If it's Tuesday, it must be France

We were able to have breakfast in the Vista dining room, instead of the Lido buffet line. We may not be able to do this every day of the week, but it’s good when we can avoid the Lido. Our table companions were two other couples – one from the Netherlands, the other from Austrailia – the same Austrailian couple from last night's dinner. All very nice people, and way more traveled than we are.

This was our first experience with taking a tender to shore – the ship was anchored in the middle of the bay in front of Cannes. We needed to make the transition from “Buenos dias!” to “Bon jour!”. We were instructed to wait in the Vista lounge, so off we went - to wait. There was this huge line at the stage, so Andy went off to investigate. It was just a line to buy water. We had the bottle we bought in in Barcelona, and have been refilling ever since.

The travel guide person, Leann, gave last minute instructions – like, if you want to go to the casino on Monty Carlo, you needed to be dressed nicely (wasn’t it a bit late for that info?).

The Monte Carlo excursion was called up first. Twenty minutes later, we were still waiting. The Monte Carlo excursion was rather popular, apparently.

Finally it was our turn, and we decended into the bobbing boat. Good thing there were ship staff members available to help me onto the tender and then off on the other side. After a bit of confusion in the bus parking lot, we found our bus for the day. Our tour guide’s name was Cecilia, and she was wonderful. Turned out, she made the day for us - she was hilarious. We were able to grab the seats right in front.

The bus ride to Eze (pronounced “Ehzz”) took about an hour - it was slow going through Cannes (pronounced “Cahn”). Eze is a typical French Riviera village, built right into the mountain. Once we got there, the #1 priorty of course was to find a bathroom. Cecilia recommended to always pay for bathroom access in France, because that meant it would be clean. Yummy.

This excursion had been rated “strenuous” – all because of the steep walk up to the top of Eze. There is only one flat spot in Eze, where the public water fountain is located. Cecilia explained that all the little streets of Eze were actually donkey trails, and the flat place is where the donkeys got to rest and get some water.

We decided to follow Cecilia alllll the way to the top of the fortress to the "Exotic Garden" – well worth the climb, as the view was just spectacular. We had a little free time till we had to meet everybody at the bus, but not much. We did manage to buy a placemat with this beautiful design on it by a local artist. If we’d had another 30 minutes, we probably would have bought some of her paintings, but considering how far we had to go to get back to the bus, we couldn’t stop for long.

Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough to claim our front seats again – a rude couple was there first, violating the informal rule of “take the same seats you had before”. It was very annoying.

When we got to Nice, Cecilia showed us a little bit of the old town, and then we were on our own. We had lunch in a random restaurant. We both had crepes – I thought might was great (chicken with gruyere cheese and mushrooms), but Andy wasn’t so excited about his – basically a cheesburger in a crepe. We noted that the wait staff wasn’t particularly friendly or welcoming and not excited at Andy’s poor attempts to order our food in French. Hmm.

Wandering around Nice, it took us a while to find the shops we had seen with Cecelia leading the way. By the time we did find them, there wasn’t much time left, so we had just a brief look and then headed back to the meeting spot.

We both kept dozing off on the way back to Cannes. We decided to wander around Cannes for a bit, as tired as we were. Once again, the #1 priority was to find a bathroom. This time, it was not so easy. We walked in a park along the shore, but saw nothing. We saw the bus terminal, and since bus terminals usually have public bathrooms, we went in. Andy once again tried to use his French to ask the person behind the desk if there was a bathroom – she looked at him like he was a Martian, and then blurted , “Non.” Not, “Sorry, no, we don’t have one here, but there’s a public one in the park”, just “Non.” And then she turned back to her work. Ok then.

Finally found the public “WC” – one that automatically washes itself when you’re done. But it wanted 50 cents – either as a 50 cent coin or two 25 cent coins. And we didn’t have that. We would need to break a bill by buying something. But where?

We saw a McDonald’s and I thought that would be the solution, anyway - everyone knows you can just walk into a McDonald's to use the bathroom – but there was a sign on the bathroom door: "Access code for the bathroom will be printed on your receipt", which meant you had to buy something. And the lines were endlessly long with a zillion enthusiastic teenagers. Never mind that idea.

So we bought ice cream from a street vendor – once again, no “how are you, here’s your ice cream, thank you for coming”. Just handed us our cones in silence. Our change came in 1 euro coins, which meant we had to break one of those into 2 50 cent pieces. Once again, Andy tried to communicate to the vendor, and she just stared at him. Suddenly she blurted, “Fifties?” and we said, “YES!”. Of course, it was obvious she clearly understood what he wanted the entire time he was struggling to explain himself, but she did nothing to help him along. Arg.

So back to the public WC – and now there was a line! The WC displays its status and very politely asks you to wait while it cleans itself. This bathroom is way more polite than the people we met. Finally! It’s my turn. Better than a port-o-potty, but not by much. No toilet paper, no soap to wash my hands – but there was a sink. And everything surface was soaking wet. So much for self-drying. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

We wandered around for a bit, but it was quite obvious we are in the wrong demographic for Cannes – swarms of teenagers everywhere, and all the shops had merchandise aimed just for them. Eventually, we gave up and started walking back to the tender port.

At the end of the day:

Eze – two thumbs up, very interesting, very beautiful.

Nice – one thumb up (me), one thumb down (Andy). I think Nice would be better if we had more time to explore the city beyond the shore line.

Cannes: two thumbs down. Snobby home of the ridiculously wealthy and their obscenely huge yachts. And we're seriously in the wrong demographic for the shops.

At dinner, we once again saw the perplexing disorganization that was so untypical of last year’s cruise. We had to wait 30 minutes for dinner, something that never happened last year. When we came back when our buzzer went off, the line was even longer. They sat us at a table for 8, and we sat there by ourselves for 10 minutes – we saw a family standing there, but they weren’t seated, which was really weird. And they didn’t look happy. They disappeared, then suddenly resurfaced 10 minutes later and were seated at our table. None of us knew what the heck was going on.

A young couple with their 3 year old were added to our table a few minutes after that. Everybody was very nice – it was a pleasure to have conversation with people who were not in their 70’s or 80’s, like last year's cruise. The young couple with the 3 year old live in Woodbridge, VA. The other family come from San Francisco. Everyone had noticed how the French had lived up to their stereotype of being totally unfriendly and borderline hostile to tourists. I guess France doesn’t need tourists’ money.

Dinner took forever - the 3 year old’s dinner didn’t show up till almost 9:00!

We barely made it to the 10:00 show – seemed to me the singers and dancers are better this year than last year. When the show was over, we headed straight for our room, since we have an early start the next morning.

Tuesday’s towel animal – a stingray.

Wednesday’s agenda – stop #1 in Italy, which includes Portofino.