Nice, Côte d'Azur

So here I am under the Osaka Wheel Expocity writing this entry about nice weather Nice, Côte d'Azur way back in May this year. There is nary a cloud blocking the sun in 万博記念公園 so the temperatures in the middle of the day reached a high of about 34 degrees. No wonder everyone in the neighbourhood crowded over into the Expocity mall (huge mall by the way) to escape the heat and enjoy the cool air supplied by the air conditioning. I gets very crowded here with families with kids getting ice-cream, teenagers, retirees and some tourists visiting the Gundam cafe here. Surprisingly I see people riding the ferris wheel (they call it Osaka Wheel).

I flew to Nice, France from Minsk Belarus right after the physics conference was over with Belavia, the national carrier of Belarus. The plane I flew in was one of the smaller jet planes that probably carried about twenty people and the trip took a little bit over five hours. From cold and cloudy Belarus I reach sunny, blue skied Nice on the coast of the Mediterranean sea.

I had planned to stay in Nice for only a night before taking the trip to my next destination Marseille via car sharing BlaBlaCar. It is an interesting concept similar to Airbnb but instead of rooms, you share a car. I paid about 13 euros for the trip of about five hours by car. It took a little longer since there were other passengers travelling to the other cities in between Nice and Marseille, like Cannes.

More about Nice. Let's start with some pictures of the beach.

From the airport to the city center, the road the bus travelled on was beside the beach.
Amazing blue sea and sky!

No reason not to enjoy the sun.

Sun, sea and sand.

More sea from another angle.

I walked of a slope and you here you see rocky shores.

My favourite shot of Nice.

I stayed in a hostel room in the middle of the city. It gets pretty hot in the day but its just more reason for me to go out exploring the city.

Renaissance sculpture of a naked man.

This view is kind of typical to French cities. Cars parked on the sides of the road
and apartment building everywhere, even going up the hill.

The fancy looking TGV station to anywhere you want to go in France.

My bed in the hostel. Not too shabby I'd say.

Sorry I did not try pizza.

Hakusan 白山

The temperature in Osaka has almost reached its summer peak, hovering at about 33 to 37 degrees. Seeking respite from the heat, some of us from the Physics Department took a night bus from Osaka JR station to Kanagawa in the Hokuriku region and then joined other hikers from around Japan to climb Hakusan 白山, one of the three Holy mountains of Japan. The other two being Fujisan and Tateyama.

Source: http://www.kagahakusan.jp/

The night bus started off from the station at 10:30 pm and we reached Kanazawa train station in the early morning at about 5:30am. We each paid 5000 yen for the one way trip. There was still some time for us to get some breakfast and do some last minute shopping for supplies at the ever present 7-11 station store.

We did not expect was the number of people queueing up to get on the bus. It was not any special holiday of season although it was just about a week before the 'celebrated' Mountain day 山の日 public holiday, which happens to be the day I am writing this. One bus was not enough and to my surprise they added another bus in the last minute. We each paid 2200 yen for the two hour trip to the starting point of the hike, Bettoudeai 別当出合.

The welcome rock. Hakusan National Park.

Nature awaits us!

We had no idea.

Our first stop for lunch was at the Jinnosuke Shelter Hut 甚ノ助避難小屋 . We ate our onigiris and various snacks while the other hikers took out their elaborate cooking equipment and boiled hot water for nice hot meals.

Lunch stop

Relieved that most of the difficult part of the journey that day (climbing mountains and hills) was over, we mad our way through fields of wild flowers and harvesting bees and annoying insects to our room for the night. The room fits five and we paid in total about 12000yen.

Other hikers who were going to minamiryugababa 南竜ヶ馬場

We are also on the way.

Can't wait to dip in the stream.

Definitely has the Swiss cottage look.

View from the other side.

Playing with ice cold water in a hot summers day on a mountain!
We are definitely closer to heaven that day.

So peaceful.

View of our shared room.

I've actually skipped a lot of details here. Nobody really reads a long blogpost anyway. Let's talk about what we did very early the next day. We actually woke up at 2:00 am. Had a quick breakfast, packed everything and started our ascent to the mountain peak. We made it a few minutes before the sunrise. Here are the pictures.

My first meeting with a glacier! I'm actually not so sure if I can call it that since its so small.
But it is made of ice, and its on a mountain.

Sun is coming up soon.

Hikers resting and waiting for the final moment.

There are way more hiker behind these.

朝日！Sun rising from the sea of clouds.

More sun pictures.

Just wow.

Someone broke his phone playing Pokemon Go.

The view of Murodo, the other accomodation closer to the mountain peak and the two glaciers.

We started the descent down back to the bus station at the starting point, 別当出合 to catch the first bus back to Kanazawa at 11:30. There are only three buses out from the mountain, 11:30, 13:30 and 15:30. We decided to walk down using another path, which is aptly named 観光新道 as there we saw the flower fields.

Some of the common flowering plants we saw.

Blue bells!

Those are some humongous pines.

魚中にパンが入ってる？パンの中に魚が入ってる？

Amazing right.本当にすごいの風景。

I really like this picture.

People and their phones. Sheesh.

The trip down the mountain was really bad for the knees and ankles. Even a few days after the trip I was feeling the pain and wasn't really able to walk down stairs or slopes. 足がまだまがらない。

We're not in Switzerland. But we might as well have been!

Thanks for the amazing trip!

Here is the link to the accommodations available at Hakusan, http://www.kagahakusan.jp/file/shisetu/etc.html