My favrouite discovery of the trip so far came when I went down to see if the flea market in Nice - supposedly one of the best in France - was still open on Saturday. Unfortunately I didn't get to Nice until 1:30pm, so I didn't get a chance to see the market in action because it shut down at 1:00pm. Lame! Flea market-less, I poked my nose into all sorts of very expensive antique shops and got some good looks from the shop keepers. A lot of them were elderly and well-dressed, and kind of glared at me down their noses as I checked out their 16th century vases, antique boudoirs, crystal and china. Tired of all that - and worrying that if I broke something I would become and indentured slave for the rest of my life - I headed back to the square to catch the tram. Guess what I found? OLD FRENCH MEN PLAYING CHESS AND SMOKING LIKE CHIMMENIES!
Oh man, I was so excited. I went scurrying over to watch the table nearest to me play a game. The Moroccan man started humming 'dangerous, oooh oh oh oh dangerous!' while he soundly thrashed his opponent, and then sang 'dancing queen' as his victory song. He's the one on the left. I'm not even joking! The guy on the right went through two cigarettes in 10min every game, and lost every time. I sense a correlation: cigarettes make you fail at chess. Logical, no? Mind, I didn't need cigarettes to make me fail at chess. Once the singing Moroccan had beat the smokestack, he insisted I sit down and play with him. Ah... I was awesome at chess... 5 or 6 years ago. Needless to say I was also killed. I took his queen right at the beginning though, it extended my life by no more than 7 minutes.
Yesterday morning I woke up early, swallowed my nutella on French bread and headed to the station on my way to Annecy. Unfortunately all the trains were delayed. Interesting, never seen a late train in Europe. Well, as it turns out the rumour is someone tried to commit suicide on the tracks. Right, that'll stop trains. 9 hours later and after several other train adventures I made it to Annecy. Did you know that if you trip (are tripped?) by someone's suitcase you get stuck under your backpack on the station floor? I'm sure I looked hilarious, I was on my side, completely unable to get up until a nice British fellow lifted my bag off me lol! The girl whose luggage was responsible felt terrible, but we had a good laugh. Please observe the offending bags.
The other adventure took place while I went to catch my late train at the station in Nice. A mother was coming down a busy escalator and somehow tripped and fell at the bottom. She knocked over the French lady behind her, who had a stroller. Not going to lie, all I saw was both women fall and the back of a stroller on a moving escalator and I panicked a little. Usually there are babies in strollers. I dropped my bags and started pulling other luggage out of the way, things kept piling up because the escalator was still moving. Wow could the children of that fallen mother ever scream. No one was injured, there was no blood, their mother was standing up trying to help the French lady back to her feet, but there were people falling on each other which understandably scared the kids. I can't claim that I hit the button that stopped the escalator, or the button that called security, but man am I a good luggage thrower lol! That whole adventure was no more than 10 min total. I was also intensely relieved to see that there was no baby in the stroller, just a lot of broken french bread.
No, I don't know why there was bread in the stroller.
