Nice & Monaco

(18/6/15) As sad as we were to be leaving Switzerland, the sadness was short lived. This day we had breakfast in Switzerland, lunch in Italy, and dinner in France! How many people can say that!!!? Truly living the high life right now ;-) (no need to mention that lunch in Italy was a picnic in the service station car park hahaha - it was still Italy!) In the afternoon we arrived in Nice. I have to say we were skeptical about going back to France - Paris was quite a let down - but Nice has definitely restored our faith in the French people and places. 

The evening of the 18th we went to a lovely restaurant to have yummy food and wine, and then moved on to a bar which not only had live music and cheap drinks, but also allowed TABLE DANCING! Suffice to say, we spent most of the night sweating our arses off, arms in the air, dancing feet on the tables. Michael and I were lucky enough to have our own room, so it was nice to have a sleep in the next morning. 

After a leisurely lie in on the 19th, we skipped the hotel breakfast and made our way down to the beach. Michael had a swim whilst I guarded our belongings and took photos (and sun baked). The beach is so weird! It's all pebbles and no sand! Smooth pebbles, some of them quite large, with different colours and patterns, giving quite a nice effect to the look of the place... and when the waves rolled out, the pebbles and rocks would make such a delightful crackling/tumbling sound, almost like soft fireworks popping as the rocks rolled out with the water. What a nice way to start the day!

From there we walked up to the markets - this was probably my favourite part of Nice. Huge fruits, colourful foods, and the nicest smelling flowers I've ever seen. Olives, sweets, tea, herbs and spices, pottery... Just the best market ever. 

We walked the entire way through, and at the very end we had some traditional food: Socca & pisalada (the Socca is like a huge flat pizza base made of chickpea and cooked/fried in salt and oil. pisalada was like a square of cold pizza, traditionally with anchovies and olives). It was the best hangover food ever - the Socca was the perfect combination of crispy and crunchy on the edge and soft and gooey in the middle - and greasy greasy! Yummmmm. 

After this we walked along the shopping mall and picked up a few souvenirs and some drinks. The weather was somewhere between 28 - 32 Celsius (in other words; glorious). We walked back to the hotel for a bit of a relax and a shower before jumping on the bus for Monaco! 

On our way we stopped off at Fragord (sp?) a French parfum factory. SO AWESOME! It is one of the oldest and most exclusive perfume factories in the world, and WOW did some of these scents smell amazing. Not only did we get to see how the soaps and perfumes were made, but we also had lots of SMELLING to do! .......and we definitely didn't leave empty handed, much to Michael's dismay (and to the detriment of the bank account, haha - WHEN IN FRANCE!) 

After this, our visit to Monaco. Now, I must say, I didn't do much enjoy this visit. The story of Monaco is this; a bunch of jerks dressed up as monks, pretended to be tired, weary monks who needed a place to sleep, and a monastery let them in for the night to eat and sleep. Meanwhile, once inside, the jerks pulled out a bunch of swords, killed all the monks, put up a big fence, closed up the gates, and claimed it as their own. Then they turned the monastery into a castle, called themselves a royal family, turned Monaco into a principality, and became royal jerks. I mean, I understand that every place has a history, but these guys have statues outside of their castle of guys dressed up as monks, pulling out their swords! Talk about jerkishness. Meanwhile, everyone in Monaco is driving around in a Porsche or a Ferrari and it costs about $200 for a meal, and the "prince of Monaco" decides who gets to be a citizen. Apparently Michael Jackson and Arnold Swartzanegger even tried to become citizens and the prince turned them down. EXCLUSIVE. 

ANYWAY, we found the cheapest pizza dinner we could find, and then blew some money at the casino, which was all good fun. A lot of our tour group spent some time "car watching". We didn't take our camera, so we don't have any pics, but I'm not really too sad about that. Who needs photos of a bunch of rich people, eh?! Nonetheless, it was a fun afternoon and evening, and then we went back to the hotel for a good nights sleep. Tomorrow; ITALY!!!!!