was pleasant and did the trick for sure, I don't really have much else to say other than it was painted a strange grey-purple!
We wandered around what I would say is the main bit of Nice, in the rather warm muggy overcast weather though it did try and rain a few times but you'd dry straight away. It might be a bit unfair on Nice, I was probably tired and a bit travel-jaded by then, but I didn't really see anything that made me warm to Nice. That famous beach that people want to go to and no doubt gets absolutely overrun in summer - did you know its a shingle beach, with not a speck of sand? Like why would you flock here when there's millions of sandy beaches you can go to? I can't say that I'm a beachgoer so I can't really talk, but I don't get it.
We also wandered through a nice park on a nearby hill which also had a cemetery next door to it. The park was nice, there was even a nice man-made waterfall but it wasn't the most amazing or inspiring park to me either. Aside from those places, a variety of streets in the city that we wandered along or the train station, that was pretty much all of what we experienced in Nice. Partly because we changed our plans around a bit and in the end devoted more time to Monaco, but I think partly because there wasn't really much more for us in Nice.
The biggest thing of note regarding food and drink in Nice (we had some nice food, not going to talk about it though) was the Limoncello. Ever since our visit to Amalfi on the Amalfi coast, we'd had this big bottle of Limoncello that we had slowly worked on trying to get through. Unfortunately quite a bit was left by Cinque Terre, so we made a concerted effort to try and use it up there - but we failed to finish it before going to Nice. It could not come with us in our luggage from Nice to the UK as we were flying and there was no room, so in Nice we had to finish it off. We even mixed it with some Grape Fanta to try and consume it, which made for an interesting flavour but I did wonder whether it was a magic bottle of Limoncello that kept refilling itself. The answer - no, we finally finished the last of it, the morning we went to catch the plane for the UK! Definitely had our moneys worth from it but I think on the whole it was more than we needed. Quite happy to steer clear of Limoncello for a while personally!
Summing Up
Its strange but when I think of Nice, I feel tired. We'd been on the road for nearly 2 months pretty much straight by that stage and there's no doubt that despite a lot of intentional rest and relaxing, it does catch up to you. We'd had some pretty exhausting days in Cinque Terre, hiking and swimming but the swimming felt quite relaxing all the same and I did feel like I'd recharged my batteries before leaving there. Maybe they just got drained on the way to Nice? I don't know. It does make me wonder how I'd feel about the place if I ever went back there - maybe on a day with nicer weather and with more time, Nice might show itself properly. Or, it did show itself properly and my perception wouldn't change. I just don't know, but I do feel like on balance if a place has seemed a bit ho-hum, any repeat visits I have done there haven't changed that idea much (Zurich, a prime example); but this is not foolproof, as I thought a lot more highly of Vienna after my last visit there than I did of my previous visit and Sasha felt the same. So for that reason alone, I kind of would be interested to go back to Nice. But I really don't know how or when or if ever that would ever happen, particularly because there isn't a strong reason to go back there.
It might be a good travel-node point on a future trip though - I know I want to give more of France a proper go at some point, explore more of the country and make a more informed opinion of the country. Chief among the places I would like to visit in France for no real particular reason are the Island of Corsica (and I'd like to do its Italian counterpart Sardinia at the same time), the Bordeaux region, and St Malo. Maybe it might make sense to visit Corsica from Nice - we actually looked at whether we could shoehorn in either Corsica or Sardinia or both on this trip, but it was simply not possible. Paris will feature again almost certainly in some eventual trip, and I would like to get another impression of this city also. All of France strikes me as a bit haughty, a bit pricey, and somehow a bit lacklustre but it can't be all of that - Strasbourg was amazing, and stands out as the most amazing place in France I have seen, and the nearby Mulhouse was also very pretty. Maybe its that whole thing of its nicer out in the towns than in the cities - hard to know what the answer to that is right now. But for now, I'm happy with what I did and saw in France, and same with Nice - although I can't say that I had a great time in Nice, I definitely had a nice time there and am glad I got the opportunity to see it.