French Rivera (Nice) and Monaco Days 5-6 Our time spent in Nice was quiet and relaxing, as we arrived on a Saturday night. The first night we were taken around the corner for a group dinner which was quite tasty. We all stopped off at the bottle shop on the way back to the hotel, we all somehow ended up in alex and my room, this was a very small room but one of the only ones with a fridge being the main reason why we ended up there. We passed the time with many different drinking games which taught us [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone, it's been a while since our last blog. Hayley has gone home, and my parents came to visit 2 weeks ago. See the Avignon blog for those pictures. My parents went to Monaco while they were here so I decided I should go for a day. I only spent 3~4 hours there but I saw the Musee d'Oceanographique and got some nice pictures. Enjoy! ps: the casino has a very strict dress code so I could not play any poker :( [View Full Entry]

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So, the morning after the night before. I open one eye around 8.00, understand THAT is not going to happen and roll over for five more minutes. The next time the eye flutters open it is 10.00. OK, I can get going now. The nice thing about seeing everything yesterday is that I do not feel the usual tug to jump out of bed and run around town, camera in hand. Instead, I decide to have an easy morning. I order café au lait from room service, open my window to the beautiful sunshine and sit and write for almost two [View Full Entry]

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The thing about going to bed at 10.00 is that one tends to rise early! I was up before the sun, but no matter. I came out onto the balcony to watch the beginning of the day and to write. How lovely. The hills begin to light up and mist falls. The roosters are actually crowing and I can smell the lavender all around me. What a way to start the day. Then, that pot of fabulous French café au lait arrives and the start reaches perfection. The New Me has really taken over here. I can’t connect to the internet [View Full Entry]

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So we decided to cancel our second night in Nice and try to move onwards to Avignon. On the way, we saw the most densely populated country in the world, and also one of the smallest—Monaco. This is the second microcountry I’ve seen on this trip, and is of course very different than the Vatican. The entire thing is secluded from the world, with mountains around two-thirds of it and the other third on the Mediterranean. And about two thirds of it is hotels, if not more. High-end cars, yachts, etc. are in higher concentration here than anywhere else I’ve seen, [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 5th June: Spent the morning window shopping and 'people watching' along the busy strip adjacent to my hotel before finally settling down for lunch opposite my hotel. I started chatting to a couple from Scotland (photo below) who were sitting next to my table - Michael was an artist and Jeanette a librarian. They were a great couple who had been married for 3 years and Michael had brought Jeanette to Southern France for her 50th birthday. We chatted for almost 2 hours about travel and cultures around the world and I was totally humbled to find that Jeanette had [View Full Entry]

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An early breakfast and I'm very excited to find that eggs are on offer - albeit boiled only. The breakfast is quite good here, and I thoroughly enjoyed the respite from ham and cheese on stale bread rolls! Once we'd booked our train tickets to Barcelona, we headed out to Castel Hill, which gives a view of the whole City of Nice. We caught a tram - they're very new and impressive - back to the beach and walked up to the lookout. Although it's not particularly high, the view is fantastic - right along the beach and over the city [View Full Entry]

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What do you get when you mix really sexy cars with fabulous Europeans, mega-yachts, the French Riviera, and a lot of screaming testosterone? I should preface this by stating that regardless of how this is written, it will inevitably come across sounding hoity-toity. For that, I apologize, but who are we kidding... this is the Monaco Grand Prix. The subject matter doesn’t quite lend itself to a humble, penny-pinching, off the beaten track travel narrative. Formula One racing could quite possibly be the most moneyed sport in the world. And the Monaco Grand Prix is quite definitely the [View Full Entry]

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aka Contributing to the reputation of Aussies drinking overseas Was up at 4:30 to make the 5:00 train for Nice, kept falling asleep all the time until Ventimiglia, when had to get off for another train continuing in France. It was packed, everyone going to the Grand Prix... by the time everyone took 5 mins to pile out at Monte Carlo it had about twice as many people as it should have. I continued on to Nice, found the hostel and checked in, then back to the station and in the express lines to get a Monaco train. Got there about [View Full Entry]

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Ok picture this: It's cold and raining, you're sitting uncomfortably on the side of a muddy cliff and if you slip you will most likely die, you've had to get up at 5am to get to this cliff, you are also starving. You try and sleep but it's uncomfortable and rain is dripping on your face, plus the noise is just deafening. Now picture this: You are in a helicopter it lands on the back of a super yacht, you are greeted by Quentin Tarantino who passes you a glass of champagne, you wander over and nibble on caviar whilst talking [View Full Entry]

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