Wednesday, March 31, 2010

NICE, Monaco and a quick roadtrip through France!

Last weekend I took a little last minute weekend trip to Nice with some of my girlfriends from College of Charlestown. We took the 13 hour overnight train on Thursday night, which wasn't that bad. Against my better judgement I didn't spend the extra 25 euros for the bed and got the "recline-able seat." The seats did indeed recline much father than your average train seat, but so did the seat in front of you. This situation wasn't exactly the most comfortable but totally worth it when we finally got to Nice. The last 2 hours of the train ride were all along the southern coast right on the water, it was gorgeous!
We stayed in this wonderful little bed and breakfast right in the middle of town only 5 minutes from the beach. Our hostess was adorable, a little French woman named Genvieve, and there were some other guests staying there who were also interesting characters. There was a woman Buddist priest named Miao (meow..like the cat) who was bald and doing her Ph D research in education in France. She was one of those people who wouldn't shut up at breakfast so we got her whole life story. She was a bizarre addition to our stay in the Nice needless to say. Our first day in Nice was warm and sunny, no complaints there! We walked down to the beach, and browsed the farmers market and tons of little shops around the city. We returned to these little shops everyday and found something new and great everyday!
While walking along the beach we found TONS of seaglass!! This picture is just a taste..there are 2 pieces in that picture..find them!


We ate lots of gelato!Mine is in the shape of a flower!! Apparently the south coast of France is actually better at cooking Italian than French because the only places to eat were seafood restaurants (which we obviously couldn't afford.. and since I was just recovering from food poisoning from seafood I wasn't really in the mood for it) and Italian restaurants. We had amazing pizza, salads and Italian everything. 


Took a casual 1 euro trip to Monaco for the day! I had no idea that Monaco was its own country! You have to be a whole ton of rich to live there, or stay there, or park your yacht there! The nicest cars I have ever seen were found sitting outside of the Casino Monte Carlo. I didn't even know some of those nice car brands even exisited because they're so expensive they can't even tell people who aren't rich enough to hear about them ;) just kidding! but still, the cars were reallyyy cool and I'm not even a  car person!

Here is a panoramic view of Nice...pretty beautiful.

So leaving Nice was great, Monaco was great...but leaving Nice was the problem. The French looooove to strike, and so naturally when we showed up to the train station on Monday night for our overnight train home, we were notified that there was a strike and no trains would be leaving Nice until Wednesday at 10. Interesting that their strike had a definite beginning and end, not really sure what the point of that is but whatever. Either way, we all had class Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday so we needed to get back to Strasbourg. Luckily we went back to our B&B and our room was still available for the night, and our host looked up alternative routes home for us. Well considering flights back were 400 euro, and buses apparently don't exist, we had no other choice but to rent a car and drive back! It was a stick, so naturally I did none of the driving, but at least it wasn't a super tiny car! Almost all the cars in France are very economical and tinyy! but we fit all four of us very comfortably and hopped on the highway to Strasbourg. Good thing driving to Strasbourg is like driving to Cape Cod, there are road signs starting 300 miles away about which highways to take and which direction to go! It was an easy peasy drive and we made it back in time to go to the free open bar party that night! Not a bad trip ;)

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