Day 12 – Nice, France
Got up at 9 to check out of Hostel Baccarat and into Hostel Mayerbeer. After that, I went to the beach for a few hours, then came back and showered. Listened to some pump me up music and read some stuff online to get [[Venice girl]] out of my head. Got in a really good mood then hit the road, grabbed coffee and a 2gb SD card for 7 euros. Then I got a kebab (my first ever!) and some wine then trekked to Baccarat’s courtyard. A bit of background: Meyerbeer sucked. The only good thing they had were computers that I used to upload some pictures… but besides that… they had no common area and the rooms were all away from the main reception area. It was one of the converted apartment style hostels. It was closer to the beach, and that was about it. I walked into Baccarat like I belonged there and went to the courtyard. I met two more Aussies there (Jason and Jade) who ended up being with Pete and Sam. They came back and we all hung out for a while. They had a burping game called Schwartz! – when someone burped, they called out “Schwartz!” and put their thumb on their forehead. The last person to get their thumb up got slapped in the forehead. After this went on for a while, I introduced the color game. We ended up going to the Old Town, then to the beach. Sam was loose cannon with every shady person he met (since he had a lot of money stolen from him the night before). The whole group skinny dipped in the Mediterranean, then we ended up sitting with a Moroccan on the beach with a guitar (Malik). Same got rough with some guys that were sitting around there… they ended up troubling us for the rest of the night. Sat out and sang with Malik on the beach, and also sang this crazy song the Australians had picked up from some American girl a few days before… it went something like “Arribbityboparouba… [words] … I wish that all the ladies …” It was funny! In the end, Sam got punched in the nose/eye and 3 French/German guys with empty bottles gave chase so we got the hell out of there (It ended with us being on the opposite side of the street, and this coked up 14 year old dealer throwing a bottle at us… but being coked up, he didn’t even get it close… ha).
On the way back to the hostel, I was accosted by my first prostitute on the trip. She started coming after me and talking in French and I was just like “No” and she backed down. [[Compare this to Barcelona later...]] When I got into the main building of the hostel, I saw a rat in the stairwell. It jumped down the middle and I heard it hit the ground and scurry off. When I got to the second floor, I couldn’t get the key to open the door. I gave up after a while and got on the wireless with my iPod, made a post about the situation I was in, then tried the door again. Still no luck, so I went up another flight of stairs hoping I had tried the wrong door. On the next floor, I found a homeless lady sleeping in the stairwell – I think I scared the crap out of her… oops! I went back down and tried the key again – I was starting to get desperate. It was past 3am and I had a 6:30 train to catch! I twisted the key HARD – I thought it was going to break, but then the lock turned and the door opened. Success, I got in! And I went to sleep.