Nice on edge

I remember before I left on this trip several people told me to "be safe" and I thought to myself would they have said that 20 years ago or even 5? I'm not sure the world is much more dangerous than it has been, but certainly terrorism has penetrated places once thought to be immune. Of course the goal of any terrorist (and likely the driver of the truck who plowed into people and shot at them in Nice last night) goes deeper than the incident itself. In fact, you can argue that the immediate killings are a secondary goal of a terrorist while the primary goal is to scare the larger population into changing their behavior, beliefs, or actions. I can't control the secondary goal of terrorism, but I have some control over the primary goal. Certainly it makes sense to be vigilant, and not take any unusual risks, but when I think about the purpose of our trip and what these Fallen Heroes buried in Europe went through, having to deal with incidents happening nearby like the one in Nice last night should not stop our trip. I'm not comparing the daily grind of soldiers in war to a few acts of terror on tourists. Both are scary for sure! However, I feel that if these American soldiers could defeat the Axis powers in WW2, then we can stay strong and carry on our trip and its goal in their honor. Having said that, we have taken some precautions for our time in Nice. We will be staying near our Hotel for dinner tonight.

We are off to the Rhone American Cemetery tomorrow which is about 2 hours north of Nice and when we return will also stay fairly close to the Hotel. I do feel bad for the folks who were looking forward to exploring Nice. I have been here twice before so I am really fine with missing out considering what has transpired here. Had we been one day earlier on our trip, its likely some of us would have been in the area when the attack happened. In the end, that's the thing with terrorism and acts of random violence. You don't know when or where its coming, and unless you want to live a miserable life, there is no way to guarantee 100% safety. We are all staying vigilant and playing things as safe as possible. Though we are moving on from Nice shortly, I think we will all be just a little more hyper aware of things for the rest of the trip, even more than we already were coming in. My thoughts are with the victims and their families this evening and I find myself missing my own family just a little bit more tonight. In one week we will be headed home and though the trip has been amazing and I'm glad to complete it as planned, I will be very happy to be home!

Because of the Terror attack, we left Florence much later to give us time to figure out if we would alter our plans or not. Also we are not doing much exploring of Nice, so I have little else to share. I did however take some cool photos during the bus ride here. We rode along the Cinque Terre in Italy and had some amazing views of the Mediterranean.