I’ve been in Nice before, many years ago. I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was but I remember I got the train from Saint Andre les Alpes to Nice and it took about 2 and a half hours. I want to do the same journey again on the assumption that the place is covered in snow.

Nice wasn’t my first choice of holiday location but it turned out to be difficult to get flights home from Fuerteventura. I chose Nice on the grounds that there was some chance the sun might be shining here; so far I’ve drawn a blank on this.

Nice…is an interesting mix. There are some very, very rich people around; it’s not that far from Cannes and Monaco but it also has the greatest number of homeless people on the streets I’ve ever seen. I remember once reading that California drew a lot of the homeless in America because the climate was such that they were less likely to die of extreme weather; I heard the same about the south of Portugal as well. Maybe it’s true for Nice too in French terms. The place is all done up for Carnival – I remember when the Catholic Church frowned on any partying after Shrove Tuesday but frankly they’re pretty much being told to go to hell. Nice has something like 2-3 weeks of Carnival due to end the end of next week. Right now…however, there are temporary seats and stages all over the place and apparently at around 9 tonight a parade of some discussion will happen. I’ll check it out tomorrow providing it is not raining.

Currently, the place is decorated with a huge Ferris wheel which I don’t remember from the last time I was here (although I must have walked past it) which looks lovely in the dark (even in the rain). I will probably give it a run tomorrow at some point, when it’s not dark though.

So I had ice-cream and Coca-Cola in the Grand Café de Lyon which cost a fortune – seriously 4.60 for the Coke – but which is one of those cultural things you need to do to remind yourself that things can be…worse somewhere else.

No photos yet. Tomorrow maybe.