Disembarkation: Nice 28th May

This is Bengie. What a treasure he was

The Promenade des Anglais

Nice

The beach at Nice

Everything went smoothly for disembarkation this morning, except we had not read the memo about breakfast finishing at 8am and that we were supposed to have vacated our cabins by 8:30.  The dining room was completely empty when we rocked up at 8:30 but with a bit of fancy footwork we were able to grab a coffee and pastry from the Mosaic lounge then go and quickly finish our packing.

Our baggage had been tagged then collected the night before so all we had to put together was our hand luggage and toothbrushes then wait for our bus to our hotel. We said our farewells to Bengie our steward and to two of the security guards who always greeted Vaughan and his braces with such good humour, then waited for our bus.

The buses gathered on the dock to take people to their various hotels, the airport and the railway station, and ours was ready to leave at around 9:30. In the meantime the main lounge had been converted to a waiting area for us and a check in area for the embarking passengers.   It felt a little bitter-sweet leaving the ship for the last time, knowing that someone else will be in our cabin tonight and that the ship will depart for the first time in over a month without us on board.

We were taken to our hotel, the Radisson Blu hotel, which is WAY down the Promenade des Anglais (the famously long stretch of beach and palm trees here in Nice) at around 10am and were told that our room would not be ready until 3pm.  We were offered shower facilities, which would have been very welcome had we just arrived by plane, but was unnecessary for our circumstances.

We decided to walk into the city in order to find a bag for our excess luggage and were rather surprised by the lack of choice locally.  It was a LONG walk and there was hardly any shade  to be had at this hour of the morning, Then, unfortunately we only found three shops which sold travel goods.  The first was at Gallerie Lafayette (think David Jones) where, not even a small suitcase was under 120 Euro.    We got out of there fast.   We checked out a store called the Travel Hut  (think a small version of Paddy Pallin) a few blocks further on and found two things there  that pretty much made our day: an English speaking sales assistant AND a duffel bag with back pack straps. It was relatively expensive 68E, so we decided to check out the final store (which the sales assistant directed us to -bless her) and could have bought a wheeled duffel for 40 E or a small case for 50 E.

The more I thought about it, the more sense I could see in having a duffel that could be packed flat in our luggage and only used as required, take at least 10kg and be carried multiple ways, rather than buying something that would always have to be carried as an extra piece of luggage.  So after a Croque Monsieur with frites at a local bar, (which Vaughan declares was his favourite meal of the entire trip) we made our way back the Travel Hut, where, bless her twice, the sales assistant sold the bag to us for 45E.

She also directed us to the local HoHo bus.  Even though we would have liked to return to Monaco today, the logistics simply weren't going our way.   We did a circuit of the local route instead, duly admiring the ornate architecture, the parks and green areas, then when the bus reached the Promenade des Anglais, tried to catch a bus back to our hotel.  We encountered some other folk from the ship also aiming to catch the bus but they were having even less luck than we were, so we shared a cab instead for 7E a couple.  We were tired and footsore and basically were past caring.

We finally checked into our room at around 6pm and were thrilled to find there was enough room for two people in the bathroom at the one time AND a bath.  Frankly we were too tired to venture out again so we went to the rooftop restaurant for a meal where we tried counting all  lost the jets taking off from the airport down the road, admired the beautiful colour and glassy stillness of the sea as the sun set from behind us, and wondered if we would see the Quest sail tonight.  It did but we didn't see it go.