Last weekend we visited the beautiful village of Eze following a recommendation from our Auntie Sam and Uncle Howard. In fact, we went on Sammy’s birthday.. We tried to go to Le Turbie, but there is no bus going there and the cost of a taxi was more than hiring our own car for the day! Next time…. Anyway, Eze is a small village which, at the very top, is 429 metres above sea level, overlooking “one of the most beautiful panoramas of the Riviera”. Here at the top, the remains of the old castle and silhouettes of cactus rise up to the sky. The original castle was destroyed by the soldiers of Louis XIV in 1706. Today, there is an ‘Exotic Garden’ made up of several hundreds of luscious plants including aloes, spurges and cactus. ... read more

“Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around…” We have discovered over the course of the past two weekends that there is a lot of truth in the lyrics of this song from Cabaret!..... We have visited the Monaco and the Monte Carlo Casino! Right from the moment you step of the train at Monaco, the money and opulence are evident. The buildings are marvelous, the gardens are all perfectly manicured and the boats in the port are the biggest I’ve ever seen! As for the casino, one of the world’s first major casinos, it is famous for it’s glorious architecture and appearances in many Bond films. Sitting at the adjacent bar, we sure did see many James Bond wanna-be’s and Bond like cars do laps around the circuit! The ... read more

Last Sunday, the 3rd of June, we did a day trip to two of the nearby beach towns with our new friend Lino. What’s great for us is that the lovely Lino has been here a little longer and had a little more time to explore, so he happily became our tour guide for the day and showed us the ropes with catching French buses (much the same as catching Aussie buses really!) Our first stop was Villefranche-Sur-Mer. It’s about 15 minutes from Nice by bus and is a gorgeous little town of about 6,500 people, settled since prehistoric times. It’s got one of the deepest natural harbours of all ports in the Mediterranean sea, reaching 95m deep (as opposed to the Port here in Nice, which is man made). We had coffee by the port ... read more

I think I’m seriously behind by about two weeks in blogs, so before I tell you all about our new place in Nice and our beach visits last Sunday, I’ll back track and tell you about my Fitness Instructor course I just did in London… That’s right, I’m now officially a Level 2 Group Fitness Instructor! I’ve always wanted to teach Les Mills classes at the gym, and in order to do this you must have a fitness qualification… Enter L2 and a trip to London! We’d only just finished travelling when I enrolled so I didn’t have a lot of time to do the pre-study. They recommend 40 days to do the Anatomy and Physiology study before the face-to-face component, but I had only 14 days. Nothing like welcome back to reality hey! Then in ... read more

Well, here we are in Nice! We have been busily setting up life for the summer on the French Riviera for the past few weeks. It was wonderful to say goodbye to our last hotel for a while and move into an apartment finally. The most exciting things were hanging our clothes (I saw the bottom of my bag for the first time in 3 months!), making a home cooked meal and not having to sit through another buffet breakfast!! We have been working our way through the list of every-day things to do and set up, like getting mobile phones, gym memberships and finding places to shop. We are living in the Old Town in Nice, where there is a fresh market right near us that's on every day which is awesome. It's also a ... read more