Train to/from Antibes

 Goodbye Rick Steves.  The tour was officially over after breakfast but since everyone was leaving at different times, we would not see everyone.  Steve hung around the breakfast room to say goodbye.

Yesterday I received a request from our London AirBnB to pay $19 for their cost to the replace the lockbox.  I went ahead and paid, but I did mention to them that I did not believe that the fact that the lockbox was stolen was my fault.  The funny thing was that I got that request a few seconds after I did my review of the AirBnb.  I said that it was great except for the hassles with checking in or out.  I wonder if they were paying me back for giving a less than glowing report.

We met in the lobby at 9:30 am to head out on our adventures.  We had planned to take the train to Antibes to see the Picasso Museum.  The train station was about a 20 minute walk away.  

Huge building close to the train station.

It was a little bit of a challenge to buy the tickets.  But we managed.  

It was a 22 minute train ride with only one stop.  

Once in Antibes we followed Google maps to get to the Picasso Museum.

It was only 8 euros to get in.  

There was a lot to see.  I enjoyed Picasso more than Chagall.  

Next stop was Le Safranier for lunch.  It was a challenge finding it because of the narrow winding streets.

They brought us each a carrot and orange mousse.  

Jeanne ordered the tomato tart

I ordered the fennel salad and we shared.  Sharon and Kris each ordered a white fish salad. I especially liked the tomato tart.  We also shared a nice bottle of Sancerre.

I am enjoying using the Google lens for translating things.  

We took a more direct route back towards the train station.  

But we had to make a slight detour.  We wanted to get to the Mediterranean. 

Kris and I finally got our toe touch in the Mediterranean.

That had been one of my goals but the beaches in Nice are not nice.  They are very rocky.

We saw a ferris wheel.  Yippee.  Jeanne and I could go ride that.  Sharon and Kris were not interested.  This was a nice bookend with the London Eye at the beginning of our trip. 

We got some great views.

Le Nomade sculpture by Catalan/Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa 

Downloaded close-up view.  I guess you can go inside, but we did not know that.

Kris got some pictures of us.

That was fun.  

Then we walked the rest of the way to the train station, Gare d'Antibes. Once we figured out what platform we needed, we only had to wait a few minutes before our train arrived.  It was weird because they did not check our tickets at all for the return trip.  We could have just bought one-way tickets, and I don't think that they would have noticed.   Oh well.  We are honest people.  

Once we got back to Nice we headed towards the hotel but ... You guessed it .. ice cream stop.

We walked the rest of the way to the hotel.  

Steve had told us about the figures up on poles in the main square.  It was called 7 continents.

We were hot and tired and ready for some downtime. 

We had to come up with a dinner plan.  So many restaurants are not open Sunday night.  We ended up going to the hotel restaurant.  It was very nice, L'Horloge.  I tried to make a reservation, but they wanted me to download another app like OpenTable.  I talked to the concierge at the hotel, and she made the 7:30 pm reservation and gave us a 20% discount voucher.  Even with that, it was an expensive meal.  But very tasty.  It also was a very leisurely meal. 

The pre-dinner starter of shrimp with cocktail sauce.  yummy

A delicious rosé wine from Provence.

Appetizer of shrimp, avocado, grapefruit and mushroom salad. A tasty combination.

I had the beef medallions on mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas.  Very delicious.  We all ended out not being able to finish our meals.  Everyone enjoyed what they ordered.  Our waitress was full of ideas of what we should order.

Topped off a little chocolate candy. We each got one. 

Sharon found out that the 7 Continents sculptures were lit up at night, and they were by the same artist who did Le Nomade in Antibes, Jaume Plensa (a Catalan/Spanish artist).  So we walked to the square to get pictures.  Not only are they lit up, but they change colors.  

The title is Conversation à Nice; the changing colors of the figures show the dialogue between the  7 continents. Created in 2007.

We headed back to our rooms.  We needed to get organized since we are going home tomorrow.  Our room has developed a leak in the ceiling but we don't want to report it until we check out.  We did not want to be moved to another room.