It was kind of nice to get away from the crowded city and head towards the more open Southern France. The train was really super fast. The climate and geography changed quite a bit as we went further south. Open spaces, dunes and deserts were plentiful. Before Nice we pass by many sea side cites like Marseilles, Toulon and Cannes. The water is beautiful down there. We were also entering a heat wave so man it was hot. The train station in Nice is not so huge so it was easy to navigate and find an Uber. A short ride later we were welcomed by our Airbnb host helper. The place was big and very reasonably priced. The fridge was not very cold and I suspected why. I had planned this place well knowing we would need an air conditioner. It was running full blast in the kitchen living room but barely made a dent in the bed room. As our place faced directly south, the sun beat on our apartments bedroom and kitchen windows hard. Fortunately the kitchen window had a working blind. It was dark when it was down but it made a huge difference. The bedroom blind unfortunately was broken and forcing it only got it about 1/4 of the way. We hit the local super market to purchase tin foil and tape. Putting a layer of reflective tin foil on the outside window made a massive difference. It was better than the working blind actually.
Next I had to fix the fridge. The excessive heat and moisture must have iced up the coiling section. I've seen this before. We had just enough space to store our food outside the fridge and overnight the fridge thawed out. It worked much better as expected. Yay cold beer. We tried our best to walk around and investigate the area but it was just to damn hot. Records were being set all over Europe while we were there. We originally planned Nice for 2 weeks to save money. Our next location was Barcelona Spain and our flight to Iceland was already booked. I looked at the weather and realized we were wasting our time in Southern France with the heat. It's just no fun hiding from the sun all day either in the shadows of buildings or in your air conditioned building. We were also getting very close to hitting our 90 day maximum in the EU. We needed to exit for a few days just in case there were some delays or problems in Iceland.
We decided to cancel our Train to Spain (which was fun to arrange) our Airbnb in Spain and our flight from Spain to Iceland. The best option for us was to take a train North to London UK and explore what looked like saner weather. The time in the UK would not count on our EU time. Cool. Unfortunately this time of the year, many local France people are also escaping from the heat. Our Eurail train tickets were free but the next available train was way out. It meant we would leave France only one day early. So we were stuck in Nice. Oh well. The cost to us was our flight and a portion of the train ticket to Spain. Everything else was refunded. Whatever the cost I did not care. I setup a place to stay in London and another in Edinburgh. Michelle rebooted a flight to Iceland from Edinburgh and we now had the rest of our Nice trip to chill out.
With all the spare time in Nice, I spent time reviewing Keto and fasting videos. I discovered Dr. Jaon Fung from Toronto and his great videos. I was even able to convince Michelle to get into it. Our plan was to start backing off on food in Nice. Eventually we would transition to Keto in the UK. After that we would switch to water fasting in Iceland. Since Iceland is so expensive to eat, we will save big $$$.
Most of the tours in Nice were crazy over priced. I did find a snorkeling tour for not an insane price. I wanted to find the location by foot one day before going. That became a nice walk to the shoreline. We discovered most of the cities inhabitants were actually by the sea in the afternoon and evening enjoying the cooling ocean. We needed to try that out. The snorkeling outfit was great. They were impressed we had experience and some gear. After a short 45 minute tour to a local spot, they dumped us in for about 1 hour. It was really nice in the water. There were not too many bigger fish to see but plenty of interesting rocks and small fish. The spot is popular with dive tours and many other boats. It was a fairly well priced simple day for us.
We found another place to escape the heat. The Musée océanographique de Monaco. https://goo.gl/maps/SDUC85gJs3WBDPT36 The price was right and it was air conditioned. Thank goodness. We finally wised up on our last few evening to head to the beach. The evening was a perfect time to swim. The blazing sun was behind the hills and buildings leaving plenty of great light for a wonderful swim. I wish we had learned this earlier. It would have made Nice much more enjoyable.
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