A Second Time Around In Nice

Once again, our roving retirement has us on the go. Next stop, the French Riviera. Specifically, Nice, a busy town of 350,000. We were here for about five days in March of this year, so it is our second visit in 2020.

Finding A Flat

Even before we left Paris for Nice, we needed to ensure a decent, affordable place to lay our heads for a while. We will be taking French lessons in town while we are going through our visa validation and renewal process.

After reviewing the options on Airbnb, we chose a centrally located 2 bedroom flat which ticked a lot of our want/need boxes for a longer stay. Travel restrictions have made the listings more competitive and therefore less expensive, so we had some good options to choose from.

Notably, the lack of renters seems to have had no impact on VRBO listings, where the pricing is still high. I can only guess that more people use VRBO to rent out their vacation homes rather than general rentals. Perhaps the rental income for VRBO hosts isn’t as critical as it is for Airbnb hosts.

Catching The Train

As when we arrived in Paris, traffic made us a bit late getting to Gare De Lyon to catch our train. I’m thankful that our Bolt driver knew the super-secret special place to drop us off closest to the TGV tracks. This made managing our bags through a large train station much less cumbersome. All we had to do was take the elevator up and voila, we were standing in front of our train.

We did have a little trouble getting onto the platform with the PDF tickets on our phones. The entrance gate couldn’t read the QR codes on our phones. An agent finally grew tired of us holding up the line and curtly zapped our tickets with a mobile reader.

TGV To Nice

We chose to take the TGV train (Train à Grande Vitesse, “high-speed train”) to Nice. We could have flown EasyJet from Paris, but the train was less hassle and pleasant enough. The 2nd class car we were in was about half-full, so we could spread out a little.

The route from Paris to Marseille was quick, taking only 3 hours. The remainder of the way also took 3 hours, but went slower and stopped frequently. Eventually, we arrived at the end of the line in Nice. From the train station, we took Uber to the apartment.

Assessing The Apartment

We were met at the apartment by an agent whose job it is to facilitate our arrival and our stay. The building didn’t make a very good first impression because it was covered in scaffolding, like lots of buildings here. Then you had to walk through one building through an unattractive courtyard to another building. The façade of our building is actually quite nice but the tile on the inside and on the balcony entrances is quite worn. But there is an “interesting” statue in the lobby of our building.

Inside the apartment is pretty nice and somewhat renovated. The pictures of course always look better than the real thing. On arrival, we spent our usual 15 or so minutes going over the features and functions of the various furnishings, e.g. oven, stove, washer, etc. to make sure everything is available and working. Our current list has at least 30 items on it, including does the WiFi work and can I sit down on the toilet. (Diana can barely fit in front of the toilet in this apartment but you gotta be flexible, you know.)

In this apartment, everything was in order except the WiFi, which wasn’t working at all. WiFi is probably the most important thing to have working. To solve the problem, the agent called a colleague, who arrived fairly quickly with a replacement box and got it up and running for us.

We’ve settled into our new digs. There are a couple of decent markets nearby. As well as many good restaurants in the area. We can get to Old Town or the Promenade Anglais in under 10 minutes. It’s not noisy. 🙂

Shades Of Scottsdale

For whatever reason, the primary decorative theme of the apartment is cactus. Given our recent extended stay in Scottsdale, I wonder if the universe is trying to tell us something.

How is your place decorated?