Day 5 :: Rain in Nice Sun in Cannes

I just love the architecture.  So much character.  So beautiful.

Beautiful tall buildings and narrow walkways

Our second port city was Cannes, France but originally we were supposed to port in Nice.  They switched it at the last minute but we still wanted to go there.  Here, and for the rest of the trip we'd be in port from 7am to 7pm and the last tender back to ship was 5:30pm.  We were up bright and early around 7:30am.  For the 3rd morning in a row I lay in bed wide awake just waiting for the alarm to go off and bounced out of bed while poor Mj had to hit snooze.  We went to breakfast at the Windjammer and then we were off the ship for the day.  We had to be tendered from the ship to the shore in a boat but the whole process didn't take very long at all.  This port was cool because the walk to the train station was pretty quick and then we just had a 45 minute train ride to Nice Ville station.  Our round trip train tickets were 13 € each.  We were really excited that there was no rain but it didn't last for long.  By the time we got to Nice it was sprinkling and we had to pull out our umbrellas again.  Mj forgot to put the memory card back into the camera and we didn't realize that until we were off ship so we were stuck with my old digital camera for the day.  Thank goodness I had it in my bag though or else we would have lost an entire day of pictures.  The rain was annoying the hell out of me but I really tried to take in the beauty of Nice anyways and not to let it spoil my mood. 

We walked towards the area where the shops were and I ducked into stores along the way to shop and get out of the rain.  We made our way towards the Old town section which was the coolest with all the narrow cobble stone streets and tall bright buildings.  Even with the rain there was kind of a swap meet/antique sale going on in the streets and there were still lots of people walking around and eating in cafes.  Like Provence the majority of the seating is outdoors.  The roads are so narrow and they are cobblestones so you almost don't realize that you are actually in the street until a car comes by.  There were tons of people on motorcycles and mopeds so you have to be really aware of everything around you. 

Partial castle ruins on the way to the top

Pretty waterfall

Made it to to the top.  Nice View.

Then it was time to climb Castle Hill aka Le Chateau.  It was part of my original plan for that day.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to because it was raining but we were walking anyways right so what difference did it make?  There are a lot of inclines and the road wound around and around leading us up a giant hill that was more like a mountain if you asked me.  It was a pretty good walk and then we finally made it to the top and were rewarded not with an actual castle but a beautiful panoramic view of Nice.  The rain finally stopped about half way up the hill thank goodness.  As we made our way back down the sun started peaking through the clouds and our mood lifted.  I stopped at a shop and bought a long sleeved royal blue shirt that I had my eye on earlier. 

View of our ship from Cannes.  There were 3,500 people on our cruise.

View of Cannes from the ship

After rain comes a rainbow.  View of beautiful Cannes coast from the ship

We took the train back to Cannes and then walked around there a bit.  The Harbor area is so beautiful and by then the sun was fully out.  This is where we had our one and only disagreement of the trip.  Mj was really hungry as we hadn't eaten all day and wanted to stop for food.  The ship was right there so I wanted to go back and eat where it wouldn't cost us anything.  There was a slight breakdown in communication.  I thought we were just looking for a small not super expensive cafe like many of the ones we'd seen in Nice and that if we didn't see one we would just go on ship since we were so close.   Most of the cafe's along the Cannes harbor were pretty pricey so when we came to the last one and he wanted to eat there I still wanted to go back to the ship.  I didn't realize that he didn't care about price or how close we were to ship.  He was irritable, starving and just wanted to eat right then.  And yes, we did end up eating on the ship because I'm a mean wife and I made my husband starve.  I am sorry that he was upset at me and that we communicated so poorly but looking back on it I'm glad we didn't spend $50 bucks on a meal that day when we were 30 minutes from ship where it was free because we spent plenty of money on food later on in the trip.  To add insult to injury and more silent daggers directed at me the Windjammer was closed until 6:15pm!  Oops.  We grabbed some pizza at Sorrento's which is the pizza shop on the main deck that's also free.  Then, perhaps as revenge, he made me wander around with him taking pictures on deck with the good camera even though I was really tired and told him I wanted a nap.  I ended up with barely enough time for a really quick one because we had a show at 7:00 pm.

Saturday Night Fever was so good!  It was a Broadway style musical and the singing, acting dancing and story line was so good.  We went to dinner in the dining room after that.  The first night we had our assigned table to ourselves but this time our table mates were all there.  It was such a good match because one couple were newlyweds on their honeymoon and the other couple had been married for one year.  I sheepishly told them I'd taken a nap every day so far but I didn't feel so bad when they said they were taking naps all the time too.  Once couple was too tired to even get off the ship that day.  We saw them around the ship a couple times after but we never shared our table again for the rest of the trip.  By the time we finished with dinner it was around 10:00pm and I was so sleepy I could barely keep my eyes open so after dinner it was off to bed with a nice full tummy.

Next Stop:  Pisa and Florence, Italy