Spring Break: Nice & Monte Carlo

This was the first of many traveling days during my spring break. We left Barcelona at 8:45am, got to Montpellier, France where we waited for 4 hours for our next train to Marseille, waited for an hour and finally got on the last train to Nice arriving to the train station in Nice at 11:30pm. Luckily our hostel was right next to the train station so we crawled into our room and fell asleep.

Day 6 25/3/10
Our hostel, Hotel Belle Menieure was the cutest place ever. It's a little house tucked away between two bigger hotels with a pebble courtyard in from and lots of trees, a sitting area and a big iron gate. We stayed on the third floor in a private 4 bed room with a slanted ceiling... very attic -esque.

Day 5 24/3/10
We slept in for the first time which was quite enjoyable, got what became a typical lunch (baguettes and cheese) and had a picnic on the beach. I was expecting the beaches in southern France to be sandy but alas, they are pebbly much like the beach back in Brighton. While picnicking we saw a big waterfall in the distance on the side of a mountain and decided we had to go there. We made our way over and walked to the top of the hill where we got an awesome view of the city.


As we were walking around the top of this hill we saw the port with a bunch of yachts so we ventured down and took some time to fantasize about owning yachts.

There's an elliptical machine on this yacht.

Nice is an amazing city. It has this old part of town with all these narrow streets for pedestrians dotted with shops, bars, restaurants and cafes. We walked through the old town to get back to the hostel, took a nap, freshened up and went out on the town! Our hostel manager, Robert, told us about this drum and base concert at a club in town called Le Volume. The concert was free if you were a member of the club so we paid the 2euro membership fee and went in. Now I'm a member of a club in Nice, France! NICE. Drum and base is really popular in England and it was funny to go to a club in France where they were in the middle of a month-long English music festival. It made me realize how even though every country in Europe is so different, the culture exchange is huge.

Day 7 26/3/10
We woke up with only one thing on our minds: crepes. We went back to the old part of Nice for a crepe lunch, bought some presents and made our way back to the beach to get some sun.

Riley and Greg enjoying the ocean air.



Soap is a big seller in Nice. This stand had a bunch of bath salts and other soapy products.
Once back at the hostel we hung out with Robert, our German hostel manager, his British friend who was in town for a wedding and three Canadians who are on a 2 year trip around the world. We spent the rest of the evening with all the people staying at the hostel. Literally, everyone was in our room hanging out and drinking. There were so many nationalities represented in one room: American, Canadian, Danish, British, German, Estonian, French and Korean. This night was the hostel experience I was hoping we would encounter. Later we decided to venture down to the beach and a few of the boys took a night swim in the freezing cold water. It was so fun just to meet people and be talking and laughing and skipping stones into the Mediterranean.

Day 8 27/3/10
This day brought with it the best weather we'd had so far. We decided to spend the day with the Canadians in Monte Carlo, Monaco so we took a 20 minute train ride to Monte Carlo. Monaco is the second smallest independent state in the world, the other one being Vatican City. It's also the world's most densely populated independent country. The train ride alone would have been enough amazement for the day, it was gorgeous ride with the bluest ocean on one side and huge cliffs on the other.




We spent the day exploring and saw more expensive cars and private banks than I knew existed. After hanging out at the beach for a bit we went to the port and saw the most amazing yachts including the "Lady Moura", the 19th biggest yacht in the world.





After returning to our hostel, napping and unwinding from a mind-blowing day in Monte Carlo, we made our way back to the old part of town to find a hookah bar where we spent our last night drinking delicious tea, smoking hookah and enjoying each other's company.
Nice observations: This place is paradise. There isn't a ton of touristy stuff to do so relaxing is main activity and we did plenty of that. All the homeless people have dogs here which is similar to what I saw when I was in Rennes in high school. They basically whore their dogs out so people will pity them and give them money. So sad. None of the dogs are ever on leashes. New goal: train Joey to be leashless. It might not go so well, but it's possible. Time does not exist when on vacation. Similar to in Barcelona and most other cities in Europe, there is a rent-a-bike program where you can pick up a bike at one location and drop it off somewhere else. There are lots of middle easterners and north africans living in southern France.

Spring Break: Barcelona

Here's to the start of what is to be many posts about my travels over the past month. I think I'll do one post for each city/region that I visited and throw in some pictures along the way. Bear with me because this may take a while.

While backpacking across Europe I saw the most amazing sites and met the most amazing and interesting people. My first stop was Barcelona, Spain.

Day 1 20/3/10
I flew in to Barcelona and got there mid-afternoon with a few hours to wait for Gwen, Riley, Greg and Amanda to show up on a later flight. The airport was huge, clean and completely empty. It was the weirdest thing... there was literally no one there. I learned by using the toilet (they had signs in a bunch of different languages) that they speak a dialect of Spanish, Catalan, here. Eventually I met up with everyone else, we took the bus into the city and after wandering the streets for a while we found our hostel. Since it was late and we were all tired from traveling we treated ourselves to our first dinner at a yummy tapas bar. We got a few pitchers of the best sangria in the universe and made our way back to the hostel. There were a few other people staying in our dorm room at the hostel, one of which was Nathan, a Georgian also traveling around Europe who will re-enter my story in a later chapter.

Day 2 21/3/10
We spent the morning wandering around Las Ramblas (the area that our hostel was located) looking for a grocery store, only to remember that grocery stores are not opened on Sundays in most countries in Europe. We did however, come across our first surprise of the trip. I've learned that the surprises that traveling brings are some of the most memorable moments. We turned the corner and saw a motorcycle on fire. That's right, the whole bike was engulfed in flames.

Obviously we stood there and took pictures like the good tourists we are. Eventually the fire department came and put it out. We continued our wanderings and came across a protest to institute a "No meat for a day" policy.


This is when I decided that I love Barcelona.
Throughout the day we had seen these tourist hop on/hop off buses and decided to buy tickets for the bus so we could see everything we wanted to see. Barcelona is a big city and a lot of the sites are not within walking distance so this seemed like the best way. The night before we were standing on our balcony at the hostel and saw way up on a hill a lit up castle looking building. Immediately we decided we needed to go there and luckily the bus took us up. We rode around the northern part of the city and got off at the stop for Tibidabo, which was what we had seen the night before. We took a trolley halfway up this hill and instead of taking the funicular to the top we decided to walk. It was a good choice because we were able to see panorama views of the entire city. Unfortunately it was cloudy so we everything was a little hazy but it was still amazing.

We got to the top and were greeted by an amusement park built on top and into the side of the mountain.

The castle that we had seen was actually an extremely lavish church that sat in the middle of the amusement park. Quite a weird combination.
We took the funicular down and continued our bus tour. It started to rain pretty hard so we went back to the hostel to get dry and decided to continue the bus tour the next day.

Day 3 22/3/10
We ventured back on to the tourist bus which ended up being very informative. Each person got a set of headphones that you plug in to listen to information about where you are and what you're looking at. Everywhere we passed by we were told all about how the different parts of the city were changed and improved because of the 1992 Olympic games that were hosted in Barcelona. It was pretty insane to learn how much a city can change just because of the Olympics. We learned that the housing near the water (Barcelona is on the coast) used to be home to the lower class but is now of higher socio-economic status. We got off the bus at the Olympic park, explored the grounds a bit and then hung out in a garden that reminded me of the secret garden. We got back onto the bus and rode along the water and through the port. I learned that Barcelona is the biggest cruise line port in Europe. Next vacation: go on a cruise around the Mediterranean. Our next hop-off stop was at this beautiful park with a huge fountain and a statue of a wooly mammoth. And some other stuff but those two stuck out the most.

After hanging out in the park for a while we eventually we made it back to the hostel where we made a yummy dinner and played cards.

Day 4 23/3/10
Finally some sun!! Since we were all spending the next month traveling around Europe we had all purchased Eurail train passes. The passes allow you to travel on trains all over Europe for anywhere from free to 10euros. We spent the morning at the train station trying to register our Eurail passes and reserve seats for the 10 hour train ride that we were taking the next day. This is when language barriers are most frustrating. Even though Greg speaks Spanish pretty well, the guy at the booth didn't speak any English and we were having a really tough time communicating. Eventually we figured it all out although we were told that the French train workers were striking which would probably cause us some delays in our journey. After a frustrating morning we went to relax at the beach!! The beach was amazing and even though the water was cold, the sand was warm and the water was bluer than blue. It felt so nice to shed our jackets and get some sun.

After the beach we wanted to get to Parc Guell, a park covered in work by Gaudi, a Spanish architect whose work is all over Barcelona. His work is very lavish and gaudy (the term stems from the artist's name) and really stunning. Somehow we went the wrong way on the metro and ended up on the sketchy outskirts of the city. Oops. This surprise, although super sketchy, had really pretty hills with houses built into them. We turned around, got back on the metro and made it to Parc Guell where we played and explored.




Some of the work in the park reminded me of gingerbread houses.

After the park we walked over to Sagrada Familia, the spectacle of Barcelona. Sagrada Familia is a huge church designed by Gaudi. Construction on the church started in 1882 and it's still not finished! It reminded me a lot of a drippy sand castle.



On our way back to our hostel we walked along Las Rambla (a big pedestrian/tourist shopping street) to do some tourist shopping and stopped at a street market to get tasty smoothies, fruit and chocolate. The market was tucked away and sold anything and everything: fruit, veggies, fish, meat, any kind of food.

Here are some observations and reflections that we gathered about Barcelona:
they drive on the correct side of the road!, there is American music and students everywhere, pastries are amazing, wine is cheaper than water, coffee is small, grocery shopping in foreign countries is more fun than grocery shopping in the states.

Thus ends the first installment of my spring break trip. I posted more pictures on facebook so check 'em out!

Next chapter: The south of France