Hello! My apologies for my absence…I’m quite embarrassed that I have not finished spring break yet. Final projects and exams in Spain are no joke! However, I am happy to report that I am writing to you in one of my favorite lunch spots in Madrid and am officially done with school! However, that does mean that I am leaving Spain in 6 days. My heart is absolutely broken. I promised myself that I could get done writing all of the trips before I board my flight back home…let’s see if I can do it.
So, let’s finish Nice so that we can talk about Munich, Mallorca, southern Spain, and Marrakech!
…
The best way to get from Milan to Nice was by a bus. A 6-hour bus…but with only a $15 price tag. We took an Uber to the bus station in Milan and arrived about 15 minutes before our BlablaCar bus was supposed to arrive (12:20). I’m not going to lie, this bus stop did not seem to be in the best part of town. Laine had a man pop out of the shadows and try to scare her while she was getting a snack (lol). After a few minutes 12:20 had passed and there was no bus to Nice in sight. The name of the bus was still on the board, therefore indicating that it was still scheduled to come. If this happens, just be patient, and the bus should come eventually! Our glorious BlaBlaCar finally showed up around 15 minutes late, so we got our seat numbers, and settled in for a nice, long 6 hours. The drive from Milan to Nice was stunning. It gave me time to write about Vienna and Salzburg and was a nice way to catch some rest after our busy day at Lake Como. There was a lot of traffic on our route, so I think our ride ended up being around seven hours instead of six…well worth it, though!
We arrived in at the Nice Cote d’Azur airport and decided to hop on the tram and take it to our hotel. If you do this, take the Line 2 tram towards Port Lympia to get closer to the center of Nice. Port Lympia is the last stop, which ends right at the Nice harbor (very close to Old Town Nice). Outside of the trams are little ticket kiosks where you can buy a ride for around 1.50 euros; the kiosk prints a ticket, and you validate it on the machine inside of the tram. Do with this what you will, but we only bought one ticket the entire time while in Nice. We never saw anyone patrolling the trams and auditing tickets or handing out fines.
After about 15 minutes, we hopped off the tram and walked a short 5-minutes to our hotel, The AC Marriott. Since we had stayed in hostels for the other destinations of spring break, we thought that we would end treating ourselves to a good hotel. Originally, I booked this hotel through Booking.com for its 3-person room. However, when I found out that Alyssa was going to be joining us for spring break, I messaged them to see if we could do a rollaway bed for the two nights that she would be spending with us. They responded and said that they would add the request for our stay…we indeed hacked the European system of the customary 2-people-per-hotel-room rule. Check-in was a breeze and we quickly dropped off our bags and made our 3-minute walk to the beach to catch the last glimpse of the sunset. Once it was dark, it was closer to 9:00 PM; we had no idea, but restaurants in Nice do not stay open very late. We had no clue what we were in the mood for, so we just started walking around to see what was open. Our options were limited, so Alyssa and I ended up going to Le Cocodile (a little café overlooking the beach) and Laine and Lilly went and got durums at a nearby restaurant. After dinner, we all met back up at the hotel, got ready for bed, and enjoyed our amazing room without bunkbeds.
The next morning, I woke up around 8:30, put on my running shoes, and did a nice run from the hotel over to Port Lympia and back. I got to pass the “I Love Nice” sign and take in the great views that the Promenade had to offer. I then stopped by a CarreFour grocery store and racked up on some groceries for our time in Nice (beach pb&j’s are mandatory). Once I got back to the room, everyone was almost done getting ready, so we made our sandwiches and started to make our way to Le Temps d’un Ete, a beach club that was only about 15 minutes away from our hotel. Out of the two beach clubs that we went to during our time, this was our favorite. They played great music and the prices of the chairs were cheaper (the food was a bit more expensive than the second club, Blue Beach). The chairs were 16 euros per person for the entire day, which were definitely well worth it in my opinion. We also rented towels from the club which would have been closer to 5-10 euros, however, at the end of the day, they forgot to put them on the bill (SCORE). We were all settled at the beach club around noon, and had ourselves an extremely fun and relaxing day. The drinks were amazing, the sun felt so good, and the water was gorgeous. It was quite possibly the coldest water that I have ever been in, however, floating in that ocean is one of my absolute favorite memories of studying abroad. The process of getting into the water is a whole other story, though. The beaches in the south of France are made up of large rocks and pebbles—a recipe of pain for your feet. Water shoes are definitely a must when visiting this part of France. While this may not have been socially acceptable, we snuck our pb&j sandwiches into the beach club and secretly ate them with our Pringles (lol). We stayed at the beach until around 7:30 PM, and decided to grab a real meal at a café similar to Le Cocodile (just one right on the Promenade). We split a couple of bottles of wine and enjoyed a nice view of the ocean from our outdoor table. After dinner, we were drained from the sun, so we took a long walk back to the hotel and fell fast asleep.
PRO TIP FOR THE NICE BEACHES: when you first get to Nice, go to any grocery store and they should have a section dedicated to beach supplies. Buy a towel, sunscreen, and most importantly, WATER SHOES! These supplies will save you a lot of pain and money.
The next morning, Alyssa left to catch her flight to Switzerland to meet her mom for the remainder of her trip to Europe. Once Laine, Lilly, and I were up, we were ready to rinse and repeat the day before. This time, we opted for Blue Beach, which had the price tag of 25 euros for a chair and 7 euros for a towel rental (ouch—good thing we packed our pb&j’s again lol). We stayed at the beach all day and ended our afternoon at the rooftop pool of our hotel for a bottle of wine. It was getting a little late, so we decided to hop in the shower and make our way to the harbor to grab a bite to eat. We settled on GiGi’s—a sweet Italian café with outdoor seating (there are lots of similar restaurants over here that do not require a reservation). We thought that we would have the energy to go to a bar after dinner, however, we decided to ere on the side of relaxation. We called an Uber back to the hotel and got some good rest once again.
The next morning was Easter Sunday! We planned on making it to the 10:30 service at Notre-Dame Cathedral de Nice. Even though we couldn’t understand a word that was said, mass was beautiful. We even got to practice singing hymns in French. Since it was Easter, church did last until almost 12:00, which was when we had a reservation for Easter brunch at Le Terrasse. I called the restaurant as soon as I figured that we would be late and they were more than happy to hold the table for us. The restaurant was at the rooftop of the Le Meridien hotel and had the most gorgeous view of the ocean; we enjoyed a light little lunch up there and were so grateful to be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus together in Nice. After lunch, we quickly changed so that we could enjoy the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach. Once the sun was fading, we packed up our stuff and went back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. We didn’t have any dinner plans, however, we really enjoyed the area that we were in earlier for mass. We took the tram and made our way over there and started roaming the streets to see what looked appetizing. There was a long line at a restaurant called La Villa d’Este—it looked like it had some delicious pizzas and pastas. We hopped in line and were seated within 15-minutes. The service was very fast and it was the most reasonably priced meal of our trip! After we paid the bill, we grabbed some gelato and walked along the beach on our way back home. We finished packing our bags and set our alarms for 7 AM for our flight back to Madrid!
*water shoes FTW*
In the morning we woke up pretty early to catch the sunrise. We have found that for most beaches located on the southern coast of Europe do not have a clear view of the sunrise or sunset. However, it was still so incredibly beautiful with the sun peaking out over the mountain near the water. Once we had our lovely goodbye, we checked-out of the hotel and called an Uber to take us to the airport. Be sure to check and make sure which terminal you are flying out of—terminal 1 and 2 are pretty far apart from each other. Security was a breeze (they do make you put your liquids in a bag), but when we got to our gate our flight kept getting delayed. We finally boarded about 45 minutes behind schedule. This usually wouldn’t be a problem, but for this flight we were connecting through Barcelona…and our layover was only 45 minutes long before our flight started boarding. Once we landed, it took forever for everyone to get off the plane and our connecting flight was at least 10-15 minutes away from our arrival gate. We barely missed the flight. Once again, the Barcelona airport messes up our spring break. At this point we knew that we had to rebook our flight back to Madrid, so we exited the airport and went to the Vueling office that’s on the same floor as the check-in and ticketing desks. They were very accommodating, rebooked us for the next flight, and gave us a voucher to spend at one of the cafes downstairs for lunch. We split a bottle of wine and boarded our flight with plenty of time to spare. After a long week and an even longer day of travel, we finally made it back home in Madrid.
Spring break was an experience that I will never forget. We got to see so many different cities and had a little bit of everything—history, culture, city, beach, relaxation. I would highly recommend visiting any of these incredible destinations!
Thanks for reading, happy travels! I should be posting pretty soon about our trip to Munich for Spring Fest!
<3,
Mp
List of Places & Things We Did in Nice:
- Food
- Le Cocodile (cafe on Promenade...several just like this)
- GiGi (Italian but also had sandwiches)
- Le Terrasse (nice; reservation required)
- La Villa d'Este (Italian cafe)
- Beaches
- Le Temps d'un Été (my favorite)
- Blue Beach
- Public beach
- Church at Notre-Dame Cathedral de Nice
If We Had More Time We Would...
- Take a day trip to Monaco
- Go hiking
- Go to the Musee Matisse museum
Tips for Nice:
- BUY WATER SHOES AND A TOWEL (or bring chacos)
- if you're on a budget, buy sandwich supplies and bring them to the beach
- going topless is acceptable
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