On the morning of our last full day in France we were very excited to venture a mile offshore from Marseille and visit the infamous fortress (and later prison) Château d'If. The 16th century structure is most famous for being one of the settings of Alexandre Dumas' 'The Count of Monte Cristo'. Walking up to the ticket booth along the harbor, however, we learned that we were lucky enough to have chosen a day with apparently iffy weather out at sea and as a result would not be able to reach the island. Fail. Our next move was clear - eat [View Full Entry]

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As I had mentioned, we literally happened upon a bus that was leaving for Marseille in 1 minute, so in no time we were on our way. The trip itself was uneventful and in perhaps 45 minutes we were dropped off in the city right at the Arc de Triomph - yes, apparently Marseille needed its own. The oldest city in France, Marseille is second population-wise only to Paris. Its port is also the 2nd largest in Europe, so this was certainly going to be a change from little old Aix. Now we were all a bit apprehensive of spending 2 [View Full Entry]

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Our last night in Nice was non-descript aside from an absolutely delicious meal at a little place in the Old Town called 'Le Resto'. I couldn't resist doing the menu, given that for around 20€ I'd get 3 courses, so I started out with some nice crisp bread with an anchovy pate and an olive tapenade for spreading. Both were excellent. For my main dish I opted for the Ravioli Niçoise, choosing to lean a little toward Italy and check out some of Nice's pasta offerings. This dish was incredible - the little pouches of dough almost melted in your mouth [View Full Entry]

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Having allocated a decent amount of time to Nice itself, we decided on the third day to head to the tiny Principality of Monaco or "Principatu de Múnegu" in its native dialect of Ligurian, a western Romance language. At 33,000 people Monaco is the world's most densely populated sovereign country and the second smallest country after the Vatican. It would take maybe an hour to traverse the entire 2 km². It has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi since 1297 - the most famous member of the royal family was undoubtedly Grace Kelly who married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco [View Full Entry]

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The morning of our second full day on the Mediterranean we were once again greeted with a grey haze, but soon beautiful blue skies, white fluffy clouds, and sunshine came through and made for a glorious day. Comme d'habitude, we first set out for our morning café crème and croissant, this time at a different little bakery in the old town. These were just almond croissants, but the warm and creamy almond paste inside left us quite happy. Taking advantage of the sun, we decided we'd head up past the old town to the Tour Bellanda, a mid 19th century tower [View Full Entry]

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A bit after 3am on Saturday the 31st, Halloween morning, we 3 American Palau residents got out of bed and gathered our belongings for the day's journey first to Toulouse, 3 hours away by bus, and then to Nice, another 6 or so hours via train. At a quarter to 5 we met our 4th traveling companion at the bus station and promptly boarded our Novatel shuttle. After a little less than 3 hours of half-sleeping and bobbling our heads every which way in darkness, we arrived in Toulouse. We hadn't anticipated being able to make the 8:17am train and instead [View Full Entry]

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Once arrived in Nice and thoroughly wanting to die from traveling so long, we headed to our hotel 'The Little Palace' just a few blocks from the ocean. I shared a room with Alex and Kelsey while Mike joined his two friends that came in from Paris in the room adjacent. It was a very nice place with one double and one single bed. Starving, we ventured out into town and found a place to share two pots of mussels and fries along with some beers. Pretty tasty, but not overly satisfying, hence a necessary croque brie second course at another [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend marked the annual celebration of the Feast of Saint Ermengol in the Catalonian town of La Seu d'Urgell. It is supposedly documented as the oldest festival in all of Spain! La Seu d'Urgell, despite only having some 13,000 inhabitants, holds many festivals throughout the year and attracts people from throughout Catalonia as well as Andorra. It is also important in that the Bishop of La Seu is one of the Andorran co-princes. Said bishop actually died a few weeks ago, so now there's a new one, but that really isn't relevant. La Seu also was the site of the [View Full Entry]

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My apologies for the lack of update in recent weeks, its just that I haven had anything overly exciting to report, nor have I traveled anywhere fun. Nonetheless Ill attempt to highlight some of the things that have been going on in my Andorran life for the past few weeks. Life in the Palau continues to go very well, and weve all very much adjusted to living here in the Ciutat de Valls. I really look forward to seeing the change in seasons via our wondrous view - theyve forecasted snow for Thursday! Our location really is ideal for getting all [View Full Entry]

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Well after 3 weeks of living in the prison known as Aparthotel Conseller I am finally free from such pleasantries as water being turned off without notice, paying for an internet that worked 1/300th of the time, and breathing in fumes from the construction that never seemed to cease. After some mild trauma with respects to securing a 4th person for our 4 bedroom apartment, Mike, Alex, and I convinced one of the Oxford students to take the 4th spot until she leaves around Christmas. After that...who knows...but for now it works out well money-wise and we are happy as clams. [View Full Entry]

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