MonteCarlo aka Monaco

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We woke up around 9am to catch free breakfast at the hostel. It was a breakfast consisting of toasted baguettes, jam/marmalade, and coffee. But the coffee was sooo delicious because it was actually real American brewed coffee...with cream, sugar cubes, and all the fixings! I had to two cups just because I could.

After our nice carb breakfast, we caught the bus to MonteCarlo, which is also Monaco. It ended up being a nightmare of a bus ride, complete with nausea and clasutrophobia. It took us almost an hour to get there, which seemed like forever, and we decided that we were definitely taking the train on the way back. After we had recovered from the bus ride, it was time to check out Monaco! We walked around and window shopped in some of the more expensive name brand stores. We gawked at $10,000 dresses and even more expensive jewelry. And we also set foot into the world famous MonteCarlo Casino....but that was pretty much all we could afford.

We decided to leave the casino and try to see something a little bit more affordable. So after getting lost a few times, making a stop at the grocery, and wandering around for a while, we eventually landed at the Jacque Costeau Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium. This was definitely the highlight of my day! I loooove aquariums! Here fishie fishie fishie....We all had a pretty good time here checking out all the fish, and looking at some cool fossils in the museum. Best of all, I bought my very own compass on a caribeaner! I know, it's dorky, but it came in handy on the rest of the trip!

We finished at the museum around 6pm and decided that we were done with Monaco. We headed back to Nice on the train, and rested up for our big night on the town to celebrate Ly's birthday! We left our hostel around 10pm thinking that we could grab a nice dinner, get gelato, and then go out. What ended up happening was most restaurants were closed, the city was completely dead, and we were very very very close to celebrating Ly's birthday at the golden arches...I kid you not. Fortunately, we decided to push on a little further and finally settled on a brasserie that was a little expensive but had nice portions and friendly servers (not easy to come by in France). We shared a nice dinner of pasta and salad, despite bigass salt pellets that kept showing up in our food. We even got a whole carafe of wine, since wine here seems to be cheaper than water or soda.

Dinner was followed by of course, gelato! It was only mildly tainted by the fact that our server was a big fat jerk. I came really really close to punching him out but decided that it was unladylike. Whatever, I just walked away and enjoyed my gelato. Yum nocciola! (hazelnut)

When we were completely full to the brim, we walked over to Waynes' place hoping to find some Bingo. Unfortunately, we were too late for Bingo but we did make it in time to see the live band. Reminded me of a combination btw McGillans and Finnigans Wake. Either way it was fun, and we got Ly drunk...mission accomplished.

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Comments

[Ly]

this is a very flattering bday pic of me, thank you.