Nice (September 1, 2017)

So there’s a little problem right at the start.

All seemed to be going well.  The descent into the Côte d’Azur was promising (photo), but upon arriving, I awaited my luggage – without success.  It’s the first time an airline has failed to deliver my luggage as expected.

I was told it would probably be delivered the next day, in the afternoon (when I will in principle be arriving in Ventimiglia.  No problem, I was told: they will deliver it tomorrow at the hotel there.  (The woman at the service counter seemed to be Italian and knew the albergue in question.)

I hope so… My backpack and walking sticks are in it – in addition to all the clothes I didn’t have on my back.  I had to do an emergency wash upon arriving at the hostel in Nice – in order to have socks and a shirt for the next day. And I then did a second load of wash once the first one had dried.

While awaiting news of my luggage, I went out for a walk and to pick up a few things.  The sun was very intense and I had to buy another tube of sunscreen while waiting for the other one to arrive (in my backpack).  I also had to buy another (small and very light) daybag to be able to transport all the things I had I hand to Ventimiglia tomorrow.  It’s also possible that I may need to buy another hat if tomorrow turns out to be as intense as today.

I didn’t find any hats in the course of my walk today – and, in fact, few people along the Promenade des Anglais (where the sun was beating down as strongly as the azure waves from the sea) seemed to have any interest in wearing one.  But no doubt they weren’t planning to walk two or three hours in full sun.  Myself, I intend to leave as early as possible the next day – breakfast is served here starting at 7am and the hostel is a few hundred metres from Nice’s main train station – with a view to making it to Ventimiglia before any intense heat sets in.  I’ll drop off my small bag at the hotel, go buy myself an Italian SIM card for my phone – and if I feel OK and the weather is agreeable, I may well make it a bit beyond Ventimiglia – up to the next village with a train station (Ospedaletti), which would make it possible to shorten my first true day of “mountain” walking in three days’ time.

I’m not particularly hungry today – maybe a symptom of jet lag – but I nevertheless forced myself to honour my father’s memory by visiting a renowned gelato shop, Fenocchio – which I had heard of and that I had recommended to my own kids when they visited, but which was closed for the month of November the only previous time I passed through Nice two years ago.  In addition to very intense (but traditional) fruit flavours, they specialize in flavours that could be described as unusual, if not outright bizarre.  I took advantage of the occasion to try three of them – three sorbets: rosemary; tomato and basil; and beer! It was the beer sorbet that I was most looking forward to, but it was the least interesting of the three: it tasted more like the head on a beer rather than like a good bitter pilsner.  It was rather the rosemary and tomato-basil sorbets that were most surprising.  Intense Mediterranean flavours, to be sure – the tomato-basil reminded me of a sundried tomato pesto – but in a form that was both cold and sweet!

What will the Italians be able to put on offer to compete?

Table of contents

Next: The joys of found luggage

Distance covered (cumulative) : 11.3 km (11.3 km)
Steps (cumulative) : 18,700 (18,700)