Nice, France

Saturday nights are obviously huge in the old town of Lyon as we got bugger all sleep due to the never ending traffic of humans, cars, and bikes down our tiny lane way ALL night!

The fact that there is a 24 hour sex shop in the lane probably didn’t help the situation, but please folks….KEEP IT DOWN, ALREADY!

Not refreshed, we headed off on the 470 km trip to Nice at 7am.
Unlike tight **** toll free travel from Beaune, we hit the toll roads early, and often. The alternative was an additional 120km, and 2 hours plus travel time.

A no brainer, really.
A few tips for the novice toll user:
1/. Know which queue is for credit card, and which for cash
2/. Make sure credit cards work
3/. Turn on English translation to see if credit cards work
4/. Pray no one is behind you when credit cards DON’T work!
Guess you know what happened…..dumb-**** Aussies holding up the toll booth waiting for attendant to take our cash!
A word of warning to Maddy, Sal, & Kate….don’t try to use your 28 degree card on the tolls. Go to the cash line.
The tolls are a interesting beast, you get on them, drive for a while, then the road widens to about 20 booths to take your ticket….then, the charge of the light brigade to get back into your lane, and off at 130km till you get to the other end, where you spread out again and you pay, or try to!
After our first blunder we got it sorted for the second lot of tolls, cash only!
€42 for the trip, about $70. Well worth it for the simple trip.
The drive itself was uneventful, except for the occasional sight along the way.
In Melbourne we have the big bird, and the fake hotel on eastlink, the Nice A8 toll has an 11 century castle on top of a sheer rock cliff, with battlement walls surrounding!
Such French arrogance!
Outside of the GPS ending our trip in the middle of the freeway over a river, we found our apartment reasonably easily.

Compared to Lyon, this one is a bit shabbier, but fine for our needs for the next two days.
We had our first swim in the Mediterranean, which was lovely as its 33 degrees.
Never complain about the coarse sand at Mt Martha again, the pebbles at Nice are a killer, murder on the feet. But it was so refreshing. Magnificent.
A quiet night in, with local provisions, and a pretty ordinary bottle of red, and a catch up on lost sleep.
Tomorrow, off on the coastal drive to Monaco.
Look out, our little VW Polo is going to get a work out.