French Riviera part 1: Nice

DAY 1 :

This trip was kind of impulsive but I felt like I must do it. It was two days before Christmas 2018 and when I was still doing my 1stsemester in Montpellier, France. The cheapest train to Nice was at 5:30 AM so I needed to catch the tram at 4:45 AM. Boutonnet (where my dorm was located) was scary at this time and I was worried about meeting bad and drunk guys. It was freezing cold and a drunk guy wanted to do a high five with me but I escaped and hid from him without making him angry. The tram was kind of late (10 minutes). I haven’t heard any news from my travel mate, Antar, yet and figured out that he was overslept. My tram was blocked in the middle of Stade phillipides station guess why? Another drunk guy sat in the middle of the railway and did not want to move his ass. So the driver and many people tried to talk to him and after 10 minutes so finally he moved. I was so worried that I was going to lose this train. I was preparing myself in case my travel partners could not make it on time. But, magically, our train was cancelled so we needed to wait for another train in the next 1h. So I killed the time by playing piano. Here, almost every train station has pianos. So we slept in the train, 2h to Marseille for the transit. Marseille is beautiful but it stinks everywhere, no jokes. I will write about Marseille from a separate trip later in my next post. We got an hour to wait another train to Nice. I was so excited. It was like going to another side of France.

Cote d’Azur finally! This is the station and our hostel “Antares”is just 5 minutes walking from there. It used to be a hotel, we supposed, but maybe they found it more profitable by turning it into a hostel. So luckily the bathroom is indoor. I ate kebab for lunch which is just across the station. Nice has this main road to go to the beach with full of department stores. It leads us to Place Massena. This is a very beautiful historic square of nice named after Andre Massena, a French military commander during the French Revolutionary era. Along the way leading to the square there were lots of shops were there and it was still Christmas discount. I bought nothing because this trip has cost me much. But I enjoyed the shopping street and the view of the cathedral.

But seriously, it took hours for mas Antar to shop. Longer than my mom! This is place Massena:

We could find a lot of artists and unique musicians along the checkered floor of square. Another thing that makes it unique is the colour of the building that bordered the square which is derived from Italian architecture and was red ochre. Be careful of the trams here! Not far from where the statue is, they are having Christmas market too! and luckily it was free! The security check was kind of strict and there was a beautiful giant ferris wheel with the creamy colored sky and the whole ocean as its background. 

And finally the famous beach, it is! The sky was beautiful too. Nice beach does not have sand but gravels. They call the street along the beach as Promenade des Anglais.

It was Christmas Eve and we found lot of solo people everywhere. I wanted to go cycling along the river but turned out the procedure of renting public bike was complicated. We had our dinner in a Cambodia restaurant because I haven’t eaten rice for a week. Luckily one of Indonesian alumni gave us a discount coupon so we used it! We went back to the other part of Place Massena and found this place with colorful fountain and thematic decorative lights. 

DAY 2:

Nice is a quite small city and every tourist attraction is compacted alongside the Promenade. I recommend this place for family holiday with seniors because it is easy to find places and not far to walk. Our 1st target is the Russian Orthodox Cathedralebecause it looks like the St. Basil’s cathedral which I finished the paper puzzle at home. This cathedral is the property of Russian Federation and belings to the Moscow Patriarchate jurisdiction.  There was an exquisite Christmas morning mass, I was not expecting it, and we were allowed to see but not allowed to take pictures. The choir was real and Antar was asking me if these are humans or recordings. Of course they were live show and thanks to the acoustic of the dome, the sound was literally like from heaven. Because the choir was upstairs and we could not see the singers. I was really jaw-dropped by the interior. It was small and but glorious. People were not sitting but all standing up. There were barely any chairs. There were only seniors and us sitting there. Amazed by all the scenes: people making formation to take the holy bread, prayer in Russian and the choir… I felt like there must be a huge angel standing above us all. I could feel it really. The ladies were wearing veils and I really envy the beauty of Russian ladies. There was this one lady with her son that caught my attention. She wore everything super classy in white and creamed colored veil. When we went out with the people after the mass, turned out that she was super rich with her fancy car parked and their little family drove away. 

After a breathtaking Christmas mass in an orthodox church (which was an expensive and unforgettable experience for me), we looked for theAllianz Riviera Nice stadium. I am not a football nor rugby fans at all but we went there because Antar is. I found the way to stadium which is pretty challenging because we needed to change bus twice. Turns out that this stadium is out of nowhere, brand new (opening in 2013) and of course, closed because it was Christmas.

So we just took couple of photos here. There was this one father playing football with his 5-year-old son. What a sweet view in a Christmas morning. We were starving and I worried not to be able to catch the bus to go back because hey we are in holiday and bus were super rare. We were in the middle of the hills. Yes, this stadium is in the middle of hills and highways. But finally a bus stopped by and we went back to Promenade. We ordered KFC bucket. This is our 2nd KFC in this trip from Barcelona. After that I wanted find the old town and the castle but turns out the castle is so far away and we needed car to go there. I asked this to a lady in a random hotel reception because we couldn’t find it through google maps. Along the way we found this amazing play ground. I immediately snapped some photos of the slides for my dear friend Chandrika. She was doing her bachelor thesis about designing slides for children. In Indonesia, things like this is not yet much appreciated as part of children welfare.

So we just walked along the port. Lot of fancy big cruises were parked there. There was this one big looney tunes ship. I wonder who owns this ship because I am sure that I won’t do that if it was mine. We wanted to climbed the stairs to see the view but it was closed at 18:00. I didn’t want to be trapped up there and worse, there was this beggar leaving only his shoes and a text: Invisible Man. It was a creepy yet smart idea. 

We found a small church along the old city part. So we sat in. There was the miniature of the whole Bethlehem city.

We bought some dinner and lunch at Casino supermarket to economize. We found a 5 euro ticket to Monaco for tomorrow by Thelo, an Italian train. Actually we can have 3 euro by bus but I was so tired to do research on it. See you in part 2! 

Photo gallery