Took about an hour for them to wrangle us from the ship, onto the boat, to shore and off the tender. Then we found our tour guides. The majority of this big group was going on a bus, but then eight extra people, us included, got our own van and guide. It worked out absolutely perfectly and couldn’t have went better! Which we learned later wasn’t the case on the big bus. So we lucked out again.
Our guide was Renee from Holland who speaks six languages and has been living in Nice for 22 years. He was THE BEST guide I can remember. He talked non-stop about interesting things, threw in his own hilarious commentary and just overall read and interacted with our crazy group well. The other six people on our tour were travelling together from Pittsburgh, so since Kory has family in that area, we were instant friends. One lady was taking pictures with her terrible towel everywhere which was hilarious. She says she takes it on all trips to pose with.
This tour, unlike the others we have taken so far, was more of a panoramic drive along the entire beautiful coast line with just a few stops along the way. It was actually a nice break from walking for hours on end like the last few days. It has been unbelievably hot the entire trip… which is better than cold or rainy, but that takes a lot out of you.
We started driving from Cannes, which I thought was a much larger city. It has a population of only 90,000 and they have beautiful sand beaches. It is naturally rocky, so they import sand from Spain. All of the rest of the beaches we would pass had dark pebbles leading into the water. Cannes is famous for the film festival of course, so we heard about that and saw where they show the films and where Elton John has his charity ball every year.
We continued driving and got to Nice, with the second busiest airport in France. It was interesting because they built it on reclaimed land in the water, and planes look like they are going to land right in the sea. Nice is also the fifth biggest city in France. We had a stop at the flower market. They had the flower vendors first, and then it was more of a farmers market with fruits, vegetables, oils and spices. It was so French… or what I imagined it should be. I have been to Paris several times and I enjoyed this area much more than the dirty, overpopulated, metropolitan city. We got some olive oils to take back home. We also bought some almond croissants from a vendor and they were delicious ! ! ! I haven’t eaten many croissants at home, but I would every day here. And they were only 1 Euro a piece.
After spending some time wandering Nice, we continued on to Eze, a little mid evil city along the coast. This was definitely the most unexpected place of the trip. It was absolutely gorgeous, built in the 15th century with lots of little paths between leading up to the top of the mountain. When we hit the lottery, we will come live here! It is so small and peaceful… No cars. There are two hotels with about 10 rooms each and they have to hump the bags up the mountain to get them to your room… So cool!
We then continued to our last stop on the coast, Monaco. I have seen it in so many movies that it was almost surreal to be there in person. It is like Disney World. It looks almost fake because everything is kept so pristine. It almost seemed like something from a storybook. Renee said there is no crime because there are cameras and police everywhere. Along our drive he talked all about how Grace Kelly made Monaco the place to be and the whole story of how it is a principality, and the prince must continue the bloodline or the area will go to France. The royal family owns everything. Casinos, hotels, car dealerships, beach club, yacht club, banks… everything. He gave all the gossip on the Royal family. It was also crazy to see the absolute extreme lavishness of everything there. Kids sit around waiting for the best cars to drive by to take pictures of them. And there were also half a billion dollar yachts sitting in the port. Just all so out of my world.
We then headed back to the ship after a day of seeing the fabulous coast… some day French Riviera… some day. After we win the lottery, we’ll be back. Among our awesome tour guide Renee’s funny observations:
• Grace Kelly was a bitch
• Russian prostitutes are everywhere (in Monaco)
• At night… all the cats are grey
• Once you’ve seen one boob, you’ve seen them all
• The French are never happy… They have 31 days of paid time off a year, get a 12 euro coupon for lunch each day, and work 35 hours a week and they still think that’s terrible
• … and tons more …
Back on the ship, we headed back to Shakers Martini Bar to continue making our way through the martini list and combine and edit our photos for the day. Then we briefly stopped by the art auction, but nothing was our abstract style and we had to get to our French dinner at “Le Bistro.” We had a fantastic waitress and the dinner was good. Another nummy steak (peppercorn,) for me and jumbo shrimp for Kory. We also had some fancy champagne to start the meal, so I was feeling real, real French. Then we made our way back upstairs because they were going to have the Glow party up on deck, but the boat was really really rocking and rolling so it got moved inside. We had a drink up there, and then took one down to the Glow thing inside. Needless to say that we didn’t stay long because it wasn’t as awesome as the 80’s deck party.
We get to sleep in tomorrow … HOORAY!!! We don’t get to Mallorca until 1 pm. We don’t have anything planned, so it will be a much smaller post tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment