Plane took off on time-ish and the in-flight meal was salmon, water and fruit salad. The holiday programmes on TV always suggest that if you don't fancy the meal ask and there is usually something else. On this occasion it was a vegetable pasty of some kind which, to me, did not seem at all appealing. Only afterwards did I discover that the fruit salad had more exotic fruits in it and you get orange juice instead of water, so I should have changed.
Arrived at Nice on time and got through customs without incident. Picked up a Nice map from the Tourist Information desk in the airport entrance, which would later prove invaluable.
Got the Nice Direct bus to the city.
It's Carnival time in Nice at the moment, so the bus is diverted around the back streets of Nice, so careful attention was made to the recently acquired map.
The bus dropped us at a location the driver indicated as being Place Massena, though my map didn't entirely agree with him. Having got a fix anyway of where we were we walked to the Hotel Regence in Rue Massena.
As it happened we had to walk past the place where all the Carnival floats ended up, so despite missing the final parade we did get to see the floats whose theme this year was sports. Got to the hotel, dumped stuff and dashed out to soak up some of the atmosphere of Nice Carnival, and discovered that tonight there is a torch-light procession and fireworks display.
On our travels around Nice we found a couple of grocers/supermarkets, always a good place to stock up with bottled water and orange juice. Several brands of bottled water available so opted for one we knew from previous travels - Volvic and another with a label and name more akin to sanitary towels than mineral water - Contrex.
Tea time and we opt for in-house cuppa soup, specially imported from the UK. We boiled up (we always take a small kettle with us) some of the Contrex for coffee, but the powdered milk was not impressed and showed it's disgust by refusing to dissolve and remained in suspension.
Initial thoughts were that the milk was off, but eventually we decided that the water had that little extra that the milk didn't like. A quick check of labels confirmed that this was probably the case. Contrex was high in minerals (dry residue of 2032 mg/l) whereas Volvic was not (dry residue of 109 mg/l).
Travel tip No 1: Don't buy mineral water with high dry residue if you take milk
In the evening we went out to experience the Carnival atmosphere proper, which for the local population, seemed to consist of buying "silly string" (that stuff in a pressurised container which spews out solvent smelling soft string type stuff) and squirting it at everyone and anything (shop windows, car windscreens (especially the Police variety), statues and so on).
The torch-light procession was a bit of a feeble affair and totally disorganised. There were bands and dancers from around the world scattered about in the procession - they had to be because they were all playing different tunes.
The fireworks display was about a mile away, still looked quite good but would have been better if it happened more over you than "over there"
Go to Day 2
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Copyright © 1997 Andrew J White