Pictures!

The view from Eze

Eze

Again

Oranges and lemons! There were at least ten other structures like this.

Monaco

The Monte Carlo casino

Nice is nice

Salut,

Lindsay and I just got back from Nice late last night. We arrived around 6 pm on Friday and searched around for a hostel that I had heard about from some classmates. Once we found it we dumped our stuff and headed for the beach. We thought that we would be basking on the shore of the Mediterranean...if only it were 40 degrees warmer! After freezing from our beach adventure, we found a cute restaurant and then headed to a bar with live music. To give you an idea of the crowd there, the band members all had hair longer than either Lindsay's or mine and the guitarist was wearing a shirt that said "No one's bitch." We left there after a little bit and headed back to our hostel to decompress.

We woke up fairly early Saturday because we wanted to do a lot of things while the weather was nice. Lindsay went into the bathroom and a few minutes later I could hear her urgently whispering my name from the stall. I went to see what was wrong and found out that we was trapped inside. We spent twenty minutes trying to open the door without avail. She tried climbing over, but based on my catching skills, we decided it was a bad idea. All of the sudden, when I was about to leave her to her doom, the door popped open. I have never seen anyone so relieved to be out of a bathroom!

After that wonderful start to the day we headed to the local market where we bought some honey, bread, and fruit and sat on the beach (all rocks, no sand) to eat breakfast and watch the waves roll in for a while. The next stop was the bus station to go to Monaco. It was a beautiful half hour drive along the sea, but a waste of time. One can see fabulously rich people, the casino, and very expensive cars...and that's about it. Disappointed, we went to Menton, an Italian border town. There wasn't much to see there either, except for the enormous floats of oranges and lemons (pictures to come). It really was amazing to see the things that they can make out of fruit.

The next stop during our whirlwind day was Eze, a cute little town with an amazing view. We happened to be in the village during their canivale. There were a couple of floats filled with kids throwing confetti. I turned around to say something to Lindsay and at the same time a man on the float pointed a leafblower filled with confetti directly at us. I was still finding pieces of paper in my hair and clothes a day afterward. While we brushed ourselves off, we climbed up a huge hill and could see miles and miles in every direction.

We took the bus back to Nice and found a sushi place that was amazing. Although sushi is not exactly French cuisine, it just looks too good to resist. After our delicious dinner, we walked along la Promenade des Anglais and bought a bottle of wine to take back to our hostel. When we came back, we joined some English, Irish, and Philipino guys drinking beers and watching soccer. It was hilarious trying to figure out what they were saying (the Irish accent is incomprehensible) and we ended up talking with them for a couple of hours before heading to bed.

Because of our Irish (came in really late) and Chinese (left really early) roommates, we slept badly and caught up by sleeping in til 11:30. It was a miserable day and we needed something to do indoors so we went to some kind of exposition with well over 500 booths. Neither of us bought anything, but it was fun looking at everything. By the time we were done, it was time to go back to the train station. Within a three hour span we went from fairly warm temperatures to two inches of snow!

Provence is purely addictive. Next weekend I'm going south again to escape the cold, but for now I have to hit the books for my midterms this week :(