Visiting Nice

We went to Nice yesterday morning. Saturday in the summer is not a good time to take a driving trip. We found this out almost immediately, as the roads were packed with cars driving between lanes, in the bus and bicycle lanes, and every other possible means of getting to the destination a bit faster than the next car.

Our mission was simple -- change our rental car reservation and then go to the Chagall Museum. We had tried to find the Chagall Museum on a previous trip and got hopelessly lost. The first time we tried, we ended up at the Matisse Museum, had an enjoyable visit, got lost on the way home, but eventually made it.

Most streets in Nice are one-way, but they aren't parallel or perpendicular to each other. Just when you think you're headed in the right direction, the street dead-ends. This time we got messed up by a traffic circle. The map showed the road to the museum as being wide and straight, but we immediately encountered a large traffic circle that wasn't shown on the map with no wide/straight street branching off from it. We took our best guess and, once again, ended up hopelessly lost.

We did accomplish getting to the Nice train station. Even though the street signs are confusing and often show the direction to the station going two different ways, it is pretty hard to miss so we found it.

We needed to park our car, so that we could go into the car rental office. There were many open spaces that said they were for a maximum of 10 minutes. Fine, we knew we wouldn't take long.

But, we immediately encountered a new type of parking space. Once you pull the car into the space, a blue triangular bar raises behind your car.

But, Terry didn't pull the car in far enough, so the bar didn't go up. When I got out of the car, a woman in the next car told me to tell Terry to pull the car forward. I told him, but instead of going forward as instructed (this must be a man-thing) he backed up. As soon as the car moved, the blue bar went up and captured the underneath part of the car. As Terry ground the car forward over the bar, it made that awful metal on metal grinding noise that you never want to hear. Eventually he got the car off the triangular blue bar, but the car was trapped inside.

When we were ready to leave, I had to go to an automated machine and pay 1.50 Euro and the little blue bar disappeared and we could pull the car out of the space. But, the bar doesn't wait for long, it will go back up if you don't rush. Just as Terry started to back up, a man to parked his car behind ours, causing a major honking session before Terry wheeled the car out just in time as the blue bar was starting to go back up.

We weren't even perturbed about getting lost on the way back, we were just so happy that the car escaped, unharmed from the blue bar.