We’ve arrived in France 🇫🇷 and are staying in Cagnes-sur-Mer about half on hour e-bike or train ride from the centre of Nice. Florence is the lovely owner of Maison d’Hôtes Floribel where we are staying. It’s advertised as a hotel but I think it’s more of a guest house. This is our home base for the next three days. We have three little bungalows looking out onto our own garden and patio area.

As well as being beautiful, “home” is a hop, skip and a jump from the Cagnes-sur-Mer train station, to the pebbly beach, as well as restaurants and bars. Florence does offer breakfast for €12.00 a day but as we are so close to a couple of bakeries Steve heads off early each morning for a walk, then swim and buys croissants and orange juice for the five of us each morning on his way home. This place is the perfect spot to just relax and I can imagine staying here for an extended time writing the great Australian novel.

Not this trip, we’re here to see “stuff” and Nice city is calling. Our train tickets into Nice Ville are €4.90.

We spend a couple of hours wandering through the maze that is called Old Town. It’s got all those wonderful feels of a lovely European city, with bars, material shops, spice traders, milliners and cobblers side by side.

So what’s the history of Nice? Well here are a couple of facts that might interest you, they did me, about this lovely city; there is archaeological evidence that dates back 400,000 years ago that if you wanted to hunt a woolly mammoth 🦣 this was the place to come.

The Phocaean Greeks in the 4th century BC established a town here called Nickaia after the Greek goddess of Victory Nike.

It then changed name to Nizza and finally about 150 years when it became part of France, it became Nice.

The people of Nice are known as Nicoise…. sound familiar, ah yes this is where this French salad originated.

There is so much more to this place of course and so much more to see here but it is very hot again (haha yes I know we came in summer 🤣) and so the energy is a bit low for us oldies. I feel bad that we don’t do Nice justice. It is easy to walk around and has really good public transport. I’ll be back as we haven’t even scratched the surface of belle Nice.

Oh yes and the story of this statue is very cool (well I think so)! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace