Nice, France and Monaco

Hey everyone! So not too much is new for me here. I'm unfortunately dealing with a pretty bad cold that I've had for..get this..3 and a half weeks! I can't believe it! I know that it is related to stress, lack of sleep, and more stress..but I just can't seem to shake it! I emailed my relative, Johanna, and told her hello and checked in with her, and only once mentioned I had a little cold. She immediately called her husband, Volker, who is a Cardiologist, and is having him come to my apartment in about 15 minutes to check me out and write a perscription. I am astounded at how hospitable and giving these people are! I have no idea how I will ever repay them. Anyways, over the weekend I traveled to Nice, France with my friends from Minnesota, Katie and Karl, and with a girl we met from Ireland, Cliona. We did blind booking through German Wings and this was the destination that they selected for us! Our plan ride was a breeze. Once we got to our hotel (after loafing over 4 euros for a bus ride!) it turns out the front desk clerk spoke not a word of English and kept yelling at us in French. And on top of this, apparently our reservation was canceled for Friday night! After finally finding a translator and bargaining with the clerk, we paid 5 extra euros and were able to stay at the hotel. One "delightful" feature of this hotel was their WCs...they were actually water closets! You could not sit on the toilet and have the door closed at the same time, so that made for an interesting situation. After we dropped our stuff, we headed out into the city. We didn't have any plan and just decided to walk. Little did I know that we would end up walking about 8 or 9 miles that day! We mozied our way through the Old Town, climbed to an overlook of the town and coastline, visited a Russian-influenced church, and got some great pictures.

One problem we ran into when trying to find food was the lack of authentic French food. Since Nice is so close to Italy, every restaurant was Italian! We settled for an Italian restaurant and called it a night once we were done. The next morning we decided to head to Monaco. The bus fare was only one euro, which still confuses me because the Airport fare was only 30 minutes, while the ride to Monaco was at least an hour, and for one fourth of the price! Anyways, our first destination was the Prince's Palace. We watched the changing of the guards; Katie was convinced that the guards were actually paid actors and didn't really need to guard anything :) We decided to do a Museum/Palace/Aquarium pass for 18 Euro. I was slightly hesitant at first about the cost, but it ended up being totally worth it. The Museum housed many artifacts from the royal family of Monaco. The Palace was very cool; all of the decorations were spectacular, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures. Once done, we headed to the world's largest Aquarium, or at least thats what they called it ;) We ended up spending the next 2-3 hours solely at the Aquarium. It was amazing! So many types of fish and animals that it was very entertaining. Once done, we hopped on a bus and headed to Monte Carlo. Once there, we decided that it was time to gamble! Katie and Cliona both went right at it, Karl didn't gamble at all, and I was lucky and found a ticket on the floor and played a few games with that. We couldn't play any table games like blackjack (those were for the high rollers, and we clearly weren't!) so we just stuck to slots.

Once we finished at the casino (nobody won except Katie came out 6.50 ahead) we decided it was time for dinner. I remember Karl saying "if we don't get food soon I am going to pass out." We knew that was probably when we should eat! We again found an Italian restaurant and had, you guessed it, pizza. The service was so horrible that we ended up giving a 3 Euro tip on a 51 euro check. Needless to say, the French are definitely not known for being friendly, especially to Americans. Our last night in Nice, I got laughed at by our waitress when I attempted to say the French version of the entree, rather than just pointing. Oddly enough, my friends on the exchange program who are French are the nicest people I've ever met! Anyways, we decided to hit up the nice party scene, which we soon found out was very lacking. We went to an over-priced bar, danced a little, and decided to leave. The nice this about Germany is that a lot of American music is played; in France, of course no American music is played ;) We decided no alarms were to be set for the next morning because we all were pretty exhausted. We finally woke up and got ready to go around noon. It was a great, sunny day for the beach! We ordered crepes from a cafe for breakfast. The beach in Nice is all rocks. Its not too uncomfortable to lay on the rocks, but when you want to go swimming its kind of challenging.

The undertow is quite strong and it gets deep really fast so that made it pretty interesting! The water had to be about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which is super warm for a large body of water! We all got a little burnt, which wasn't exactly a bad thing! It was worth being able to have an afternoon in the sun! We headed to a pub to watch the Irish Championship of Gaelic Football. Its a mixture of rugby and soccer, it was pretty cool to watch :) We found a nice place for dinner (with horrible service, of course!) and ate up! We got gelato on the way back to our hotel, which was sure a kick to my tastebuds! We were all exhausted so we watched some John Cusack movie that was dubbed in French (I'm really excited to watch it in English). This pretty much ends my Nice entry. On Monday we just headed to the airport and caught our flight back. I'm awaiting my ever-so-gracious relatives to come give me a check up now. I hope all is well back home! Tschuss!