Riviera Life part 2

Right after arriving to Nice I went to search my hostel. It took for a while to find a place, but finally I ended up to find the correct place. The place is called Villa Saint Exupery Gardens, nice looking place about 3 kms away from Nice centrum. Hostel had gotten very good feedback from visitors, but it still surprised me positively! Common area was very big and nice, something like 10 computers free of charge, free coffee or choco or tea, free cereal breakfast, free shuttle bus from tram stop to hostel and best of all very warm welcome by roommates. People started to talk to me right after I stepped into the room. unfortunately I didn't have much time to chat to them since I wanted to go to see local casinos as soon as possible! ;)

First I went to biggest casino of Nice to find out that they don't have any tournament poker there. I was very disappointed. Luckily on my way to that place I saw also one smaller casino, so I headed there. They were just going to start a tournament of 120€ 30 minuites after I arrived there! I registered to the tournament and read french poker magazine without understanding any single word of it while waiting tournament to start. When it finally started I didn't have too much fun until I was already out. It took like 30 minutes from me to catch a top pair, top kicker with AQ against flopped set of villain. My tournament was over before it even really started. I was very disappointed, but that's poker.

After quick tournament I headed back to the hostel with a plan to go to sleep quite early. It didn't go like I planned since first of all when I arrived back to my room some American roommates of mine had been cooking and they offered food for me as well. I went to eat with them and they told about their plan to go out that night with small group of people sleeping in our room. I hesitated for a while, but ended up to go out with American, Japanese, Polish and two Mexicans. We went to some quite small bar what I didn't like very much since I prefer nightclubs much more. At least we were able to talk each other because music wasn't too loud. We had to head back to the hostel quite early, already 2 am since trams don't operate anymore later than that. That was fine to me, because I wanted to wake up early and go to Monte Carlo next morning.

I've always hated waking up early and it didn't work that morning either. Finally I got myself up from the bed between 9 and 10, because I didn't want to miss morning cereals! I ate big bowl of cereals before going to search bus number 100 from Nice to Monaco. I heard from some German travellers that bus is leaving from Port of Nice, so I went there and found the stop quite easily. The bus from Nice to Monaco is extremely cheap as it costs only 1€. Journey takes about 40 minutes and all the time bus is driving near coastline of Riviera, view is awesome! I felt like I really want to move to Riviera in future!
Part 3 later...


Sign from the hostel


Arriving to Monte Carlo

Riviera Life part 1

It's long time ago since I updated this blog last time!
But now I finally got reason to do it since I had holiday of 10 days from army!
I couldn't waste such a good opportunity and right after getting information of holiday I went to search flights somewhere. First I was thinking about Barcelona, but after finding return flight from Ryanair to Milan for 130€ I couldn't resist it. Not like I wanted to go to Milan, but it was close enough to Nice! And Nice is almost next to the place where I've always wanted to visit, Monte Carlo! So I ended up to book return flight to Milan.

I arrived to Milan on Sunday evening only to find out it was raining out there and of course I forgot my umbrella to home. Luckily there's always someone selling umbrellas on the streets in Italy, so I didn't need to walk more than 5 meters from bus without umbrella. I hadn't booked any accommodation for the night since I was going to leave the city 7 am. I thought that in such a big city like Milan there's always something going on 24/7. I was terribly wrong. The city was totally dead at the night, it was nothing compared to London. Not a single store was open at night and I didn't find any nightclubs either near by central station. Public transportation didn't work from midnight till 6 am etc.. I was freezing, bored and tired. I just wanted to steal a sleeping bag from a bum and go to sleep on the street! :D

After super boring night in Milan it was finally morning and my train was about to leave. I found Italian train seats brilliant since they were like sofas! 3 seats together without any armrest between seats. So I was able to lie on the seats and sleep whole journey from Milan to Ventimiglia.. Ventimiglia is small town near by border of Italy and France. I spent few hours there walknig around the place and eating some Italian pizza. From Ventimiglia I took another train to Nice. After 30 minutes I finally arrived to surprise surprise rainy Nice! More about Nice in part 2.


Bergamo airport, thunderstorm as usual...

Ventimiglia

Rainy beach of Nice