Muscles in Monaco. Yummy!

Day 20. Happy Easter! Today I took a day trip to Monaco. I jumped on the train and 25 minutes later I was in a different country. Awesome! I met a Chinese girl named Chang at the train station and we decided to explore Monaco together. Monaco is beautiful, it was sunny and warm and wasn’t even windy. There were yachts everywhere in the bay, a breathtaking seaside view, beautiful homes in the cliffsides and hills, of course the decked out Monaco casino, and ridiculously expensive cars and fancy restaurants. It even has its own palace. Chang had never been to or even seen a casino so we decided to head there first. Lambourgini’s, Ferrari’s, Royce Roller’s and other amazing cars were parked outside and kept rolling on up to the casino. Hot damn. We walked through one of the casinos and she asked questions and I tried to get her to gamble, but she wasn’t having ANY of that. After the casino I was starving, so we stopped at a small restaurant and I got some muscles in this spicy tomato sauce with fries and bread. It was delicious! Feeling satisfied we made our way across Monaco to the other side, and up the cliffside to the palace, oceanography museum, and cathedral. Chang was excited about the palace, and I was more excited about the oceanography museum. So we split up and agreed to meet back up in a bit. The cathedral was nice, but nothing amazing, and the palace looked nice from the outside as well, but the oceanography museum was massive with a Mediterranean aquarium on the bottom two floors. It was so cool!!! (Babe, you would have LOVED it). The fish were all so colorful, they glowed and were all sizes! There were jellyfish, sharks, eels, sea turtles, big fish, small fish, red fish, blue fish (haha, Dr. Suess status). But it was all really cool. They had one tank that was bigger than my parents living room and I just sat and watched all the marine life thrive. I met back up with Chang and we made our way back to Nice. I got some lettuce and sandwich material for dinner (who needs peanut butter when you have Nutella! Jelly and Nutella is so good!). I said goodbye to Chang and went back to my hostel to relax and get some dinner. The people in my hostel room are so awesome, there is one couple from Canada, Melisa and Patrick, and they are loads of fun. Then there is this 80 year old man from England that likes to take care of everyone in the room and he is very funny, his name is Bob. I chatted with some other travelers on the terrace for a bit (Lance from New Zealand and Sam from England), and we swapped some stories and had fun just relaxing in the warm night. And then we had an epic dance party right in the hostel kitchen. Haha, people were coking and on their computers giving us ridiculous looks, but we didn’t care. We turned the music up and danced!! I was so excited to skype with my family this evening too! We planned to skype around 3pm there time which is midnight my time, and it was so great seeing everyone. I got to further explain some of stories from my blog, and describe things, and let them (mostly it was for my mom) see that I wasn’t dying over here. Kasen even tried to come to me through the computer and I died a little bit on the inside. It was such a lovely Easter treat to see my family!

Day 21. Today was my last day in Nice; I am catching a train tomorrow that will take me all the way to Barcelona, Spain! Nice has been so wonderful, and the weather has been fantastic. I really think I could spend another week here just relaxing, soaking up the sun, and maybe working on some French. I promised myself I would get into the water here in Nice because of how blue and gorgeous it is so off to the beach I went! On the way to the beach I stopped at a café and got a café (haha, yay France). I sat outside drinking my miniature coffee and just watched the people pass by and then I made my way to the water.  It wasn’t quite as sunny as I would have liked, but the wind was a warmer breeze and I was determined to at least put my feet in. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants and holy mother of ice it was cold. But after a few minutes when my feet were nice and numb I started walking through the water. Now if you remember, Nice has rocky beaches, not sandy, so when I say I walked along the coast I really mean that I slowly kind of meandered as each step was rather painful and had to be carefully placed. Lol. Hmmm. I wasn’t giving up that easily, so I kept walking and found a spot where instead of larger rocks it was mostly smaller pebbles. C’est parfait! I stood in my little spot and took in the sea and the crashing waves (Which were crashing RIGHT in front of me I thought for sure it would knock me over and sweep me away but it was always just about to hit me before it crashed, very cool and always made me laugh). What wasn’t so cool was most of the waves carried rocks with them, and they smashed into your legs, feet, and ankles rather hard… ouch! So I backed off a little bit and then noticed something else. I already LOVE the sound of the ocean, but here as the waves crash in and then seep out, it carries rocks and pebbles with them that add this very soothing, almost like a trickling of rain type noise. And down below my feet were some awesome rocks of every color and design, even cooler was that it was like a constantly changing mural with the waves, and they were all so smooth and polished like beach glass. After enjoying the water and satisfying my desire to go in the sea I hobbled out (my feet were pink and numb and every step was rather painful) and dried off, put my socks and shoes back on and then walked along the promenade towards Old Nice. I stopped at a place called Fenocchio for some delicious ice cream (White chocolate, omg so good, thanks Craig!!) and got a slice of onion and sardine pizza (also strangely good). My travel guide book said to “lose the map and get lost in Old Nice” … so I did… until I was super lost… and that wasn’t so fun (I swear I have the worst sense of direction). But I figured it out and I don’t know how I ended up where I did, but I somehow made it back to my hostel from the complete opposite direction of how I left it (I must have walked in a huge circle of sorts). But I got a couple things in Old Nice in some of the shops, including some incredible brie and some ham/ a tomato to put on a baguette for later. Yummy! I decided I really wanted to see the Hunger Games at the cinema over here and I wished it could have been in English, but I was strangely excited for it to be in French. So off to the movies with Melisa and Patrick I went! The movie itself was great; I almost liked it better without really being able to comprehend everything that was being said. It’s as if I got to read the book again for the first time but with cinematography instead of written words.  I could follow along the main plot and I understood all the words I already knew, but trying to follow full and exact conversations was very difficult because of how fast they spoke. And the French version didn’t quite match up with how their lips moved (slightly distracting). But all in all I enjoyed the movie, had a great French experience, and would definitely want to watch the movie again in English. As I walked back to the hostel I saw some of my friends outside talking and stopped to say hello for a minute. Not but 2 minutes later the police showed up and thought we had drugs on us. Since I was the only one who spoke some French I told them we didn’t have any drugs and that they could feel free to search us. After being thoroughly searched and questioned they said “C’est bon” (It’s good), and left. Those two words never sounded so good! Talk about an adrenaline rush!! I could hear them talking about taking us downtown to jail, that would have been the WORST!  But it all worked out and I can cross that experience out of the books and hopefully never have to repeat it.  Phew. After laughing about it for a minute with the group I went inside to calm down and get some dinner. Have I mentioned how much I love Nutella?  I am catching trains all day tomorrow and will soon be in Barcelona. Yippee!!