More Sea and Sand

No, that sea and sand is not in Amsterdam, although other than the last couple days it has been extraordinarily sunny and warm here! John had to go do some work in Nice, France Monday and Tuesday a week ago (awww, poor John). Since Erin’s work schedule is relatively flexible she got to go with him! Sun and sand in the French Riviera – what more could you want?

Our flight left incredibly early Sunday morning: before 7a.m. In order to save some time, or so we thought, John checked in online Saturday afternoon and printed out our boarding passes so all we had to do at the airport was check our one bag. When we arrived at the correct desk row to check in, the first two desks were open for those who had already printed their boarding passes and the next 5 desks or so were for customers who still needed to check-in and get their boarding passes. The first two rows had about 10 people each in line while the remaining desks were totally empty. John decided to just go over to one of the free desks. Surely they could check our luggage for us. Nope. Even though this guy was doing absolutely nothing at his desk, he pointed to the two long lines and instructed us, “You already have your boarding pass. You need to go wait in those lines.” John argued that printing out your boarding pass is supposed to make things go faster and pointed out that this guy had no one else in line, no one was coming, and surely he could check our bag. Nope. So we went over to the lines and waited. Sure enough, not 5 minutes later one of the ladies at an empty desk starting calling people from our line over to be checked in! We ended up only having to wait a few minutes after all! John took a picture that you can see on our flickr site to document this phenomenon.

Since we got to Nice around 8:45 a.m. and didn’t leave until 9:40 p.m. Tuesday evening, we had pretty much 3 full days in Nice. (Although John had to spend two of those days in an office – with a really great view of the Mediterranean). Sunday we both got to explore the city of Nice and swim in the ocean. The other days Erin occupied herself with more sightseeing, some shopping, and entire day of lying on the beach, reading, and swimming. It was great! Just down the street from our hotel was a shopping center called Cap 3000. When Erin ventured into the mall on Monday she decided that must be the name because there had to be about 3000 stores in the place! Neither of us has seen a real shopping mall since our trip to California at the beginning of the year, and this one was really larger than most shopping malls Erin has seen in the U.S.! Other than the fact that everyone was speaking French, Erin felt a little bit like she was back in the States.

Interesting fact: Nice has rocky beaches – no sand. The title of this blog is not a complete lie because our hotel had its own private beach, where Erin spent one of her days, and this beach did indeed have sand.

Another tidbit: If a hotel charges €18 for one person to eat breakfast, it probably is not really worth €18, or even €8 for that matter.

Yet more useless information: Transavia, the discount airline we flew to Nice, apparently has as its theme song, “Take a Chance on Me.” Hmmm. Why in the world would an airline choose this as its theme song? (We did, by the way, make it to and from Nice safely with no problems.) We suspect that “Take a Chance on Me” by Abba is the theme song because it is the song playing when entering the plane and we got to hear it at least twice while taxiing into the Amsterdam airport, which, by the way, is about a 38 km. trip after the plane actually lands on the ground. Schiphol has to be the only airport in the world where the plane lands halfway across the country and then drives by way of runways all the way to the terminal. It will always add at least 20 minutes to your travel time. Transavia is not prepared with enough music to last this long on the ground without repeating songs.