Friday, July 7

We arrived Friday morning in Frankfurt. Sara didn’t sleep much at all. I got a bit of sleep. but we’re talking maybe 1-2 hours? The kids were zombies when they had to leave the plane.

Because our flight had been delayed, we had a relatively tight connection, which required us to deplane, enter customs, re-enter security, and switch terminals. All went ok, though if anything hadn’t gone well we would have been in more trouble. There was some confusion as to which terminal / gate our plane was in. I didn’t get coffee before the flight :(

Ben slept on the second leg, which was a relatively short trip to Nice.

We arrived in Nice minus Sam’s bag. The AirBNB doesn’t have a street number so we are hopeful that it will arrive here safely the next day. They apparently found it.

We got our internet working and before we collapsed, went down to the port to meet up with Mark and Shayna. They have been here over 2 weeks, and were able to orient us pretty quickly. We got a quick drink / snack, found some gelato for the kids, got tickets for the bus, identified the famous free sparkling water station, and took a bus back to our AirBNB, where we collapsed pretty quickly at 6pm.

It was a really windy day, but hot, and there was some debate in my mind whether we should use the A/C or leave the windows open. The AirBNB Host said there could be mosquitos, but we kept them open anyways. I may have gotten some bug bites and probably didn’t sleep as well, but I did sleep 12 hours.

Saturday, July 8

We walked the city with Mark and Shayna across the whole day. The map above spells out our route. Some features included:

• Hiking up to the Fort Alban and walking around it
• A secret walkway down to the city
• A children’s park
• Taking the tram to Mark and Shayna’s apartment
• The fountains where the kids played in the water
• Our walk through the Vielle Ville, then along the quay towards the port

We ended with dinner al fresco at our place. The kids stayed up late.

Sunday July 9th

On our second full Day in Nice, we went to Monaco. Mark and Shayna stayed in Nice for the day…we had worn them out the day before. We walked down from our house to Villefranche Sur Mer, and hopped on the bus (I had to run back up to get the bus tickets). We walked along the Esplanade, visited Le Marche de la Condamine where we drank coffees in the plaza and had lunch. We then walked up to the palace and vielle ville, walked through an exotic garden on a path high on a cliff above the sea, wound our way down to a secret beach(that was closed), and had a dip in the ocean along a concrete pier at Solarium Beach. The water felt great, but without life jackets, the big waves and deep water were too dangerous for more than one kid to be in the water at a time. We walked through the vielle ville on our way back and each got a gelato. On our way back, we took the local train.