Nice and Monaco

Monday:

Nice was a wonderful experience. We arrived at our hostel early on Monday morning. Our place was in the old city and since we got there at 9:00 am it was pretty dead. Our first impression of Nice was not great to say the least... we found our hostel (marked by a small name placard on a apartment buzzboard) and made our way up. The owner wasn't there so we dropped off our bags and explored the town a bit. Exhausted from our night train ride...

[side story: so we hangout in Bordeaux all day and explore every last nook in the town. We went to the international fair (which had everything from livestock to cars to airplanes and furniture), climbed to the top of the cathedral bell tower and explored the commercial river front. We wait in the train station until we 12:45 am for it to leave, we get on the train and climb into our couchette bunks. The train master comes by to check our tickets and I can't find mine. So in broken French/English I plead to him not to kick me off the train. Completely furious with me, he decides that I can buy another reservation for 20 Euro. Afterwards I finally fell asleep and awoke in Nice.]

Kevin and I find a park to go sit down in and wait for the owner to come back we both look at each other and we can pretty much read eachothers mind... "I don't know about this man, what did we get ourselves into?"

After Helen (The Hostel Maiden) returned we quickly found ourselves at home in Nice. That afternoon we went down to the beach... swam a little and walked down the beach for a mile or so through the town.

That night we met up with one of the gals staying in the hostel and hiked up to an ancient castel just east of our hostel in the old city. From there we hiked down and explored the Nice port. After a long day of traveling and finally finding some comfort in our accomodations we called it a night.
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Tuesday:

Seeing as we had already discovered most of Nice the day before. Kevin and I decided to check out Monaco. It was a 1 Euro bus ride down the coast and into Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo is quite honestly one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the world. It is only 16 km long making it the second smallest country in the world behind Vatican City.

The big Monte Carlo Grand Prix was last weekend so we were able to see all of the bleachers and track side rails still in place. We took the bus to the Grand Casino where we saw some rediculous cars including a Mercedes McLaren. We then hiked down from the Casino bluff to the harbor where the main racing grandstands and pits were set up. From there we headed up the other side of the bay to the top of a bluff where the Palace is. The palace was interesting but not interesting enough for us to pay 7 Euro to go inside. The main government buildings are also on what is known as the "Rock" and a huge aquarium. After checking out all the tourist attractions there we hiked back down and hitched a bus home.

Once back in Nice we grabed a happy hour pint and meal at an english speaking bar called Waynes. We discovered there was to be live music that evening so we made plans to head back. We went back to the hostel cleaned up and chatted with our room mates for a while. By the time we got back down to Wyanes at about 10:00 pm the place was packed. There were students from all across the US, Austrailia, The UK and locals as well. The band came on around 10:45 and by 11:00 everyone was dancing on the tables. (I was too tall to dance on tables). At about 12:00 a gal in our group motioned that she wanted to leave. So we headed down the the beach. At that point Kevin and our hostel friend Alyshia decided it would be a great idea to go swimming. Seeing as there was already a rowdy crew of Australians having a ball they were in plenty of company. Afterwards we headed up to the hostel and called it a night.
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Wednesday:

Was a mess... missed 3 trains, there was a train strike the day before and we got to Lugano at 1:00 am. More details to come later.

- Ryan