Nice

For fall break, we decided to tour France and Spain. We didn’t want to overbook our schedule, but we wanted to see as much as possible, so we finally decided upon Nice, Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona as our destination cities. We left Vienna on Thursday night and took an overnight train to Nice. I love overnights because they prevent me from wasting precious daylight hours on a train when I could be experiencing the wonders of a new city or country. Nice is quite a ways from Vienna, however, and so we didn’t arrive there until about noon on Friday. As soon as I stepped off the train, I knew that Nice would be everything that I hoped it would. Nice is very close to the border of Italy, but its architecture and culture are undoubtedly French- I could see an obvious difference as soon as the train crossed the border. The houses in Nice are built along the ocean cliffs. The city is much bigger than I supposed it would be, and it has a decent public transportation system. The temperature was in the sixties, and the warm sun and ocean breezes gave the town a tropical feel. When we arrived, we headed straight for our hostel in order to check in and drop off our bags.
While I was busy checking in, the other six people in our travel group were busy looking at an advertisement for canyoning. When I walked over to them, they told me that we were going. I didn’t believe them for several reasons. First of all, it was expensive, and secondly, I didn’t know what canyoning was. The picture showed a man jumping off a large cliff, and I did not think that looked safe or even fun. We went ahead and reserved our spot on the canyoning trip for the next day, but I remained unconvinced that we would actually go through with it.
We took the train to Monaco, and spent some time in the famous French coastal city where multiple celebrities own multi-million dollar getaway houses. Then we went back to Nice and wandered around the beach and the city streets. Finally, we went back to the hostel where we ate fahitas, and I headed to bed as soon as possible.
The next day, we woke up as early to meet our guide for the canyoning trip. I still did not believe the reality of the situation until I stood in front of our tour guide, a skinny Frenchman whose English was quite poor. The night before, the seven of us had examined the clothes we had brought with us, and we realized that we did not have the proper attire for the adventure. We had no tennis shoes, no swim suits, no shorts, and no spare t-shirts. Completely desperate, Cari and I raided the hostel’s lost and found bin until we found enough t-shirts and knit pants, which we cut into shorts. Then, we all went to a shed in the back of the hostel and hunted for tennis shoes. Cari wore a pair of much-too-small white keds, Amy found a pair of old man black tennis shoes, and I wore some kid’s skater boy shoes. We climbed into the van with the Frenchman, who was a terrible driver, and we were off. The drive took a little over an hour, and we finally pulled over to a small parking area beside a highway. There, we donned full body wetsuits and helmets. I still didn’t know what canyoning was at this point, and I began to get a little nervous, but I knew it was too late to do anything about it.
We started our canyoning experience by repelling down a waterfall. Granted, it wasn’t a huge waterfall, somewhere between twenty and thirty feet, but it looked like fifty from the top. I have repelled multiple times in Colorado, but I have always been belayed. Here, there was no belay- if I chose to let go of the rope, I would fall and that would be the end of that. No one fell, though, and we all came down smiling and laughing.
As our trip wore on, I slowing pieced together a definition for the word “canyoning”. Canyoning when you essentially travel down a river which is in a canyon. The way you travel is by repelling, swimming, jumping off cliffs, and sliding down waterfalls. One recurring problem during the course of our travel was our guide’s inability to speak English and our inability to speak French. He got frustrated and mad at us frequently, as we would jump the wrong way off of a cliff or let go of a rope we were supposed to hold onto. We all made it through safely, but I think our guide was more than a little glad to be rid of us.
My favorite part of the experience was sliding down waterfalls headfirst. These waterfalls were only about six to eight feet, and the stone in the river was smooth and easy to glide over. I also greatly appreciated seeing the beauty of God’s creation and being in nature, something that I haven’t done much since I have been in Europe.
By the time it was over, we were exhausted. I could not believe that we had taken such a risk, because honestly canyoning was not the safest choice of things to do. However, I have learned that you have to do dangerous things every once in a while, or you will never really live. We returned to the hostel and showered, and then we wandered around the beach and ate dinner. We caught an overnight train that night, and at eight a.m. the next morning, we woke up in Paris.