In Menton: Day Trip to Nice (by train)

June 27, 2025

We decided to take the (air-conditioned) train into Nice to check out Café du Cycliste and have a look around the city. It was going to be too hot to do much of anything so we thought we’d go for coffee and perhaps splurge on a souvenir.

Accordingly, after breakfast we walked to the Menton station and took an almost-empty train to Nice Riquier, followed by a walk through a gritty part of Nice to the port. At Café du Cyclist we had the best (and most expensive) coffee of the trip and browsed around the store. We both left with new jerseys. I wasn’t planning to buy one but… I really like the one I got, though I would have been happy with the one I saw at the bike shop in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. Ifonly it had been available in women’s sizes, especially since it was half the price. One thing about Café du Cycliste—they make pretty well everything for both genders (with the same design name too).

On the train. I thought the labelling in four languages was great but I’m easily amused.

Café du Cycliste flagship store, facing Port Lympia, the old port of Nice.

Afterward, we walked an inland, mostly shaded, route to Old Nice, stopping for a nice lunch at Colita along the way.

First course: grilled vegetables with burrata

Main course: filet de Saint-Pierre (John Dory) for me and magret de canard for Al. Both were excellent!

No pic of dessert—we both ordered a strawberry something and we disappeared them very quickly.

I love this style of architecture! Restaurant Colita is just to the right.

Nice old town was full of restaurants and tourist shops and people, rather like our corner of Menton. We made our way to the waterfront where the start/transition/finish zones for Sunday’s Ironman event were being set up. Our route to our airport hotel will take us past this so we wanted to see how it might be. We think it will be just fine.

In Nice. Too bad it’s no longer an umbrella shop.

We continued walking around the waterfront, now with a light breeze and the sun less intense than it had been, and past the port to the station.

Agapè, by Andrea Roggi, on Quai des États-Unis

Giant macramé sea urchin on Promenade des Anglais, part of Nice Biennale

We had some discussion about which track the eastbound train would be on; we thought the further track since most eastbound trains seemed to be on it, but the one working screen in the station seemed to say otherwise. Then perhaps it was updated… Somewhere in this we got our tickets out of our wallets to see if they needed to be validated (we had forgotten this step this morning and couldn’t see where now) and then put them back in our pockets. We put our wallets back and zipped the pockets—or at least Al is very sure he did.

Forty minutes later, as we got off the train in Menton, he realized that his pocket zipper was open and his wallet not there. Nor was it in any other pocket or in the backpack. Damn! What a mood-killer!

We went into the ticket office and an agent showed him how to report the loss online but didn’t offer any hope. He locked his cards and we got on a train back to Nice (our tickets didn’t specify a train and hadn’t been checked). At Nice Riquier, we spoke to an agent who said that pickpocketing was “very bad” here in the summer. We checked around the garbage cans at the station in case the thief had taken the cash and discarded the rest nearby, but no luck.

I’ll add that we thought zipped pockets were secure enough and I’ve never seen him leave his pockets unzipped. Also, there were many more people travelling mid-afternoon than there had been in the morning.

So we got on yet another train to go back to Menton and lick our wounds.

Very good pizza at Salento Express for dinner, right below our apartment.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0