Check-out time at the apartment is 10am, so we get up, eat breakfast, and get ready to leave. We drop the key and payment in to the door (they don’t staff it during the winter), and wander around Riomaggiore with our luggage. Unfortunately, it’s drizzling, which dampens our enthusiasm for being outside. We walk up the hill to find the only parking area in town, the castle, and the cathedral. At 11:30, we attempt to go to lunch at the same place as yesterday, but unfortunately they don’t open until 12:00, and our train is at 1:00 with at least a 10-minute walk to the train station. Instead, we walk to the train station where we find another restaurant that opens at noon. We validate the tickets, wait until noon, and then sit down. Unfortunately, the food is more expensive and not as good as the previous day, but oh well.
We have no trouble getting onto the train at 1pm. Unfortunately, we are on the train 4.5 hours until Ventimiglia. It was kind of a long ride. It’s a regional train that stops at many of the towns along the route, but it’s really the only way from Cinque Terre to France. In Ventimiglia, we have 15 minutes for a bathroom break and to find the train to Nice. We get to Nice around 6:30pm and accidentally walk the wrong way out of the train station. After we figure this out 5-10 minutes later, we don’t have too much trouble finding the hotel. We decide to try one of the restaurants in the Rick Steves book for dinner, but when we can’t find it, we start wandering around. About 30 minutes after leaving the hotel, we see this restaurant that looks ok and sit down. It’s the restaurant we had been looking for! We got cassoulet (almost like pot roast simmered in white beans), which was really good.
