Nous arrivons!

Well, it seemed to take ages to come around, but 20th September 2008 finally appeared on the calendar.It was time to make for Gatwick and EZY5067 to Nice.

Catherine having managed to remember she was giving us a lift, we arrived in plenty of time, checked in straight away and went straight through security. All good stuff. In fact, it was only a short while later when Carol came to me looking very worried. She had just been to the loo so I was quite concerned - what had she found?

"It's not right" she said, "Everything's clean, people are smiling, there are no queues". I started to agree - this wasn't airport travel as we know it Jim.

Good old EasyJet, though, saved the day! The flight was 30 minutes late and there had been no information on why. Hence, I had a crick in my neck from continually turning round to see if they'd called for boarding yet. To be fair, though, we had a painless flight and were only 10 minutes late arriving in the beautiful south (isn't there a pop group there?) of France.

We were met outside the airport by our landlord - M Olivier Bonnet - who was just great. He spoke Franglais almost as well as us! All joking apart, he is lovely and was really concerned to ensure we have a great holiday. Rather took the wind out of his sails when we told him we'd spent 10 days in Nice last year - he couldn't give us the tour guide spiel!

However, we got to the apartment without further ado and whew! what an apartment. It's approached down a rather dingy corridor but, once inside.......

We have a full kitchen including dishwasher, a through lounge/diner with 2 terraces outside, a bathroom, dressing room (fitted out in red cedar!) and a comfortable bedroom. All kitted out with an eclectic mix of, well, junk - very classy junk it must be said.

Having got our bearings, we set out to do our first provisioning trip using the recommended local shops. The boulangerie was great and, whilst there, Carol discovered appolines - horns of puff pastry conaining high calorie cream filling - fantastic! They're going to need to up production of these while we're in town!

The supermarche, ED, was cramped and busy - but had everything we needed this time. We just couldn't figure the system - we were queuing for nearly 30 minutes! We will study and learn!

After a very short sit down, we headed into la vieille ville of Nice for dinner - at le restaurant de Gesus. Pissaladiere to start for us both then daube for Carol and gnocchi for me. Great.

We got chatting with a canadian couple at the next table - they'd come all this way without a guide book! Hmmm.

Anyway, more tomorrow - it's bed time.

Au revoir!