Mediterranean cruise and European adventure - Day 6 - Villefranche (Nice)

Villefranche-Sur-Mer (Nice)

This morning we had a little more relaxed timeline. I woke up first and went up to decks 9 and 10 to see the city of Villefranche-Sur-Mer. I took a few photos and took in the view from the little bay where we had dropped anchor. I came back to the room and everyone else got up and we all went and ate breakfast in Cabanas. After breakfast, we collected our items from the room and just as we were doing so, a little after 9, they announced that they had moved to open tenders. Prior to that, if you wanted to leave the ship you had to go to the movie theatre to get a ticket for the tender boat. Priority was given to Disney excursions and so once they had a break in excursions, the would collect those with tickets from the theatre and take them down to the tender boats to go ashore. But since it was now open tender, we could proceed directly to a boat on deck 1 aft or forward. We went forward and there was no boat so they sent us aft.



Once ashore in Villefranche, we made the walk to the bus stop. It wasn’t far, but it was a fairly steep climb at points. As soon as we arrived at the bus stop, bus number 81 arrived (which was one of two buses we could have taken to Nice, the other being the 100 bus). We got onboard and I only had a 20 Euro bill. The driver seemed annoyed, but gave me change back and our tickets and off we went.




(That's not a backdrop, there was a photographer at the tender dock.)

The drive to Nice wasn’t long, maybe 10-15 minutes and we got off at the end of the line and then tried to figure out where the tram picked up (tram being their version of light trail that travels in a U shape around the city). We should have gotten off at the second to last stop because that’s basically where we ended up going to get the tram. On the tram weren’t able to get off at the stop we needed for where we wanted to go, so we got off the tram and continued on foot, soon discovering the reason for shortened tram route. They were setting up for some huge music festival and due to this, we weren’t able to enter Promenade du Paillon at all. This was disappointing as spending some time strolling in this large park was one of the main things we were going to enjoy.



We made a detour around the outer edge of the park down toward the ocean to find the small tourist train that picks up at the base of the park to find…nothing. So we looked around a bit and I finally called the phone number on their website only to find that they were meeting elsewhere, presumably due to the music festival. The new location was, of course back up near where we had walked from tram stop where we got off. There just hadn’t been a train there at that time so we didn’t see it. We began the walk back, but took the other way around the park this time and found a cute little double decker carousel. I had found mention of it online during my research for things to do in Nice and I had been hoping to find it, but it had been an old article and hadn’t seen any recent reports of the carousel. So we stopped and Emmaline took a ride.




After the carousel ride, we arrived at the real location for the tourist train in time to take the 11 AM train (they run every 30 minutes). The train is about a 40 minute ride around the city with a 10 minute stop at the very top a big hill that overlooks all of Nice. We had time to look around, buy a postcard and Emmaline took some photos with some birds a man had at the top. There was also a gentleman up there playing top hits on an accordion. When we arrived he was squeezing away to the tune of “Uptown Funk.”







After the tourist train returned, we hunted down the lunch spot I had selected for us in my research, Femme du Boulanger, which I described in my notes as, “a French cafe serving breads with stuff on top.” And that’s pretty much what we had and mine was amazing. Mine was a large piece of toast with some deliciously seasoned and sauced mushrooms topped with some kind of gooey melted cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. It was served with a salad on the side. Delicious!



After lunch, we did a little shopping and stopped into a patisserie for some dessert. More yum! Then we set off in search of the post office to mail the postcard Emmaline wrote during lunch and Roger wanted to buy some wine. At the post office, I waited in the line only to get to the front of it and find that it was actually a bank counter. So I got into another long line and when I got to the front of the line I found that it was only for packages and I needed to buy a stamp from the automatic machine. I had considered those, but they were all in French and I didn’t know how much a postcard to the US cost. The man, who spoke no English (and I really don’t speak more than a phrase or two of French) seemed to take pity on me and took me over to buy the stamp and off we went.

We met back up with Roger and made our way back to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Villefranche and then the tender back to the ship, arriving back on board around 3. Thinking about our day and our choice for this port, we had a very nice lunch and the little train was cute, but I sort of regret not going to visit the village of Eze (which was another option we had from Villefranche). The other option from Villefranche is Monaco, which I don’t regret not visiting because I wasn’t interested in that at all. Too many choices, not enough time!



Back in the room, we relaxed a bit before Emmaline and I went to the Promenade Lounge for “Cogsworth Countdown” games. Initially we were the only ones who showed up, but eventually some other kids joined in. We had a collection of silly party games we played and Emmaline had a good time. After the games Emmaline and I went up to deck 9 for some snacks (aka ice cream) and then Emmaline went back to Promenade to play a wheel of fortune type game. When that was finished we met Minnie and Mickey in their adorable French outfits. When that was done, we went back to the room where Emmaline watched some Mickey cartoons on the stateroom TV while I worked on typing up my trip report for the first few days of the trip.



Soon it was time for dinner and our first time in the new restaurant, Rapunzel’s Royal Table (which was super fun - the Thugs are fantastic). The prior evening, our head server had noticed me eating a vegetarian dish and asked if I was a vegetarian. He told me he’d have something special prepared for me for this evening. Sure enough, when the entrees came, I had a special Indian curry brought to me. There were two different curries, plus rice and some flatbread (it wasn’t Naan, but more like a tortilla, roti maybe?). It was really delicious and I would receive a new Indian meal every night thereafter!




After dinner, they were showing Tangled: The Musical in the Walt Disney Theatre but we weren’t planning to see it because we saw it already the last time we were on the Magic. But Emmaline wanted to see it again so she went with one of the friends she met onboard. While she was at the show, Roger and I downloaded photos to the computer and I worked a little more on the trip report. Once she returned, we got our things ready for the next day before going to bed.

Click here for Day 7.