By the time we woke up at 7.30am we had already dropped anchor in the bay of Villefranche, and 900 passengers from our ship were on their way to the Monaco Grand Prix taking place nine miles down the coast. We decided to head in the other direction!
After another delicious breakfast we set off with our bottles of water and sandwiches, onto the tender taking us to the port. We asked at the information desk and discovered there was a train to Nice leaving in 20 minutes so we hot-footed it round the bay to the station and, once we had deciphered the ticket vending machine, boarded the train. We were hoping for lovely views of the French Riviera, but went through a long tunnel and jumped off the train when the station said Nice. It only took us a few yards down the road to realise that we were in the suburbs of Nice and nowhere near the main part of the city. So we retraced our steps and got on the next train and this time successfully got to where we wanted to be. What an enormous, lively and vibrant place Nice is. We purchased our tickets for the 'Hop on, Hop off' bus and went two stops to the sea front. Here we had a long walk in the very hot sunshine along the promenade. What a sad reflection of the time we are living in when you have the Army, holding sub machine guns, patrolling the beach and the promenade. Oh, dear, we do hope, when this book/ blog is read in the future the cruel world we are living in at the moment will be a distant memory. We stopped for a coffee at one of the many cafes along the front. Three times today we have bumped into the three ladies who share our dinner table, if we had been looking for them we would not have found them! On the third meeting we were all heading in the same direction - to the Hop on, hop off bus, our companions to return to the ship, and us to going the other direction and complete our tour of Nice. From the top of the open topper bus we had great views of Nice and the surrounding area and saw the hotel where Queen Victoria stayed when visiting here and many other interesting landmarks. The hotel looks as good today as it did in her day! We kept on the bus and it took us along the whole coastline back to the port area for the tender to return to our ship, where we sat on our balcony, enjoying a cup of tea, and watching the many helicopters leaving Monaco after the Grand Prix.
A superb dinner was followed by another visit to the theatre to see Manuel Martinez perform his second show. Another brilliant, laugh a minute comedy magic routine.
