Apartment Living--Nice

We did something different in France this time.  We rented an apartment--sight unseen over the internet.  Yeah, I don't think we'll do that again.  This will be a hard blog for me to write as I don't want to come across negative.  Nor do I want to come across snobby.  However, even as I am thinking about the 5 days we spent in Nice, I can feel the pampered American coming out in me.  I am so very spoiled.

This is the description (as told by the owner) of the apartment--in the heart of the pedestrian city, 1 bedroom, air conditioning, washing machine, shower, coffee maker, kitchen utensils, linens, the internet, TV-- close to shopping and restaurants.

This is the description (as told by me) of the apartment--2nd floor apartment 2 doors down from a bar that doesn't close until 3 am, 1 bedroom with hard mattress that slopes, very noisy air conditioner, washing machine/no dryer--can wash 4 items at a time, (very) limited hot water, 20 year old coffee maker (bring your own filters) spotty internet, extremely small (13 in) TV.  And BYOTP--toilet paper.

 The kitchen--the blue door is the refrigerator, no dishwasher but there was s little oven.

 The living room, the arrangement was not good, I was dying to rearrange the whole place.

 Eat in (kind of ) kitchen, the small door held the washing machine, which was about 15 inches wide.

And lastly the bathroom.  The smallest shower ever, with the smallest water heater ever.

And that's probably what started the whole bad attitude thing--we met a woman at the apartment (that we were unable to park near--remember pedestrian area) and unloaded our luggage while my husband was double parked.  He then had to look for a parking garage while I proceeded to follow the barely English speaking lady to the rental.  She showed me where everything was--really not that hard to figure out--and then left.  I liked her, she was nice, however--why didn't I ask her how to work the washing machine?  How could I be so stupid?  We did eventually figure it out, so all was well.  Kind of.  OK, not really.

This apartment was small, really small.  Really, really small.  I soon discovered that there wasn't anywhere to store our luggage, and I wasn't going to put our things in the dusty old chest of drawers.  So that took a while to figure out.  But, that's OK, I was determined to make the best of a badly decorated, super small, noisy apartment.  It was sort of cute--had I decorated it.  I'm sure that 30 years ago all the decor looked fresh and clean.  We unpacked, as best we could, and then realized that there was just one-half of a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.  Only 2 sets of towels and only 3 coffee filters in the kitchen.  It was a Sunday evening, and if you know anything about most of Europe, you know that on Sundays it's pretty much shut down.  We decided that we had better quickly google a map and find a nearby grocery store--and that's when we found out about the poor internet connection.  We took off on foot, found our little store and made the necessary purchases.  I felt settled then--parked, unpacked--toilet paper and coffee filters bought.

We found out later that night about the hard bed and the loud bar.  It's a good thing that my husband and I are seasoned travelers.  We laid in bed that night and were overtook by a laughing attack--with tears rolling down our faces, and our bodies sloping on our small extremely uncomfortable bed, we laughed until the wee hours of the morning.  The next day, not so much.

Since adventure and exploring are our middle names we took off to discover all that Nice had to offer.  We walked the pedestrian streets, took a pedicab tour (totally fun) and that evening walked the famous Promenade des Anglais.  Sightseeing and food improved our moods dramatically.  Until that night when we crawled into that horrible bed.  After another night of sleeplessness, I was ready to check into a hotel and leave the apartment life far behind.  My ever brilliant husband though had a thought--don't we have a pull out sofa sleeper in the living room?  Ummm, yes, yes we do!  There we were at midnight, pulling out a sofa sleeper, praying that somehow, someway it would be more comfy that our bed.  And it was.  Oh, sweet bliss.  We were able to sleep the next 2 nights much more comfortable.  It's funny how much better Nice looked to us once we were well rested.  Call us old farts if you want to, but we need our sleep.  Nice was finally beginning to look nice.