The plan for the first 6 days from there was full on as we were both having a week off the bike because its cycling nationals over here and of course foreigners can't race. We had decided to do a whirlwind trip of the South of France
On Tuesday Brad and I took the TGV fast train from Lyon to Nice. Its about a 4 hour train ride that cuts through the middle of France and then follows the coast from Marseilles up to Nice. The plan was to stay in Antibes. Antibes sits half way between Cannes and Nice and was to be our base for the next 3 days.
Brad managed to find a camp ground that was 50m from the waterfront, 50 meters from the train stop and most importantly wasn't expensive.
On the Wednesday we headed to Monaco. From everything you hear and see, this is the place to go. Everything is on a grand scale and within 5 minutes of arriving there we saw 2 Porsches and a Ferrari. The place is most famous for its wealth, its marina and the Formula One.....the later had been on just 2 weeks ago.
The view looking down on the city
One of the boat marinas
Our plan was to do a city tour as its such a hilly place. They have noddy trains that give English commentary so this seemed the easiest option. From here we walked to some of the key attractions. One place that was on the must do list was the Oceanographic Aquarium. This is both a museum and a aquarium and was run by Jacques Cousteau for 30 years. They had some really crazy fish in this place.
The museum is built on the cliff side
Transparent fish
Moray Eel
For the afternoon we continued to walk around more of the city and the marinas. This place is really hilly and you end up doing a lot of walking
It got so hot in the afternoon that we decided to take a swim in the sea. The water there is clear and pretty amazing. Nothing says class than 2 people from NZ just going for a lazy swim in their boxers.... Oh well
We went swimming just around from this place on a little beach
On the way back from Monaco we stopped in at Nice for dinner and to have a look around. This is really the hub of the Cote D'Azur region and one of the most recognised places. Our thoughts however were its a little overrated to the other places we visited. The beach was horrible and the shops were like any western city
On Thursday we headed down to Cannes. This place is most famous for the Movie festival so it was worth a stop through the cinema area to see the red carpet. I had done a fair bit of reading before we went and we decided to take the ferry over to the island of St Marguerite. The beaches here were supposed to be less crowded (summer time and school holidays here) and free (most nice beaches in the Cote D'Azur are not free and can cost up to 30 euro a day pp). This area didn't disappoint and we found a pretty cool inlet that had only a few people. One of the funniest stories from our trip was when 2 french girls turned up and decided to do their own modeling shoot in the water. Priceless....and we were in tears watching (yes, photos below)
Cannes red carpet
Island of Saint Marguerite
Me noticing the girls.....they are in the background and you need to zoom
One of the many modeling pics, they other girl has the camera around the corner. Sorry we missed the pic of the moody head turn....while lying the water but believe us when we say it was some funny shit.
Again more walking. I think we racked up close to 10k a day
Back in Cannes we did some more sight seeing, monuments, castles and churches. Leaving Cannes we managed to get the wrong train. We got on the direct train to Nice and not the local stop train. This meant another trip to Nice so we decided to stay and have dinner and another look around. The great thing about France is the train conductors are useless and you can ride the trains for free quite often. I think out of the 8 or so times we took the local train we never got asked for tickets
This is part one to our trip. I will write the next 3 cities in the next day. Hopefully that is a small insight in to what we did and saw. There is so much you could write about. I also have a post below with a link to the whole album from the trip.
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