Following the stars

Day 35 - Nice

We're using Nice as a base for five nights to take day trips to the surrounding areas. After much consultation with ChatGPT we decided we would travel to Monaco and Éze today, but when we arrived at the train station we discovered there was a train about to leave (oops ... missed it), and instead of the expected 15 to 30 minute wait for the next one, it was actually over an hour.

We quickly changed our plans and caught a train to Cannes instead. We walked down to the harbour, but instead of the expensive yachts and busy promenade we'd expected it was an empty marina, fences and barricades.

We walked up to Le Suquet, the historic old town of Cannes, which was much more interesting. 

We also walked past the Palace of Festivals where the Cannes Film Festival awards are held each year. Cheesily there is a red carpet on the stairs so that tourists can pose and pretend they are a star (no, we didn't do it)!

We continued walking to the next bay, La Croisette, marvelling that once you passed the small public beach the rest of the beach couldn't be seen as it was entirely covered with umbrellas and very expensive restaurants.

We jumped back on the train towards Nice and got off at Antibes. We immediately felt that Antibes was much more our scene than Cannes and Nice. After walking down to the harbour (full of huge yachts) we walked along the wall to the statue Le Nómade. It's an 8-metres tall seated human figure made of interlocking letters.

We then walked into the old town with artist's studios on the other side of the wall. In the first studio K immediately recognised the bronze West African female figurines as being the same as those she bought in Ghana and Benin in January 2025. Although K's lack of French made communication difficult connection was made and understood through the sculptures.

We missed our train back to Nice as we discovered too late that we were on the wrong platform. We caught the next train and this one was an express train that we hadn't paid extra for, but all the inspectors did was tell us to move out of the first class carriage!