Martha from NYC moved in last night as well as Celeste from New Zealand. Celeste was an au pair in NYC and had spent every winter for the past 6 years working in different ski resorts as a snowboard instructor. pretty cool! I read in my travel book that the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month have free entry into the Matisse and Chagall museums. I heard that the Chagall was very small and had about 12 of his works and none of his super famous pieces, so I decided to just visit the Matisse museum. Martha came with since she's really into painting, so she was great company - for me at least I like going to museums with someone (unless they have to study each brush stroke of each painting on each ... read more

Today was my alone day as I paraded around the Cote d'Azur through a small hill town called Eze (funny thing, in Hebrew Eze means goat) to the Ferrari and Porsche laden streets of Monaco. Eze I took the bus first to Eze (heading east towards Monaco) and fell asleep on the bus! Luckily I woke up right at my stop and jumped off. whew! Eze was charming, super small, with nothing to offer except for touristy cafes and boutiques selling nicknacks, porcelain, cloths, and art from the few galleries that were hidden in the rock. But frankly, it was exactly what I needed after bustling Rome. I got a beautiful view of the ocean and saw a lot of the same shops over and over again because I made a few wrong turns and walked ... read more

On my way to Tal's hotel, I stopped at the corner cafe and decided to treat myself to one of France's wonderful pastries - une brioche aux raisins. I don't actually know what a brioche is, but it looked like a regular pastry, my guess was that it's made with lots of eggs or something. Either way it was delicious! Tal and I first had to make sure his rental car stuff was done and arranged (him, his dad, and his older sister drove to Nice from Paris). After that, we headed to Gare Routiere for the bus and enjoyed watching the coastline for an hour and a half. It was longer than expected, but we talked the whole way, which was good practice for my Hebrew and probably good practice for his patience, haha. Once ... read more

I can confidently say that I know more about the Milano cookie (sugar oval cookie with chocolate sandwiched in between) than Milano the city. It's not what I planned, but c'est la vie (however you say that in Italiano). In Rome: For some reason, I felt like I had to leave the hostel early and wait for my train to Milan a bit earlier than probably necessary. I think half the reason was excitement to get to a new city and the other half was because I knew Italian trains were crazy when I was here in Nov, so I couldnt imagine what summer was like at Rome Termini station. Well, what I forgot to logically think about was that the trains would never be early or leave early, so why come early? Oh well. I ... read more

So the day I arrived I decided to walk around and just come across landmarks/sites/interesting places. But I found that Rome is unlike Paris and Florence in the sense that it really matters where you're wandering. My hostel is not in the old city so I had to walk down a lot of streets with silly shops until I came across my first piazza (square with usually a fountain, sculpture, or obelisk where people hang out, drink wine and pigeons roam). The piazza is called Piazza della Repubblica and there were beautiful marble sculptures atop a fountain that sprayed water high up in the air. When the wind gusted through, it lightly misted those sitting on the foutain's lip, including me. I saw most people resting their feet in the cool water and I did the ... read more