Our last day in Nice kicked off this morning by taking the free walking tour offered by the hostel (one of the reasons it's a top 10 hostel) and given that they only run on Wednesday and Friday we couldn't miss the opportunity. The tour ran for a little over an hour and provided a great insight into the history of the area and it's culture. Interestingly it's only been French for about 150yrs after being ruled by Sardinia before that, this Italian influence is still evident as you walk around the "old town".
These old towns were built with narrow streets and tall continuous housing for a specific reason, it meant the streets were in constant shade, providing relief from the summer sun. Also with the combination of street positioning, the cool air below and the hot air above, a breeze is captured through the streets and all the doors have openings above them to allow that breeze into the buildings. There's a small latch on the roof you can open to then let this breeze escape back out, thus sucking the cool air through the houses. Effectively an early model air conditioner.

With the tour over we walked back through the fruit & flower market (the biggest in France) before jumping on the bus bound for Eze, a small medieval village on top of hill overlooking the Mediterranean and French riviera. The narrow ancient streets (pedestrian size only) still exist as they did hundreds of years ago, the whole ancient town is literally built into the side of the cliffs on one side and was once considered a major defensive stronghold for the waring regions of the time. These days it's home to small little shops where local craftsmen sell their goods, not to mention the odd fancy boutique hotel.
With a sporadic bus timetable to get back to Nice we headed for the stop, not wanting to miss the 3:52pm bus as the next one wasn't for another hour. 25mins later we were sipping our espresso's while planning out the next leg of our journey into Italy, La Spezia and the Cinque Terra being our destination for the next couple of nights.

Back at the hostel we spent tonight looking for accommodation to cover next 4 nights, the first step of course is to decide where your going and how long you think you might stay. With Sarah on the iPad and me on the laptop we sat in the beer garden at the hostel and worked at answering all those questions. In the end was set; 2 nights in La Spezia to explore the Cinque Terra before driving up to Verona, the home of the Romeo and Juliet story. With the next 5 nights accommodation now booked (Milan was already done as we had a set date to drop the car off) we retired for the night, a big driving day waited to greet us in the morning.