We awoke and had a very meager breakfast in the courtyard that is in back of our building. It was a sort of garden, with pieces of modern art displayed here and there. We then made our way to the train station. We arrived early, so Phyllis and I went back into town a bit to browse some stores before returning to the station, getting some food, and then boarding our train.

The first leg of the trip was across the width of Italy, to Ventemiglia. There, we changed trains and boarded a regional commuter train into France and along the Cote d’Azur to Cannes. We arrived at around 8, and foolishly I had neglected to get a map to our hotel while I still had wifi. What’s more, the station where we got off was sort of in the middle of nowhere, with a beach on one side and a street on the other.

I asked a “Mister Pizza” delivery guy for directions, but he spoke no English and I could not make out what he was saying, other than that it seemed he was saying that it was a long walk. We walked down the street a stretch, and I was able to call the hotel to confirm that we would need a taxi to get there. So we stopped at a pasta retaurant for dinner, which was excellent, and then asked the waitress to call us a cab, which took us to the hotel.

We had hoped that the hotel would be close to the beach, but it turned out to be pretty far inland, and we were further discouraged because the room turned out not to be as nice as we had hoped. Still, it had everything that we needed, and we set things down and turned in for the night.