Nice, France in Three Trains

In 2015 my mom came to visit me in Italy for the holidays, and we decided to take the train up the Riviera to visit my cousin in Nice for a couple of days. We started from the hokey little station in my then hometown, which didn’t even have a ticket station. There was a tiny waiting room with old black vinyl upholstered benches, concrete walls and no heating. There was one other room which was locked but had a broken window. It may have been the ticket office at one time. The track was full of weeds so the contrast of seeing an amazing high speed slick train pull up was like watching the final scene of Back to the Future III when Doc’s super hi-tech train is on the old West tracks. The train was known as the Swiss train on account of where it came from, and I never did find out where it was going. We were only on it for a few stops, alighting at a transfer station called Gallirate where we picked up a train to Milano Centrale. From there, we were five hours on a comfortable train with amazing views of the hills and fields until we hit the coast in Genoa. At that point, the train raced along the celebrated coastline pulling into lovely stations, each one quite different than the last.

We stayed in “Old Nice” at the Ellington Hotel. Built in the 1920s, it has retained that jazz era vibe and the price was incredibly good at 60 euro per night for the room.

It was between Christmas and New Years and while there were healthy numbers out and about, the city was quiet by comparison to the summer. We enjoyed some time at the Christmas Market with my cousin and her children, dined on delicious food, and spent a lot of time and money at the celebrated Flower Market, had crepes for breakfast on the beach and enjoyed a splendid spell of sunny weather.

It was a wonderful way to put a year to bed!

The market is lively and full of delicious fruits, vegetables and breads as well as soaps and dried herbs and colourful plants and flowers, arts and crafts and souvenirs too. You can have coffee right among the stalls, a fragrant experience.