At 4:30am I was jolted awake by Viki exclaiming, while we were sleeping in the tent, “I think there’s a dog out there!”. “Please explain – why do you think there’s a dog?”. “It hit my leg!”. After some more probing, it seems like some kind of animal had pushed itself against the tent wall and Viki, in her sleeping bag. It also stole her sock and shoe, which, fortunately, were found a couple meters away the next morning.
We properly arose and had left by 7:50am, excited to get to Nice. Well, particularly excited because Viki convinced us to splurge on a hotel room for the night. Right off the bat we had the toughest part of the day, about 400m of climbing over 30km before reaching our breakfast stop. To save time, we skipped cooking our oatmeal, and just had a croissant, pain au chocolate, coffee, and some handfuls of baguette – each!
We carried on and passed from the Verdon Gorge National Park into the Pre-Alpes National Park, which had a few more hills (around 50-100m each, fortunately all a quite mellow 3% or so). We had a quick stop for lunch of baguette/Brie/tomatoes from the day before, but got right back on the bikes in our race towards Nice, showers, and a room with solid walls to call our own for an evening.
The afternoon flew by. “It was magnificent”, says Viki. We essentially had a 40km downhill – a perfect grade of 3% most of the way, getting us enough speed to not have to pedal, but not so steep as to have to brake very often. It helped being surrounded by mountains, alpine pastures, and a deep gorge lower down. We passed through the small town of Gréolières, where smells of garlic, butter, and cooked meals wafted from an outdoor restaurant filled with people, but we continued on.
Finally, we arrived in Nice, with the last 10km along the promenade by the sea, surrounded by fancy boats, buildings, and wealth. We checked into our hotel room, got our important chores done (showered, washed clothes, started all the electronics charging), and then set off for an evening strolling through Nice’s Old Town, having ice cream (I had 4, Viki 2, of a 6-pack of cornettos from the supermarket), and picking out our dinner (olives, salad, and a can of upscale cassoulet).
We’ve just planned out the route for our next week, expecting to enter Italy tomorrow and spend 6 days getting to Como, on the border with Switzerland.
