Day 16: Royal Caribbean Tour #1: Nice & St. Paul de Vence or "Look quick kids! There goes Nice!"

June 2: Ville Franche, France en route to Florence, Italy

(Disclaimer: Blogs for the time being will be photo-free. The wifi on the ship is NOT up to my standards!)

Today was our first of MANY scheduled tours. We didn’t dock but had to be tendered (makes me feel like a cow for some reason) to shore in small boats. The good news: The tiny town of Ville Franche where we dropped anchor was super cute. The bad news: Every single person apparently wanted to get off the ship at the same time…. OH! NOW I really feel like a member of a herd of cattle!

We made our way to our tour group that was to take us to Nice and a cool walled city in the hills called St. Paul de Vence. I should have been tipped off immediately that this would be a challenging experience when the little lady who was our tour leader seemed a bit dingy and giggled after everything she said. I am NOT a big fan of gigglers. The entire experience was so ludicrous that it ended up being funny. (Not too funny of course that I am not busting out a "constructive comment card" on this one!)

Picture this: It is the first excursion for 42 people (yes, I am quite certain it was EXACTLY 42 people as you will see) on what should be an amazing day in France. Madame Giggly (as she will for referred to from here on) stood at the door to the bus and collected our tickets as we ENTERED the bus.  We are all excited and getting sort of restless as the other buses seem to be pulling out before us. M. Giggly is muttering to herself in French and appears confused and agitated. I have snagged a front seat because buses are not my favorite mode of transport given my tendency to vomit. :) Mme. Giggly FINALLY gets on the microphone and says that we have 42 people on the bus but she only has 41 tickets. We can not leave until she gets the 42nd ticket! 

Are you F*$!ing kidding me? She took the damn tickets as we entered. She knows we all paid (a horrific amount I might add!) and WE WANT TO GO NOW! She truly is bewildered as to how to remedy this situation even though we helpfully pointed out to her that each ticket has our name on it. Perhaps she can check them off AS WE DRIVE?????? But noo.... she makes us sit there for 30 minutes while she works out the missing ticket. By now, the FORTY-TWO people are pissed and it just gets better when the bus zips by the coastal town of Nice with a comment, "and this is Nice" from Mme. Giggler. No stopping in Nice. Okay. Let's continue to the walled city. That looked awesome. We spend the trip up to the village listening to her drone on and on and ON AND ON about things that are 1: Not interesting and 2: Difficult to decipher. Yes, I DO know I am in France and they speak french but we all (42 of us!) were on an English speaking tour so, not super helpful when you can barely understand your guide.

And then Giggler passes out to each of us, a little radio thing and an ear bud to wear so we can HEAR HER WHILE WE ARE EXPLORING THE VILLAGE. Um. No thank you. I think I may stab myself in the eye with a fork if I have to listen to her even when I can not see her! As soon as we were out of view, we tossed the little radios into our bags and took off to walk the tiny cobbled streets of St. Paul de Vence. SOOOOO cute! I wish we could have stayed longer but we needed to head back to the bus for our next round of torture. 

We are all back on the bus... well 38 of us are. The last tender boat leaves at 6:00 and we all figured we can spend some time wandering around the little port town Ville Franche before we go back to the ship. (You know this is not going to go as planned right?)

Mme. Giggler tells us we are missing four people. Let me just say that it has been made VERY clear MULTIPLE times that if you miss your meeting time, you find your own way back to the port. We are already 15 minutes past and she will not leave! There are some rumblings from the middle of the bus where Bailey and Matt are sitting with other people that perhaps we need to commandeer the bus. SO, 30 minutes later, as we are now all LITERALLY yelling at her, Giggler sees our missing people coming. The best part of that was that there were FIVE and we ended up taking an extra person back to the port! WTF? The tickets are only important one way? Not like I wanted to sit for another stinking minute in the bus anyway. BUT the REALLY BEST BEST PART was that she got us on the road back so late we were stuck in traffic and road work and made it to the tender at 5:59pm! Super fun! 

Not to end on a negative note, I want to give a shout out to Toby who refused to be brought down by this. He ran from the bus, stripped down to his undies and raced into the Mediterranean for a quick swim! Granted, he was one of the last 10 people to make it onto the ship before it pulled up the anchor but he did it!

Tomorrow we are stopping in Livorno and taking a tour to Florence. I am going to pre-screen our tour guide before I enter the bus. Stay tuned.