The French riviera: love, sea, and wine

mountains somewhere between Munich and Nice..

For our favorite and most relaxing part of this first chunk of spring break, we discovered the gem of France-the riviera. Between it's turquoise water, quaint shops, incredible flower gardens, and mountainous countryside, Nice was gorgeous.

One of our many train rides around the Riviera

view of Nice on our way to Monaco

Abby and I, along the coast with Nice in the background

 I left this region up to Abby to research. I had Munich, and she had Nice. She found a quaint little hotel run by a father and son right in the middle of the pedestrian street, where cars aren't allowed. It only had 13 rooms, and they were so kind! We had a perfect room for us, balcony, great bathroom, and just enough room for our backpacks :) After getting scammed by the cab driver on the way there, we walked through the pedestrian street to Hotel Solara. Conveniently located across the street was an omelette take-away café. Our cute little balcony looked like the perfect place for breakfast and coffee the next morning!

view from the balcony

yummy breakfast! hadn't had an omelette in 3 months. forgot how much i love eggs.

After we buzzed the hotel to open the door, we didn't see an elevator.. so we walked up the four flights of stairs to the hotel. When we got to the top, the man was waiting for us and said, "You didn't take the lift?" haha well... we didn't see the lift. It looked like a closet door.. Needless to say, the next million times we left or came, we crammed into the "2 persons, or 1 person with luggage" elevator..

that's the tiniest lift I've ever seen. it also has a gate that shuts you in. creepy!

After settling in, we decided to head to Monte Carlo, Monaco for our first afternoon. We jumped on the train, trying to read the schedule in french and not even knowing the days of the week to try to figure it out.. Also couldn't buy a ticket because the machines wouldn't accept American credit cards. We would have had to wait in this long line for international people, so we though we could just buy them when we got on the train. A nice man working in a ticket booth, only for French people, helped us out and said, it's not a problem to buy them on the train, so we jumped on.

 The beautiful train ride of 20 minutes landed us in the ritziest (if that's a word) place I have ever been. Rolls Royces, gigantic yachts, Range Rovers, and Bentleys flooded the streets. Not having any idea where the "city" was, we walked along the water and looked at the yachts until we found a sign for the famous Monte Carlo Casino. But first, this one caught our eye... notice the second sign down.

my last name is Moore, Abby's is Rowland, and we're both business majors... coincidence?

After seeing this sign, we discussed our future plans to own property somewhere along the riviera someday to vacation to when we're rich and famous, over wine of course. The most expensive wine I have ever bought myself was probably the best wine I've ever tasted. At the famous Hotel Paris, in Monte Carlo, we felt like celebrities waltzing in for a glass of wine at 3 pm. It was a fun treat, but after glancing at the menu, we both said, "umm... do you think that's for a glass or a bottle?" Haha yaa... that kind of expensive. 

view from right outside the paris hotel, up the mountain

holy yachts!

We wandered around for awhile, taking in the scenery, the people, and the entire atmosphere. Looking for our prince charmings, we ran out of luck and went to the second famous bar/restaurant in Monte Carlo, the Buddha Bar!

Walking around, through some pretty gardens

at the Buddha Bar

The Buddha Bar had insane decor-a huge Buddha at one end, great couches and large pillows to sit on on the floor, low level tables, and a massively stocked bar. It was too nice (just like everything there) to take pictures, unfortunately.. We snuck this one without a flash but we were not about to be those girls sitting at the bar taking pictures of the place.. We took advantage of the happy hour deals, which were really reasonable, and had some great sushi before making our way back to Nice for the night.

somewhere in Monte Carlo.. not really sure

On our walk back to the train

pretty shoreline!

Our first full day on the Riviera began with that great omelette breakfast on our balcony before deciding to jump over to Italy for lunch! We woke up early to take advantage of our only full day there, and since there isn't a bunch of touristy things to see in Nice, or along the whole Riviera I guess, we looked up a few fun things to do that were short day trips. We decided Ventimiglia, Italy would be nice. We could cross another country off our list too! So we read the train map, figured it out, and headed up the 5 blocks to the train station!

a pretty park in Ventimiglia

the cool rock beach!

and the view back toward Nice

 We were looking for these great markets we had read about, but after asking a few people, in English and Spanish (since Italian and spanish are sort of similar..), we couldn't find it. We settled for some Italian gelato. Really great substitute for Whiteys, but not quite the same..

We walked around, realizing the freshman 15 was making it's re-entrance into our lives but not regretting a thing :) You can't go to Italy for the day without having the gelato, I mean, come on.. One of our friends put the "study-abroad 15" nicely. She said, "if you don't gain weight when you study abroad, you didn't live." Totally true. Although the food in Spain isn't my favorite, I've grown accustomed to it and found plenty of things I like there, and on our lengthy travels!

on the beach in Ventimiglia, again

and a pretty park!

 Really tired at this point from wandering all day, we went back to Nice looking for a great seafood dinner and maybe seeing what the nightlife was like there. Europe is big on these plate of the day things, where you pay one price an can choose between the starters, main course, and dessert or coffee. We went back to this great restaurant we had our first lunch there that was reasonable but really good, and I had great fish! I had mussels in Alicante one time during the tapas cooking course I took, so I ordered those as my starter. I got this huge giant bowl of like 20  mussels! They were incredible. I had never had them before, but this white wine sauce was so good. I'm now a huge fan of those.

After dinner, we wanted to find this famous Casino in Nice. We found it, and thought it might be fun to go in! Neither of us ever having gambled at a casino, we could hardly work the slots.. embarrassing.. They get you when there's a coin slot and it says they're 20 cent slots but the coin slot doesn't work and it only accepts 10s, 20s, or 50s.. Not about to play 50 rounds of slots for 10 euro, sorry.. We wandered around,  looking like lost dogs I'm sure watching the crazy gamblers put in 100s and 50s. Decided to find a restaurant for our go-to: cheese plate and glass of wine :)

france does have great cheese, if I might add..

We're getting pretty good at the "wandering and finding cool stuff" thing..

main hotel in Nice

Our last morning in France, we wanted to see Nice! We had taken the train everywhere the other two afternoons, so we had seen these cool bikes you can rent. Perfect! Bike around, see the markets, port, etc. Well unfortunately you have to have a french phone to register your card with the meter thing.. So our spanish phones didn't work.. We resorted to walking, which was probably better for us anyways, and cut out a few stops.

Both of us being tired, we wandered off the shoreline into the city a little looking for a café. We happened to find the markets we were looking for! Tons of tables lined up with flowers, baked goods, fruit, vegetables, gifts, soap, everything!

my last real croissant!

great looking fruit

and so many flowers! the smell was incredible

random ones i liked :)

surrounded by beautiful scents

orchids, reminded me of home :)

and these are my new favorite flower, i think they're peonies maybe"

 Continued walking after the market stop to find the yachts along the port :)

But first, stopped for a cute little eclair!

We wanted some pizza for our last fun meal before the Spanish food began again.. But also had a flight we needed to get to the airport for at 3 pm. The restaurants opened at 12, so we had a diet coke while waiting for them to open.. Once again, expensive little thing..

Well, a yummy giant piece of pizza later and our food babies were ready for a nap on our flight to Barcelona, then Alicante, to conclude our first group of travels.

It was an incredible 8 days. 6 countries later, our eurotour concluded for the moment. Through all of the research and planning, packing, struggles, exploring, language barriers, great food, and good times, it was an experience I'll never forget. I learned so much about myself, as far as how organized I need to be and how I like to travel (research-wise and actually having a plan..). I've always known I was independent, but traveling Europe brings out an entirely different kind of independence. I quickly became the leader of the group, with the directional sense and the know-how to go the right direction on the trains (well, most trains :) ) And becoming responsible for not only yourself but two of your best friends brings on the responsibility pretty quickly. We were forced to figure out things I didn't think I had a chance at learning before. I think that's all part of the study abroad experience too, being thrown into a crazy world where you are now solely responsible for yourself. There were no parents or program directors to give us an itinerary or tell us how to get somewhere. It was a lot of work to plan, actually! But I quickly understood how worth it it all was. I saw so much incredible architecture, experienced so many different cultures, and realized so much about my outlook on life in such a short period of time. I guess that's what traveling does to ya!

Break numero uno, and back in Alicante for a re-coup weekend before heading to the real wild and crazy but relaxing part: Tenerife, in the Canary Islands with 12 of my closest friends :)

Let the pool lounging begin!


-k