Nice, Cannes & Monaco

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I arrived in Nice that evening and checked into my hostel. The man on the reception desk was typically French, in the sense that he was about as friendly as a snake. I know this doesn’t apply to all French people, but a large majority of them seem to live up to their stereotype of being bloody grumpy!



I went into my dorm room, and met Sonia from Montreal, Canada…. now she speaks French and was very nice! I also met Mocca & Ryan, two girls from China who were travelling around Europe together. I went out that evening to have a wander around Nice before it got too dark, went to the promenade, and strangely enough, it reminded me a little of Las Vegas. A little, not a lot! The promenade has large hotels on the front which are lit up at night, and there are a few glitzy casinos dotted between them. There’s also plenty of palm trees lining the coast. As you walk along the front, you can just hear the last of one busker before you hear another one up ahead, so there’s plenty of street entertainment to keep you occupied!



The next day it seemed that both Sonia and I wanted to visit Cannes, so we decided to travel together on the train for a day trip. We arrived and had a tasty lunch at a café, before roaming the mains streets and sights. Cannes is pretty, and you have a nice view if you walk to the castle at the top of the hill. The rest of the streets are filled with things (mostly clothes) that I will never be able to afford, and even if I could afford them, would more than likely ruin them with some sort of gravy type substance. The film festival red carpet looks very much like the stairs up to a standard cinema, just with red fabric on them – really not much to look at!



That night after we arrived back in Nice, we went out for dinner at a French restaurant with Mocca and chatted for a while all about the differences in our cultures. It turns out there’s only one small province in China that eats dogs! (I didn’t bring that up by the way!!) Food in Europe is so different for Mocca that pretty much everything she eats is an entirely new flavour. Sonia and I tried to explain the menu, but didn’t do so well comparing beef bourguignon to anything on a Chinese menu – especially after Mocca told us that Chinese food here isn’t real Chinese food! She was quite enthusiastic to try local foods though, she’s studying international politics and language and seemed to just want to see and taste the world!



When we got back to the hostel, another girl had arrived – Jillian – who is also from Canada but from Ontario (and as it happens also works in Law!). We arranged to all go out the next day to Monaco, Monte Carlo, so the next morning the five of us went to the train station, and spent the next hour queueing for tickets. Tip – If you ever go to Nice and need train tickets, get them the night before! We just made our train, and arrived in Monaco craving breakfast! We assumed that there would be loads of restaurants lining the beach front, but there aren’t! There are way more Gucci, Prada, Valentino etc. stores than restaurants – they have their priorities all wrong!! But perhaps that’s why they can fit into the teeny tiny overpriced clothes!



We finally found a restaurant at the top of the beach, and sat down to be served by a crazy French man who seemed to own the place. He couldn’t understand why Mocca and Ryan would possibly want the code for the WIFI – to take a picture of their dinner to share on Facebook of course! ?



After lunch, we headed to the main casino and went inside. We were only allowed so far into the casino before we were rejected from proceeding any further due to our poor attire! And by that I mean we were all wearing sandals. Well screw you Monte Carlo!! I’ve been to Vegas – and they don’t care if you’re in your worst holey tracksuit pyjamas with food stains down them and you’ve been drinking for 4 weeks straight, they’ll still welcome you with a shot of bourbon! ……… Judgemental French arseholes! We just had a picture in front of the casino instead!



After having a good walk around the rest of Monaco and climbing the hill to the castle and gardens dedicated to Grace Kelly, we headed back to our hostel….. of course via the local off licence! Once again, I made the mistake of assuming that the hostel would have a bottle opener on site….. no such luck! We had bought two bottles of wine to share with no method of opening them (Europe must think it’s blasphemous to have screw top wine!) Well that wasn’t going to stop me! I went down to the kitchen, found a knife and stabbed the cork into the bottle with such force that I got a face full of red wine! Totally worth it.



A mutual search for a corkscrew introduced us to two other travellers, one from Australia and the other from Texas. They had also bought two bottles of wine and, from the desperate look on their faces, hadn’t thought to try to ‘push in cork’ trick. It very quickly became my new party trick to open wine in this fashion, and after my second bottle which caused a hasty trip to find kitchen roll to wipe wine from the walls, I’d almost perfected it!



We spent the night chatting, and I think it’s fair to say we all had a non-spoken agreement that everyone thought the guy from Texas was a bit of a dick. This was especially after his comments on how he would resolve a small disagreement by saying ‘Well I’d just introduce him to my gun….’ Which caused a mixture of disgusted type exhales of breath, and a, not so well disguised by a cough, ‘Dickhead!’…. which may or may not have come from me! I guess it’s a Europe vs Southern America thing.



We were all fairly relieved to see Texas passed out drunk on the sofa (no I didn’t spike the wine!)…..so much so that no-one bothered to wake or move him when we all buggered off to bed. Oh well!







Next: Switzerland! ?

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