Nice Is...Meh.

SO - we woke up at 5:00 (neither of us actually slept much.  we tried to go to bed early so we could get at least 6 hours, but then both of us pretty much just lay there) in order to catch the train.  we got on the train with no trouble, and arrived in nice that afternoon.  turns out nice is significantly warmer than paris, which we discovered walking to our hotel from the train station. 

let me strongly Not-Recommend the quality suites la malmaison in nice.  it is not quality.

we've definitely been spoiled by our hotels so far, and we were only in nice for a one-night stopover, so it wasn't a big deal, but it was not so nice.  dirty and smelled like old smoke and there was some kind of critters in megan's bed biting her legs.  the lady at the front desk was really nice, though, so if you ever go there, tell her i said hi.

we sort of wandered around nice - went and sat by the water a bit, which was nice.  the weather was lovely - very warm and sunny, and we got a good night's sleep, which was our main concern after a mostly-sleepless-night and before a long day full of travel.  so, all things considered it was fine.  i didn't get any sense of the place: we had chosen our hotel because it was close to the train station.  the area we were in felt like a sort of low-end resort town with lots of apartment buildings and hotels and stuff.

anyway - after a few unsatisfying meals we were on our way the next morning.  and by "morning" i mean "eleven-ish".  we went to the counter to buy tickets, and the guy there had the gall to speak mostly french.  imagine.  megan told him a few times we were wanting to get to florence, and he said 'okay' and printed out a bunch of tickets.  when we walked away, we saw they would get us to pisa (about 40 km or something from florence).  i went back and played stupid (not terribly difficult at this point) and he sighed and printed out an itinerary that showed we took two trains to get to pisa, and then the train from pisa to florence was a local train and we couldn't reserve seats.

i have to admit, i'm a bit tired of being the stupid american.  especially since in almost every case, i have lived down to being the stupid american.  it would be so much nicer if these people were just overly judgemental or unfair, but i'm ashamed to say it really does just come down to: i'm in a country where i don't speak the language, and when their english isn't good enough to overcome my lack of french, it creates problems.  it's terrible being the person who's the jerk in the scenario.

all right - i've been trying to find the time to finish this and post it for about two days, and it doesn't seem to be happening, so i'm gonna do a quick wrap-up and hopefully get something wonderful and exciting posted in the next day or so.  :o)

long story slightly shorter - it was a long day of train-ing.  we caught a local train to ventemiglia (sp?), then another train to genova, then a train from there to pisa, then a train from there to florence.  on the sunny side, we caught all of the trains just fine, and arrived safely in florence at about 10:00 at night. our new hotel is fairly frill-less (despite being called 'privilege' - how fabulous is that?) but clean and friendly.  when we went out to get some dinner. we were a little surprised that all the restaurants around us were closed, since there were loads of people out, but we finally found a (terrible) little place and had something to eat before heading to bed around 1.

right.  i'm gonna head out for the day.  i hope life is good with you all, and i'll have loads of exciting florence news to report next time!