Monaco and Monte Carlo $$$

June 5, 2013:

So our tour leader Carly, took us up to Monte Carlo just for the evening and were reminded of how poor we all were...lol! Their is a reason that Mon-aco, Mon-te Carlo and Mon-ey all have something in common: because to live and play in either of these cities you have to have money....and LOTS of it!!

Before hitting the casino area, we drove to the Palace where the prince of Monaco lives. We also drove down the track for where the Grand Prix takes place....lots of curves, but a beautiful view of the sea and cliffs!!  I can only imagine how crazy it gets up there once the race is actually going on.

Once we got to Monaco we were let loose to...as our tour leader said..."find us a sugar momma/daddy" so we can get on a yacht or get into a mansion!   Lmao! 

We went into the Monte Carlo Casino and what a bore it was! I was expecting an upscale version of a Vegas casino, and found a quiet and pristine version of it instead. Their were only a handful of tables in the middle of the room and a couple slot machines in the front and back area. Granted this may have just been the tourist casino room because I know their were other rooms that were private areas for the high rollers! I decided I had to say that I've gambled in Monaco, so I was going to put some money down. Too bad most of the tables minimums were well over my head, starting at 100 euros or more. The roulette table had a minimum of 5 euros though so that's what I played along with two other girls with me. One actually put in 50 and won 25 back! Score! 

We then moved on before we got addicted!  ;)

In front of the casino

Embarrassing story of the evening:  So after we tried our hand at the casino, we still had some time left for the evening before we headed back down to Nice, so we headed over to a place called Buddha Bar and realized the drinks were too expensive (15-25 euros per drink), so we got up and left, and then we decided we would go back and split some hookah: 60 euros for the hookah, not so bad split between 6-7 people.....right?!?!....FAIL!!! We went and sat back down only for them to tell us that the hookah was an add on....we couldn't smoke hookah without getting each person a drink, sooooo guess what....we peaced out again!  :/   Yeah pretty embarrassing I know!  I guess that's what happens when you try to get in where you don't fit in right?   :)

Grabbed some pictures before leaving Buddha Bar

That's Monaco for you in a nutshell....next stop: Pisa and Florence 

Back to France we go....

 June 4-5, 2013:

Now after our brief detour into Spain, we are headed back to France. We are on our way to Nice.

On the way to Nice, we stopped by a city called Arles, which has a huge Roman amphitheater which is the big attraction in this city. We actually had about an hour stop here, so after taking a look at the amphitheater, a group of us decided to just take in the city at a cute French cafe near the amphitheater. We had some really delicious paninis and just enjoyed the weather and atmosphere.

That has been the biggest downfall to this trip, is our "meals". Due to the fact we are on a scheduled tour, it's been extremely fast paced, moving from city to city, and often having to pick up meals from rest stops and such, until we reach our destinations. This sucks, because most of these rest stops have paninis (which have no mayo, mustard, anything, just bread and cheese and meat), or pasta. After a while, trust me you get tired of that.  LoL! Oh well, gotta make do with what you get I guess.

Anyways, after stopping by Arles, we also stopped by Grasse, to tour a perfumery: Fragonard. This was really cool, to see how "eau de toilette" was made. 

After the perfumery we got to Nice, and had a hike up to our hostel. FML! I was dying by the time we got to the top. The bus couldn't take us all the way up due to the narrow roads near the hostel. So we had to get off the bus at the bottom, and walk up three steep hills to our coach, and do that every time we headed into the city! Needless to say, we tried not to come back to the hostel once we were gone unless we had no intentions of going back out again.  

Our first night in Nice, everyone chilled out at the hostel and ate and drank together and just relaxed, mostly because we didn't want to leave the hostel and have to hike back up that hill. LoL!  We had a dinner at the hostel, which surprisingly was pretty good. It was a meal consisting of a quarter leg of chicken, mashed potatoes and some veggies.

The next day I did go see the city a bit with some others from the hostel, because our hostel was offering a free walking tour around what they call "Old Town" portion of Nice. So we head on the tour and our tour guide James was pretty entertaining as we went along, he made it amusing.

We saw the Societie Generale which is a bank that is famous because of a bank heist that occurred here years ago: think "Oceans Eleven" or "Bank Job"..... The criminals robbed the bank on Bastille day when nobody was working at the bank and did so by cutting out the bottom of the vault from the underground sewer system. One of the crews girlfriend ended up turning them in and when he was on trial, he ended up tricking the judge and jumping out the window of the courtroom, and getting away on a motorcycle that was waiting for him and was never seen again!  Talk about a pro, he had this thing down to a science.

After the excitement of that story, we walked over to the Plaza Massena, which is a huge outdoor square with a statue of Apollo in the center.  This plaza also has these 7 statues of men sitting on top of pedestals looking at each other and the concept behind it is to signify the 7 continents and the communication between them in today's society. The colors of the statues change at night as a symbol of this.

The Statues in Plaza Massena

Apollo statue in the center of the plaza

We then continued our tour through the alleys and past all the cute cafes which I have always imagined all of Europe to be like. When I think of Europe I think of people spending their days outside in cafes, sipping on coffee, or wine, just people watching and chatting! I love the life, they are soooo much more laid back and take their time enjoying each day rather than rushing through it all. 

The picture on the left above is Henri Matisse's house. The house is situated behind an awesome fruit and vegetable fresh market as well. These seem to be very popular in Europe. 

After we finished up here we headed over to Castle Hill which is a hill which is setup high above the city and beaches. So it has beautiful views of the entire city and beach area, and is a great spot for hanging out, or for having a picnic! To greet us at the top of the hill was a beautiful waterfall.

We then headed back down the hill to the beach, the beach in Nice is very different from most beaches because the "sand" is not sand at all, it's actually flat rocks and stones. Which makes me wonder how or why people would want to lay on that, because I'm sure it's not comfortable at all, but there were plenty of folks out sunbathing. The beaches in Europe are also popular for topless sunbathing....saw young and old people alike doing this! 

This summed up my day in Nice, headed to Monaco/Monte Carlo in the evening! I'm excited to say I've been to Côte d'Azur....it's beautiful being right by the ocean!

Avignon to Barcelona

I have to apologize ahead of time for the delay in blogging, I had intentions of being better at it while I was away, but it's been so difficult because we are constantly on the road (with no wifi), but more pictures and edits will come when I return home, so keep checking it out!   :)

Okay, so on the way to Barcelona, we had a brief stopover to break up the trip. We spent a night in Avignon, which is a small town on the banks of the Rhone River in France. It was a good evening for downtime, because it's only day 4 and we have a long way to go in the weeks ahead.

Avignon, is known as the "City of Popes", and used to actually have a wall built around it to keep the popes separated from the citizens of the city. 

We had a group dinner tonight at La Cintra, which was pretty good. I've realized after being in Paris, that 3 course dinners are the norm around here. We had one our first night in Paris, as well as one tonight. It was pretty good no complaints here.

After dinner a bunch of people went out for some karaoke at a local bar, but I was soooo tired I couldn't even function so I just  went back to the hotel and chilled out and hit the bed.

The next day we left Avignon and headed to Barcelona. During our drive to Spain, we stopped at the famous Pont Du Gard. Pont du Gard is the largest Roman Aqueduct still standing. After stopping here, and getting the chance to see the aqueduct and grab some pictures of it, we continued our journey to Barcelona!

Wine Anyone?!?

So we are heading out of France and on our way to Barcelona, but we couldn't leave France without a winery tour and tasting after all that's one of the many things France is known for.... THE WINE!!!

So we head down the road towards Avignon where we ended up at Château de la Greffiére which is located in Burgundy. This was a privately owned winery and we were taken around by the owners son.

It was really interesting because as most of you know I'm a Risk Management Consultant and so I used to go to clients sites and see the processes of how different products were made, so it was interesting from that standpoint, as well as just learning about how wine was made, and the differences between wines in France.

So it turns out that in France, wines are named by the region not as they are in the US. So for example, Champagne can't be labeled as that anywhere else in France except for in Champagne where it is made, so other cities can make similar wine, but must name it based on their region as sparkling wine.

I thought that was a neat little tidbit. Anyways, we tried some wines and then we moved on for our journey to Barcelona. 

Bonjour from the city of lights

So after a rainy day and all of us having our fingers crossed the night before praying for NO rain....we woke up to a much better day! I roomed with three really sweet girls, two from Mexico and one from Malaysia.

L-R: Notre Dame Cathedral, Palace of Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, Mona Lisa @ the Louvre, Sacre Couer, the Eiffel Tower

Me and a few others who I had met on the bus decided the night before on a plan for the day (well I kind of coordinated the sites we were going to see)....the first of them being the Palace of Versailles: which is centered a bit outside of the city.

So we headed out to conquer the metro train which everyone seems to say is easy to navigate, but I don't know I agree with that. We headed to the Palace which is absolutely beautiful. It was adorned with good all over the gates and entrance. Their is so much history behind this palace. It was the home of Louis XIII originally, but it was constantly being added on to and embellished until King Louis XIV's death in 1715.

We then headed into the city, to go up the Montparnasse Tower which is a tall building which you can walk up and see the whole city from, the view wasn't as great as I imagine it could've been due to clouds which were still lingering but it was still great to get a view of the city.

We then went on a search for the famous French Crepes which France is known for. You would think that crepes would be much easier to find, but not so much. We were walking around for 30 mins or so before we finally found a cafe that had them. The crepes were good, but to be honest I thought they were slightly overrated: oh well, at least I can say I had them. 

Now we were off to the Jardin de Luxembourg, and we walked through and watched some street performers and took in the nice weather, as it had cleared up by now.

Now that we had a chance to chill out in the gardens, we were off to Sacre Cour. When we first go to Sacre Cour we were a bit intimidated by the hill with steps that we had to climb to get to the top but it was SO WORTH IT!!! The weather was beautiful and clear, and the view was absolutely amazing! You could see the city so perfectly. People were sitting on the front steps and hanging out, kids were playing, street performers and people drinking beers while enjoying the view, it was probably one of my favorite sites while in Paris (other than the all famous Eiffel Tower of course)

From Sacre Cour we went on to The famous Moulin Rouge. We then hopped back on the metro to head to outlast two sites before hitting the Eiffel Tower.

We arrived at the Arc de Triomphe and grabbed a few pictures there and then headed on over to the Musee de Louvre.

I had originally planned to just take some pictures at the famous Louvre pyramid and and not go into it, well man did I luck out or what....so we were meeting some others from the tour there as well, and when we did they told us that nobody checked their passes when they went in and we could probably use them to go in ourselves if we wanted. So we were like heck yeah....and so basically....we got in and got to see the Mona Lisa for free!!! Always a plus!!! The Mona Lisa as you can see from the picture is soooo small...nothing like you would expect or that you are used to seeing based on the way the painting is portrayed in movies and magazines.

After we did this, we went on the way to the Eiffel Tower for us to end our day with a picnic on the lawn in front of the tower with some of the other tour mates. We took pictures of it before it got dark, as well as after the lights turned on lighting the beautiful tower up, all while eating and drinking wine on the lawn!!!! 

Talk about a tiring, yet completely AMAZING first day of the trip!!!  :D

Aurevoir for now Paris, off to Avignon then Barcelona I go.....