#47 A Weekend in Cannes
The day started out with some breakfast at the hotel. As Roman checked out, he was tacked on with a 70 euro charge for having me over for the night. Now Roman knows the European tradition of nickel and diming people. We boarded our train at 11 AM to Nice and it would be a long ride. The rail line broke at Ventimiglia (a small border town in Italy) and we had to get off of the train to catch a bus to Nice. The parking lot was chaotic. There were six buses lined up and none of them had signs to where they were going. After pushing to crowds to talk to the bus drivers, we found our bus to Nice. The was ride was smooth until we entered Nice’s city limits. Traffic built up to a standstill and the delay caused Roman and I to miss our train to Cannes.
Country # 10 France
Destination #19 Nice, France
While waiting on the bus, the traffic delay ended up being caused by some teenagers who decided to park their car in the middle of the street while eating at a Moroccan restaurant. They took their sweet time to move the car and it reflected the arrogance I have previously seen with French people. A few minutes later there was another care parked in the middle of the street, but the bus was able to get around it. Although we missed our train to Cannes, the trains ran regularly so we caught the next one fifteen minutes later.
Destination #20 Cannes, France
It was around 5:30 when we finally arrived to Cannes. We first checked into our hotel directly across the street from the train station and dropped off our stuff. We had not eaten since breakfast, so Roman and I looked for a good place for dinner. We walked through the shopping streets and towards the coast. There was Christmas village on a square next to the harbor which featured varies gift shop booths shaped like Swiss chalets and creperies. We then saw various restaurants. Roman would not eat there because they were empty, but this was due to us eating early (for French standards) not the quality of the food. We also went to walk inland but got lost. We bet a crepe about which side of the street where the hotel was located. Roman won, and now I owed him a crepe for breakfast on Saturday. After finding where the hotel was, we walked around the blocks in that area and found a lively French cafe with plenty of steak. Since I only had pizza on Thanksgiving, this was my default Thanksgiving dinner. I ate peppered steak with fries and fresh bread while Roman went extravagant, ordering duck liver and lamb shanks.
After dinner we walked around a little more and stopped by a casino. I’m not a gambler, but Roman wanted to play Texas hold ‘em poker. Unfortunately for Roman, the only poker option was tournament with a $400 buy in which was too expensive for him. We then went back to the hotel. I watched a little BBC (the only English channel) and got frustrated with the leftist green propaganda that filled its programming. I then read a little bit of a finance book that Roman lent me. Roman was considering bailing on a family trip a week early to work for my Uncle Chris. I try to convince that he missing out and that why would he put himself through working in a crummy situation to avoid international travel. I then went to sleep.
The next day we slept in and ate crepes at the Creperie in the Christmas village. We then went on a walk up the coast and looked at prominent hotels and yachts from everywhere from Los Angeles to Austria (landlocked which is strange). The crepes were not filling so we got some lunch at another French cafe. Roman ate steak tartar (which I thought tasted strange) and I had a sirloin steak. We then realized there was not much left for us to do in Cannes, so we boarded the earlier train to Nice. Once in Nice, we realized we could catch our train to Milan from Monaco, so we hopped aboard a train to Monaco and decided to spend our afternoon there.
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