G’day folks! The journey of course continues as I give you the full wrap and low-down on my adventures from Dhaka to Dakar last year. The last couple of posts have centred on Florence, where I stayed five days, but after that it was a mad dash to get to Barcelona in three days to meet my friend Graham as we then headed to Morocco.

A lot of the purpose of the total journey was the journey itself. I love the feeling of moving and it was great to do it without taking any flights at least between Istanbul and Dakar, but I like the sense of moving through a place too as opposed to flying over it.

I had done my research to work out what was the best way to plan the three days out of four which would be solid travel, and it seemed reaching Barcelona from Florence in a single day was a real stretch. So I needed to break that journey, and Nice seemed to be well positioned for that.

I could have one day in a place and as I had already been to Barcelona before, I decided to that particular day in Nice. Getting there from Florence was a four-train deal. I booked through trainline.com which had its ups and downs, and it seemed this was the best way to get there. From Florence to Pisa, Pisa to Genoa, Genoa to Ventimiglia which is the Italian town on the border with France, and then a final French train to Nice. Back in 1999 I took the train from Rome to Nice and it was just one simple train, but international services aren’t running it seems between the two countries these days or if they are they are extremely limited.

The times between trains were pretty tight, and the final change at Ventimiglia had a lot of people running from one train to another. The French train then was super packed (all the others had been relatively spacious and easy) and had a lot of stops along the Riviera on its way to Nice. An absolutely amazing train ride in terms of views looking out to the ocean on the left side of the train.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I arrived in Nice and luckily my hotel was seriously close to the train station. Just a three minute walk down a hill to the Hotel Khla Nice. Check out my vlog review above. I had an easy rest of the afternoon and grabbed some dinner from a local kebab store which was nice. And then I had an email from SNCF that my train in two days times, the third of the journey from Nice to Barcelona from Beziers, had been cancelled due to industrial action.

So when I woke in the morning I had to head straight to the station to try and work it out. Unfortunately, as I had booked with trainline.com, they would not issue me a refund for that portion of my ticket. I called trainline.com who said there was nothing they could do in terms of getting me to Barcelona, but they would apply to SNCF for a refund but weren’t clear if they expected it to actually happen.

In the end I found a bus going from Beziers to Barcelona later in the evening a couple of hours after I was due into Beziers by train. I booked that and then had a few hours to walk around the very pleasant Nice.

The weather was cool but mostly blue skies, so I headed to the beach as Nice is somewhat famous for its beach. For some reason I kept feeling like I was in the 1920s as I walked through the leafy streets of this attractive town. Some nice architecture and a well laid out city. I got to the beach where there were quite a few people out on said beach. It was probably about 18-20 degrees, which in Australia is NOT beach weather usually. But we are used to an overall warmed climate I guess.

It wasn’t a bad place to be really, although there were people swimming and I thought that was a bit much. If you took away the fact that instead of sand there were just stones, then it is a really lovely view with the city behind it. Little cafes doing a bit of business too. Ahhh, la plage!

I turned in from the beach after a walk along it and made my way towards the centre of town. The day would be about walking rather than museums and buildings, and these can be great travel days I’ve found. The Jardin Albert was moving to the smooth sounds of a bit of jazz, a little concert was going on, and I walked through it noticing some interesting sculptures.

The Foutaine du Soleil was a popular spot for people to meet and take selfies. Just across from it was the Promenade de Papillion which was a wide space with a number of fountains that popped up seemingly at random. This area seemed to be the centre of town with the attractive and impressive Place Messena abuzz with visitors and cafes and the like. The city is well served by trams too especially up the Avenue de Jean Medicin which appeared to be the main street of town, with cafes, restaurants and boutique shops along it. Including the Galeries Lafayette – a department store, and Sephora Nice which is a perfumery.

I walked down the Avenue until I got to the historic church – the Basilique Notre Dame de l‘Assumption. It’s a cathedral built between 1864 and 1879CE. This cathedral was the location of a terrorist attack in 2020 where three people died.

And then I walked back to the hotel. I had done a loop of a few kilometres around Nice and I felt I had a sense of the place – no more of course. And a super big day of adventure and challenges lay ahead and I had to prepare. But that’s the next chapter! Thanks for joining me today, take care wherever you are in the world and… May the Journey Never End!