V | Ocean & Wheelchairs

27/9/22-29/9/22

Nice is such a beautiful place. This is what I’ve really wanted to see! The old and colourful buildings. The colour of the ocean looks like something off of a painting. The enormous mountains surrounding the city. I fell in love with this place instantly. The atmosphere is great, and to top it off it feels like summer over here with temperatures of about 28 Degrees Celsius. I’ve been having some beautiful swims and sun bathing sessions at the beaches that’s for sure. Naturally I booked another night after only booking one night originally, sadly the second night was at a different hostel that was kind of crappy compared to my original one, but that didn’t matter too much as I had ideas of where I wanted to go around here. 

Of all my travels across France so far, this area is definitely my favourite. It isn’t perfect, but has a whole lot more beauty to offer than the previous places I’ve been to. Even my hostel Villa Saint Exupery Beach was great! The bedrooms were good, the bar and social rooms were very good and actually quite social too. 

It was about 8pm on my first night there and the bar was packed. I thought fuck it, don’t be a shy prick for once, grab a beer, see how you get on and try and meet people. To be honest, this is actually the first time I actually thought properly about being social in gathering areas while Hostelling. I’ve gotten pretty good at attempting to get to know roommates on my trip, some bite and some don’t, that’s fine and expected. But I never bothered to meet people outside of that up until this point. I’ve never been the sort of person who’s been able to rock up to a group of strangers and say “Hi!” with confidence. I picture myself being like Will McKenzie trying hard to fit in with this group of travellers talking amongst themselves, where he just looks terribly awkward and out of place in The Inbetweeners 2 movie. I always came up with the excuse of “you enjoy your own company more” when I’d contemplate doing that. Sure some times I do, but in moments like this where there’s obviously something cool going on, I’m blatantly just trying to bullshit and talk myself out of getting uncomfortable. I’m glad I didn’t listen to my usual excuses for once. 

The first person I met at the bar was a New Zealander! Aside from people who were already living in England or were holidaying over there that I already knew, I hadn’t met another kiwi on this side of the world before. Which is crazy to think, apparently there’s so many of us around these parts of the world. I was watching these people play beer-pong along this massive table. This guy comes up to me and asks if I wanted to have a go, and I said sure. I thought he sounded like a kiwi when he spoke and looked like either an Islander or maybe even a Maori. He asked where I was from as he wasn’t sure if I was kiwi or Australian. I thought about saying Australian to mess with him and make up a story, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that to someone who was obviously the first kiwi I’ve seen in a long time. For some weird reason I must be unconsciously developing this little twang in my speech over in the UK because even people from back home keep saying I sound Australian some times too. Even though I’m not even in bloody Aussie! Might have to watch Peaky Blinders and listen to Tommy Shelby on repeat to fix that little issue there. 

Calvin and I got on real good, I think we both appreciated that we had that common ground of both being kiwis and we could actually understand each other with our typical kiwi slang and talking. I love talking to the poms back in England - but even they don’t know what I’m on about some times! Calvin is from Auckland and works with the NZ Kiwis Rugby League team which is wild. Anyway, there was this pub crawl event happening at my hostel that he convinced me to sign up for. We met loads of people from all over the world. Canadians, Dutch, German people, you name it. It’s a pretty awesome experience to be apart of something like that. We met these two British girls called Mia and Jasmine on the pub tour. I can’t quite remember what part they were from in England, but anyway we hung out with them a fair bit too. They were bloody hard case. They were quite a bit younger than us and were like these loud, funny and annoying  little sisters or something. Towards the end of the night we got to this bar where me and Calvin weren’t allowed in because we were both wearing shorts. He weaselled his way in eventually because his shorts were pink and funky apparently according to the bloke at the door. “Ah shit, guess my night ends here” I thought to myself. I was about to shoot off back to the hostel before Calvin rushes out of the bar and says I can come in now. Why? Because it turns out the bar owner who wouldn’t let us in is from Otara, New Zealand! Calvin recognised his accent when he got in and that got the ball rolling. Not only that, he brought us over with him to the bar and we all had a shot together! Quite the turn around, being denied entry to being shouted a shot by the bloke who actually owns this bar. This night was awesome, I really enjoyed myself and happy that I made the effort to socialise. 

The next day I went and took a train to Antibes, about half an hour west of Nice. It was a beautiful place too, it had real cool beaches and quite a cute town to it. I mostly just soaked some sun on the beach and explored a bit. Good way to knock off the dust from the day before. I must have been tired, I bought a coffee at this cafe and accidentally walked off without paying for it after I had it. The manager chased after me down the street and started saying all this shit to me that I didn’t understand, then I clicked and realised. My bad mate!

I was guttered because Calvin and I forgot to exchange contact details and I knew he was in Nice for another night too. He was in a hotel rather than a hostel and I had no idea where he was. I searched the web to try and track him down, but no luck. Then out of the blue during the day he started following me on Instagram and contacted me. How the hell did he find me? I couldn’t find him on any social media! Turns out an old work mate of mine Gina, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in like 5 years, she knows Calvin and thought she recognised me in one of his Insta stories and asked him if that was me. Small world!

After Antibes, I pretty much just chilled out at my new hostel and chatted to this bloke from the Netherlands who was travelling via euro-rail. I didn’t realise fully what euro-rail was all about before I got to France. I heard of it before but never really looked in to it. I actually met a few people who were doing it already. It sounds like a very effective way to travel across Europe if you plan on going for a month or more especially. You can literally just buy a pass and you can go anywhere for a reasonable amount of money, it seems pretty worth it. Something to consider for the future. 

Later on Calvin, his cousin “Hooter” and I went out on the piss. To be honest I can’t actually remember Hooters real name, but Calvin said to call him that. At least I think he said Hooter… I’m shocking with names hence why my dumbass writes everything down these days. Hooter was only a young fella, and he’s a Wainuiomata lad. He’s a bloody funny kid, I got told about some funny shit he’s done on their travels. We went to a couple of bars and clubs and during one of them we met this Aussie bloke in his mid 30’s called Robbie. He was a bit of an interesting chap, I think he was pretty horsed when we met him but he had some interesting things to say. He was very Australian, bloody hell it was hard case. Robbie had been cycling across France for the last 28 days which is crazy, he smelt like he did I know that much. He was telling us all about that and all the travels he’s done over the past decade or so. I did think he was a bit strange, but he was definitely a fascinating bloke who’s seen and done some really cool shit. 48 countries he reckons he’s been to which is awesome. He recommends Brazil as his must-go-to which is surprising to hear a bit. He even has a YouTube channel documenting his travels which I’ll have to look through properly at some point. 

Man I’ve got a funny story from this night though. Calvin, Hooter, Robbie and I went inside this club and got amongst the party. At some point in the night, this attractive French girl was sitting at the bar as I was ordering a drink and she started talking to me. Well, I say talking - half the time we used the notes app to actually understand each other. Anyway, we got on good, bought her a drink as well. Then, I asked if she was keen to get up and dance to the karaoke that was going on. She then wrote on the note pad “I’m in a wheelchair.” I thought no you’re bloody not… then I looked down… how did I not notice!? I’m asking someone in a bloody wheelchair to stand up and dance! I didn’t think I was that pissed, but I really had no idea. I apologised to her, walked off in shame and told the boys about it, they laughed because they obviously knew. I just couldn’t figure out how I didn’t see that. We even saw her enter the club earlier in the night, in a bloody wheelchair! She must have thought I was the biggest piece of shit that was having a laugh, asking her to get up from her wheel chair and dance! Hopefully she saw the same funny side of it as we had. Anyway that was a laugh. That was that and the lads and I pretty much just got hammered, ate some good food and said au revoir. 

I met quite a decent amount of people the last couple of days. I’m loving this trip.  It’s a shame I don’t have more money to travel with, I’ll likely only be able to get another week or so in before going back to England. I might consider looking at more Workaways like I’ve been doing in England so I’d save hell of a lot of money while travelling. Something to consider!