September 4, 2016
Finale Ligure to Nice.
We manage to get our cycles on the train for Nice despite the carriage being up the wrong end.
September 4 Sunday 12kms
Finale Ligure to Nice.
We manage to get our cycles on the train for Nice despite the carriage being up the wrong end.
There is a young Italian couple also staying at the guesthouse. Faced with the variety of temptations on offer at Jacobo’s colazione, they restrict themselves to coffee! We make up for it though. We have had some quite intense conversations with Jacobo. He is something of a perfectionist and would like to try cycle touring. He has his eye on a classic bike - the classic look appeals to him. He also wishes to imbue his wife with his enthusiasm for cycling. Not sure if he will achieve his dream. Maybe in winter. He seems to be responsible for meals while his wife has a job in Finale. The grandparents do much of the care of children as well as cleaning and changing linen for the guesthouse.
Fortified by Jacobo's final breakfast, we load up and head for the station, making it in plenty of time to manage our bikes on the stairs (what do wheelchairs do in Finale?) and position ourselves to where we anticipate the front carriage, the one always allocated for bikes, will be. The train arrives in the station, but where is the cycle carriage? Down the back! I ask the guard if she will wait for us to get to it- no! Fortunately, as with all things in Italy, there's another way. And so our bikes go on wherever.
Seated in the train we watch the kilometres we have cycled disappear very quickly and soon our old friend Ventimiglia appears. Here it’s all change. Our knowledge of that station comes in useful as we know of the crossing at the end of the ripario which will obviate the need to negotiate another set of stairs.
The SNCF Nice train arrives and with the kind assistance of a young Italian chap who ‘minds our bags’, we board. There’s an excellent cycle rack and the trip offers some great views of Menton, Monaco and the towns of the Riviera, Villefranche- sur-mer, Cap Ferat, and swimmers in the Mediterranean, one of whom has the audacity to moon the train in a joyous duck dive as it sweeps past.
Nice's special blue seascape (do they dye that water?) soon appears and we alight from the train with all of our baggage- again we have to negotiate stairs and an escalator. Several armed and uniformed soldiers are patrolling the station pointing firearms mostly at the ground.
We don’t hang about but load our bikes and head for the waterfront and the Promenade des Anglais for our final cycle trip to the Ibis hotel. Cycling the waterfront is easy, past landmark hotels, beach areas and the recently created memorial to those who died in a terrorist incident.
At the Ibis, we are gratified to be given a special room to store our bikes. We are relieved as it seems the ideal place to dismantle and pack our bikes into the boxes we had yet to obtain.
That afternoon we check Google maps for the location of bike shops in Nice that might be able to provided cartons, only to realise that we have neglected the Lundi factor - the chuiso/Ferme/closed day! Not all, but a number of bike shops, have this as their day of rest.
Fortunately Neway Cycles on the edge of the city replies to an email with an offer of boxes for 9 euros each- beggars can't be choosers, and so we decide that this will be our Monday mission. We celebrate by cycling to the beach for a swim in the big blue.
Today's ride: 12 km (7 miles)
Total: 3,479 km (2,160 miles)
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