Wednesday, September 14th saw us leaving Paris early for a flight to Nice.

Our pilot told us it was a nice day in Nice and it was supposed to be sunny and 24 degrees. It was cloudy the entire flight so we didn’t see much until we broke out of the clouds near the sea. It was also raining quite heavily as we exited the airport looking for a taxi.

We’d arrived at 8:30 am and we couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 3:00 pm so I asked the cab driver to take us to a good place for breakfast.

He dropped up near 2 places and recommended Cafe Du Palais as the better of the two. So we trudged the block or so in the now pouring (but not hypothermia inducing rain like Alberta) rain. We decided on sitting inside as the umbrellas weren’t always winning the battle.

It was almost done raining when we left to find a place we could drop our small suitcase so we didn’t have to lug it around for a few hours.

Bag dropped and off to shop for an umbrella.

When we emerged from our successful quest, the rain seemed to have stopped. Or so we thought.

We walked around the shops and made our way over to Quai des États-Unis to look at the sea.

It still looked like rain would arrive but we strolled along without it happening.

It’s not a big hill at the end of the Promenade des Anglais but even though it was cloudy, it was still warm so we rested at the #ILoveNice sign. Trying to get a shot of just Lynda was a bit challenging.

We stayed at the top of the hill killing time before I had to go get our suitcase out of storage.

Lynda waited for me as she didn’t want to walk down and back up the hill. I was there and back in under half an hour. We strolled in the direction of our Airbnb and we walked right past it to our harbour tour that Lynda had booked for 3:00 pm. I had thought we could check in at 2:00 pm so we had an extra suitcase to bring along.

We got our tickets and sat on a bench in the shade waiting for boarding time.

We moved to line up with others standing, waiting and the rain came back. It was just a light drizzle but only moments ago the sun was beating down on us.

The boat has room for 46 passengers, 22 of which can be outside on the upper deck. Rain or no rain, Lynda and I headed up top. I had razzed Lynda about bringing her jacket along to such a warm place but it was nice to have it to set on the already wet bench as a blanket. The rain picked up in intensity and the wind started blowing before we even left the harbour. Luckily, we had ourselves a couple of umbrellas.

So, we sat in the rain, huddled under the umbrellas as person after person left to go down stairs to huddle inside.

The wind was even stronger after leaving the harbour so I didn’t even try to get my camera out and decided I’d make due with my cell phone.

We exited the harbour and headed north east along the coast and turned into the harbour at Villefranche-sur-Mer. There are plenty of impressive houses to look at along the way. The rain had started to slow down so some of the chickens came out to stand in the way of our view. I was inspired by my friend Canada Slim aka Adam Kerr and his lazy faire attitude when it comes to level horizons and I snapped a few shots willy-nilly. (It still feels weird)

The tour was almost over when the rain stopped but we were heading into some bigger waves and we were starting to accelerate on our way back to Nice so even the cell phone camera was put away.

The tour is an hour long and not terribly expensive so I think it was worth it. The rain put less of a damper on it than the 20 something year old girls that couldn’t sit their asses down once they ventured out on to our level. We weren’t too wet when we were done and we only had a 5 minute walk to our apartment.

More stairs were climbed and it took us a while to get our keys as the directions weren’t 100% clear. (It is said that things are lost in translation and in this case, it was true.) But finally we were in and dropped off our stuff so we could head back down to town for supper. We picked Mamma Mia and shared a Pizza Margherita. I tried an actual Marguarita (It seemed weird not having any ice in it but it would be the best one I had in Nice.) while Lynda had Sex on the Beach. (The drink. Not… What are you people thinking? Lol)

After a leisurely meal, we decided we were tired enough to just head back to the apartment instead of exploring the town. So we again walked along the Promenade.

Seemed a bit early to crash but it had been a long day getting up at 4:00 am and all and I’d gotten over 17k in steps. Tomorrow we have a morning tour and pickup is 8:30 am.