Nice is nice, but this isn’t where we planned to be tonight …

Nice is nice, but this isn’t where we planned to be tonight …
Thur. 6/24/2010
We're staying, unplanned, in a nice motel in Nice, France. There were rumors in Vernazza, Italy that Italian trains were going to strike on Friday, the day we planned to leave Vernazza. And as that was a big travel day for us out of Italy and we had to catch a train in Nice, France to Paris, we decided to leave Italy a day early to avoid the risk of not being able to get out at all.
But then we ran into another problem – avoiding the train strike in Italy on Friday, we found out there was a train strike in France, on Thursday. We didn’t find this out until we got to the last town in Italy (Ventimiglia) before crossing the border into France. We found out about this standing in line in Ventimiglia to get tickets to Nice when another customer told us that on this day, Thursday, the French trains were on strike! And so we couldn't get out of Italy by train on the French trains to Nice. There were other travelers who we talked with who helped us understand logistics (we needed to go about 90 km to Nice), and so we planned on sharing a taxi to France, but the taxis wouldn't take more than four people, so our family ended up taking a taxi to Nice by ourselves (not cheap). The taxi driver, Pierre, was French, and spoke fairly good English. He told us he lives in Nice, but his taxi business in his modern, small Mercedes was out of Monaco. (He had interesting stories about his other rich clients – not us!) He helped us find a motel room in Nice near the train station. Motels were crowed because of conventions and the Ironman competition in Nice this weekend (the same weekend it is also in Coeur d'Alene)
Ah, but it's nice here. Mary and the boys waded in the French Rivera, we had a good dinner, two deserts, and were entertained by great street artists.
Todd