Happy National Day everyone! I wouldn't have remembered if Ferne hadn't reminded me via sms. This morning I left Saint Remy on the bus back to Avignon and met Mario, the friendly Italian bus driver again. He was by far the friendliest person I had met in France and the irony was he's not even a native! We parted on a sad note at the Avignon bus station and I hurried to catch the train to Nice, the heart of Cote d'Azur. I had decided to stay a night at Nice because the train ride to Turin in Italy would be very long and I didn't want to reach there at night.
The 4-hour train ride to Nice was not as painful as I imagined, as we cruised along the coastline past Marseille, Toulon and Cannes. As this was my 2nd time here in Nice (1st time in 1997), I knew my way around so I didn't have to ask the snobbish tourist office girls for information. However Nice was tres crowded at this time of the year and I was walking around for at least 30mins with my backpack, sweating like a leg of jambon in this heat at 5pm and cursing like a mad woman after being turned away from the full 2 and 3-star hotels.
Pissed and hungry, I checked into Le Grimaldi, a 4-star joint (95 euros) and was ecstatic at the last available single room (MTV and BBC!) and free internet access (that's why I could write so much now). After a fag and shower, I took a stroll down the familiar broad beachfront walkway (yes, the titties were still on display on the pebbled beach and no, I didn't run into Henry the dirty old Frenchman who once approached us to say he liked Asian women for their clean bodies and nice small tits!) and enjoyed a big plate of spaghetti fruits de mer with my beer (16 euros) at a packed Italian restaurant located at the busy France Rue Massena avenue. These 3 French teenage girls were staring at my meal while they shared their thin pizzas and water.
It had been a whole week already on my own but it felt like a f%cking eternity! I was getting the hang of being Carl Solo, except at times when I was down, I'd get so lonely I could cry. Then I would puff up my shoulders and remind myself to savour every moment on this 'amazing race' where I'd pull through the detours and pitstops to arrive at my destinations. This would be one self-discovery journey that I won't get eliminated because I got to set the rules!
The 4-hour train ride to Nice was not as painful as I imagined, as we cruised along the coastline past Marseille, Toulon and Cannes. As this was my 2nd time here in Nice (1st time in 1997), I knew my way around so I didn't have to ask the snobbish tourist office girls for information. However Nice was tres crowded at this time of the year and I was walking around for at least 30mins with my backpack, sweating like a leg of jambon in this heat at 5pm and cursing like a mad woman after being turned away from the full 2 and 3-star hotels. 
Pissed and hungry, I checked into Le Grimaldi, a 4-star joint (95 euros) and was ecstatic at the last available single room (MTV and BBC!) and free internet access (that's why I could write so much now). After a fag and shower, I took a stroll down the familiar broad beachfront walkway (yes, the titties were still on display on the pebbled beach and no, I didn't run into Henry the dirty old Frenchman who once approached us to say he liked Asian women for their clean bodies and nice small tits!) and enjoyed a big plate of spaghetti fruits de mer with my beer (16 euros) at a packed Italian restaurant located at the busy France Rue Massena avenue. These 3 French teenage girls were staring at my meal while they shared their thin pizzas and water.
It had been a whole week already on my own but it felt like a f%cking eternity! I was getting the hang of being Carl Solo, except at times when I was down, I'd get so lonely I could cry. Then I would puff up my shoulders and remind myself to savour every moment on this 'amazing race' where I'd pull through the detours and pitstops to arrive at my destinations. This would be one self-discovery journey that I won't get eliminated because I got to set the rules!
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