Hadleigh Parkes column: Sun, seafood and super yachts in Nice

In the second of his Six Nations columns, Wales centre Hadleigh Parkes talks about sunshine, seafood, super yachts and the small matter of Rome.

The sun's out, it's February, but we're in shorts and T-shirts and the boys are getting a chance to work on their tans!

Obviously we're here to work, but it's been great to get out to Nice for our training camp this week.

With the year we've got coming up with the World Cup, it's a tour mentality. In six months or so, those fortunate enough to get picked are going to be away from home for eight weeks, all being well.

So this is just preparing everyone to know what it's like to be involved with something like that.

This is my first time in Nice. It's just good to have a look around and try the local cuisine. I went to a lovely seafood restaurant the other night and had some lobster linguine, which was huge, and some mussels.

Samson Lee is a big mussel man. He gave me the recommendation having been there for lunch. He almost ate all of them as well!

Gareth Anscombe, Gareth Davies and I rented some bikes and went for a ride to the port, where we saw some super yachts - one was worth £250m.

We tried to get Sanjay [Liam Williams] to come along with us, but his bike was speaking French to him [via an automated voice] the whole time, so we couldn't get him connected. Maybe we'll get scooters next time!

Obviously we know we're here to do a job ultimately and we want to be two wins from two. If we do that, we'll put ourselves in a great position.

It's nice to relax, and the coaches let you be your own man in your downtime, there's a lot of trust there. It's nice to have that.

Hadleigh Parkes' kick led to George North's first try against France

Training is hard work, but it's always a bit easier after a victory, and it was great to get off to a winning start against France on Friday night.

There's a lot of character in this squad. To come back from 16-0 down, you need a bit of luck on your side, and fortunately that happened to us.

I think it's a matter of belief. If you control what you can control and believe in what you're doing, there's no reason why you can't achieve what you set out to do.

Traditionally, Wales don't do too well in the first match of the Six Nations, apart from last year when we had a great win against Scotland. So it's great to get off to such a good start with a win on the road.

There was a big feeling of relief. We've played our 'get out of jail free' card now.

It's an old cliche, but it was a game of two halves and, fortunately for us, we managed to score more points in our half.

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We finished really late on Friday. We had the usual function after the match and after getting back to the stadium, it was about 3am by the time we got to bed. And then at 10:30 we were on the bus to the airport to fly down to Nice.

It was pouring down here on Saturday, but since then it's been beautiful.

We went in the sea on Sunday morning, and had a good recovery.

It's just a lovely place to be, it breaks up an eight-week campaign and it's on the way to Rome too, so we're not going backwards and forwards with our travel.

You can't complain. We're here, having a coffee, sat in the sunshine in February.

Hadleigh Parkes made his Wales debut against South Africa in 2017

Club sides do these kind of trips at the start of the season. With the Scarlets, we go to Tenby because we don't like to spend too much money.

Some teams go to Portugal, Spain or France, building camaraderie.

For the first couple of days here we had lunch out, coffee out, which is nice. You do that at the start of the week and by the end of the week you get back to normality.

Andre [Moore, the Welsh Rugby Union's chef] is a superb cook, so luckily he travels everywhere with us. It's top-quality food.

Last week was my first column for BBC Sport Wales, and there were a few comments from a few of the boys in the squad.

So when we were on the way to training one day, they got me to go down to the front of the bus and read out bits of it. The boys got stuck into me, but it was all friendly banter.

I only got about halfway through before they'd had enough, which was good because I wasn't up there too long.

There's a good feeling around the squad at the moment. We have a joke of the day - Jake Ball, Ryan Elias, Elliott Dee are on that, but haven't really delivered any good jokes yet.

There have been some poor ones, and I don't think I can repeat them here.

Hadleigh Parkes had his stag do in Washington after Wales beat South Africa on the 2018 summer tour

We're preparing for Saturday's match against Italy now, and I've never been to Rome so that's exciting.

I'm actually going to stay there with my parents for a couple of extra days because it's a fallow week afterwards and we'll have Monday and Tuesday off.

So we'll check out the Vatican, the Colosseum and all those kind of things. I'm really looking forward to it.

The game should be a great occasion. The Welsh support in Paris was amazing and hopefully we'll have another big contingent in Rome.

It's great that my parents will be out there. Sometimes I can even hear my dad during games.

He's got a very loud whistle, which is usually for the dogs on their farm in New Zealand, telling them to do some work - because they are quite useless to be honest!

He's always done it, whistled at games. He'll do it and then I'll give him a nod and I'll see him give me the thumbs up. It's quite a cool little thing that he does.