Nice is nice (ha ha bet no-one's thought of that before...)

I got a flight over on Friday evening - and a slight complication getting to the hostel from the airport in that some people gave me bad directions, and I walked in totally the wrong direction from the bus stop! But then I spied some nice french people to ask for directions and they actually gave me a lift right to the door of the hotel in their car despite not being able to speak any english at all!! So nice, and I would have been not a very happy camper without them. :)

Nice was fantastic. So nice and hot, and sunny, and not at all like England (we're having really bad weather at the mo - supposed to be summer!) So, Anna arrived the next morning on the train and we got a local train to Monaco at about lunchtime. Her boyfriend spent about 6months working on superyachts in Nice, so he'd given her some tips on where to go, and they were great tips! So we went up to Monaco (great train service all along the French riviera) and wandered about there chatting for a bit - did the obligatory visit to the casino (didn't go in though as had to pay :)) and saw the changing of the guard.

Then we headed back towards Nice on the train stopping first at Cap d'Ail and Villafrancia. Found ourselves a primo swimming spot at Cap D'ail and stayed there for a couple of hours chilling.

More swimming accompanied by ice cream strolling along the parade, and a nice meal at Villafrancia (another sort of seaside stopoff).

The next day we went to collect our hire car and Anna managed fantastically with the slightly frightening experience of driving on the wrong side in the reasonably chaotic Nice, with traffic lights every few meters and lots of lane changing :). We then spent most of the day driving out to Moustier San Marie. The drive took us around the Northern edge of the Gorge du Verdon, which is known as the grand canyon of Europe. We stopped at each of the viewing points on our map, and it was very spectacular - though after a bit we got used to it and lots of them were quite similar views.

We parked the car at some random layby and had a picnic (of french bread and cheese) and swim in the river which was gorgeous! If a bit colder than the sea. We also stopped at some village market along the way which was quite cute (strangely selling both mattresses and grandfather clocks). Upon arrival (fairly late) we fell in love with the little town we were staying in, and so the next morning we spent a bit of time walking around before driving back around the south of the gorge. So CUTE! And the B&B we were staying at was lovely.

There was also this amazing colour lake, which we couldn’t resist a swim in as we made our way home - like an enormous swimming pool. Be a great place to go back to. Then the drive home - including Anna's close encounter of the snake kind :) and a stand-off with a huge bus trying to come up the road that wasn't big enough for the both of us. I had to back the (brand new) hire car up very close to the stone wall and pull in the wing mirror to let him pass. When we got back we picked up Anna's friend Sally from Nice, and they dropped me at the airport - and went on to have more fun adventures. My flight was delayed a bit unfortunately but lovelyMim picked me up from the airport and dropped me home just before midnight.
It was awesome!!