Explorations in France and a visit to Monaco

The next morning (January 2), we had free time. I slept in for a bit and then went downstairs to make sure I got in on breakfast. I was going to try and explore Nice with a couple people, but instead I decided to take one of the Australians to the Laundromat and walk her through the whole process before I wandered off on my own.

The start of my day.

First I went to the Contemporary Art Gallery. It was interesting. Although most of it was extremely weird, they did have a really cool exhibit about a guy who makes art by exploding gunpowder into different patterns across the paper. The upper floors also had a pretty fantastic view of the city. Other than that, it was pretty standard weirdness.

Gunpowder artwork.

Closer view.

View from the upper floors.

Next I went to explore the Old Quarter. I was already hungry, so I bought myself a beautiful and delicious raspberry tart. I found a neat old cathedral that had light eerily and majestically streaming in through the windows, and then I took a glimpse around the market. The market was right near the water, so I went over by it before I went to explore more in the newer section of downtown.

The Old Quarter.

Yum.

The church I went into.

Outside the church.

Inside the church.

A beautiful January day.

By that time I had decided that I needed to find myself a crêpe to buy and I wasn’t very interested in looking through the shopping district. I wandered through the little carnival that was there and then I finally found myself a crêpe that had CANADIAN maple syrup on it. It was delicious. Then I just headed back to the hotel.

Europe loves ferris wheels.

Cute doggies.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing and writing in my journal, and then I visited with some people before we got all dressed up to head off for our dinner in Monaco. Angie had told us to dress like we were celebrities, so everyone dressed up nicely.

We got to Monaco and walked around a bit on our way to dinner. We got to see (in the dark) the castle, the cathedral, and a lovely view from atop the hill (which would have been amazing to see in daylight as well I’d imagine).

Cathedral.

Castle.

The view.

The dinner that night was delicious. I had a goat cheese pasty as my appetizer, then a wonderful plate of salmon with a dill sauce, and some yummy chocolate cake for dessert. When dinner was over, we got back in the bus and headed to the Monte-Carlo Casino, the oldest casino in Europe.

We had to pay €10 to get in (that’s how swanky it was), and it would have been great to take photos in there because it was BEAUTIFUL. Every inch of wall and ceiling was filled with elaborate paintings and carvings. I didn’t gamble that night, but lots of others did, and all but a couple lost money.

Outside the casino.

When everyone was finally ready to go, we drove back to Nice. Pino was ready to let us off the bus downtown, but no one wanted to go out in their fancy clothes, so we all went back to the hotel. Some people went out later but I just decided to call it a night.

January 3 – as per usual on our travel days, we got up nice and early so we could pack out. Then we headed straight to the perfume factory for our tour there. It was somewhat interesting to hear about how they make perfumes, but the stench of the whole building was so overpowering that I just couldn’t stand it. I didn’t spend any time shopping in their store, I just went back to the bus and waited with a few other people while everyone else finished up their shopping.

From the factory, we drove to Aix-en-Provence for lunch, and it seemed that there were some issues with the toilet on the bus. Angie told us that we weren’t allowed to use it any more. When we got to Aix-en-Provence, we had some free time to find food, and I was with a fairly large group that ended up finding a nice little café to eat at. I didn’t take any photos of the town.

Next we continued driving to Avignon. We finished the rest of the introductions on the bus, and with Jag as the very final introduction, he lied about everything he could think of (for example, the fact that he was “19 and a half” but “married with 3 kids”).

When we got to Avignon, we had more free time to explore the town. Bianca and Mai and I headed up a hill next to a church in the square we had been lead to, and got to a lovely garden area. We had a nice view from up there, and it was beautiful just as the sun was starting to set. Then we walked through the downtown area and found some food and other things to buy in the shops there.

Church.

The view.

In the gardens.

Big elephant statue in the square.

In town.

City Hall.

Back by the church.

When our free time was up, we all got back on the bus to head to the hotel that was apparently in the middle of nowhere. Angie had already warned us about that though, so people had stocked up on alcohol that they would be able to consume later that evening.

We got to the hotel and took all our bags to our rooms. The hotel had no elevator, but luckily we were all on the first floor (except Eric, Derek and Jag – the old guys from Vancouver). That was when a couple of people noticed that their bags were soaking wet and smelled of piss. People were getting pretty upset, especially since only one person had been consistently using the bus toilet, so they blamed it all on her.

Luckily it was only 3 bags that got wet (the backpacks because of where they had been placed beside the toilet), and even though the one girl had JUST washed her clothes in Nice, she took it really well (“I get covered in piss at work every day anyway”). She filled up the bathtub in her room, added some laundry detergent, and threw in her clothes, and some stuff from the guys whose bags had gotten wet.

Our dinner that night was just in the hotel restaurant and (as per usual), it was chicken and chips. After dinner, we just got to hang out around the hotel. It was the first time we had gotten free access to the Internet, so we were all trying to use it (it was REALLY slow). I started trying to upload some photos while people were playing drinking games, and I ended up leaving it there uploading for the whole evening.

The drinking games got pretty rowdy, and by the time they all decided to pack it in, there were quite a few of them that were really drunk. I was still in the lobby visiting with people, but we pretty much got sent to bed when one of the guys broke a glass. He blamed it on me though because he had been reaching behind my chair to put the glass on a table, and I had moved my chair a bit because I thought he needed to get by. This caused him to lose his balance and the glass smashed onto the floor.

An Italian New Year

**Big long post that starts heavy on photos, and ends heavy on writing.**

December 31 – We all packed up and were on the bus bright and early. We drove to Pisa for lunch and had some free time to look around. I walked around by myself taking photos and looked inside the church. I didn’t go into the tower because I didn’t feel like spending the money.

Cathedral with the leaning tower in the background.

Inside the cathedral.

Nativity scene inside the cathedral. Featuring the leaning tower.

We got back on the bus and drove to La Spezia. Then we got off the bus and got on a train that was headed to Monterosso. The ride was absolutely beautiful, even though it was hard to see much. Every glimpse we managed to get was perfectly picturesque.

We got to Monterosso and had free time to look around. A couple guys decided to swim in the sea, but I just wandered around with some people. We found a little café and stopped to have a bite to eat. After eating, we just wandered around the town a little more before we had to go back to meet everyone and get on the train. When we got there, a bunch of guys had bought fire crackers to celebrate the New Year, and Angie’s boyfriend was helping set some of them off. She wasn’t too happy about it, but he didn’t stop until a police officer came by and asked him to.

View in Monterosso.

I think this is what you could consider "downtown" Monterosso.

We got on the train and headed to the next town. By the time we got there it was already dark out, so we couldn’t see much. It seemed like a really small place though, so I’m not sure how much there would have been to see anyway. After we were there for a while, we got back on the train to go to La Spezia for dinner.

The restaurant was incredibly small, and we were really packed into one room. My table was pretty cool though because we had 5 Canadians at it. Only 1 person at our table wasn’t Canadian, and there was only 1 other Canadian in the whole group that we were missing. The meal was decent, we had pasta and then chicken and chips (soon to become a theme), but kind of a weird dessert.

The town we visited after Monterosso (I don't remember its name).

We got set up in our hotel and had some free time before our Contiki party. I was tired so I decided to have a nap, and I barely woke up before we were all supposed to meet downstairs. We were in some sort of conference room and everyone had cracked out the massive amounts of alcohol that they had purchased earlier in the day to celebrate.

Then a bunch of the guys (and Angie’s boyfriend) started setting off the firecrackers on the balcony. Setting off firecrackers on New Year’s Eve is a big thing in Italy, so you could hear loads of other firecrackers being set off all around the town.

When it was getting a little closer to midnight, we set off to find a street party to celebrate the arrival of the new year. There were tons of little street parties all over town, so we found one that we liked well enough and stuck there until the countdown that wasn’t a countdown and everyone just started going around saying “Happy New Year!” Angie even gave each of us a sparkler so we could celebrate properly.

A bit past midnight, we started walking in search of another street party. There were tons of them, most with musicians playing up on a stage, and crowds of people celebrating and lighting firecrackers. The crowd following Angie thinned as people got lost along the way, but I wanted to go back to the hotel, so I just kept following her.

I went to bed pretty soon after I got back, but then I ended up having to get up to let my roommate in when she came back. Twice.

I woke myself up early the next morning so that I could count down to the same New Year celebration that my family was counting down to back at home. We got to sleep in, so I stayed in bed for a while before I finally went for some breakfast and packed up my stuff.

Effie decided that she needed to wear a special outfit for the first day of the year, so she wore her onesie. Some other things included. I suggested that she go for the 1 boot, 1 shoe look, so she did.

Effie's look for the day.

Leaving late seemed to mess everyone up. We almost left 2 guys behind when their alarms hadn’t gone off because of the new year, and one guy almost forgot his wallet. We got everything sorted out fairly quickly and then we were off. We needed something to do on the drive, so we started going through introductions where everyone had to go up to the mic and say their name, where they were from, agge, an embarrassing story, and the colour of their light (green – single, orange – it’s complicated, red – taken). We stopped for lunch at what was essentially a truck stop, and I had a big buffet meal, and since I had bought a Coke, they gave me a Coke glass with a Santa on it.

We got to Nice that afternoon and had free time until dinner. A whole bunch of people headed off to the Laundromat, so I went with them just in case they needed help translating things. It was an extremely confusing set-up for laundry (there was even some water-extractor step thing in between the washer and dryer), but we managed to figure it out with a combination of the terrible pocket translator Jag had brought (it didn’t seem to translate things very accurately), my knowledge of French, and the English-speaking owner who came through and helped us out. A man and his son came in and made the mistake of paying for their machine before they put the clothes in, so they lost their money when the washer locked up and starting washing its own empty self.

After the adventure with the laundry, we went back to the hotel to hang out for a bit before dinner. My roommate had gone on a jog and apparently ended up so far from the hotel that she was lost and had to taxi back.

That evening we decided to walk into town for our dinner. It was in the basement of a restaurant, and it was a decent meal. The food definitely seemed a lot richer and heavier than the food we had been eating in Italy.

After dinner, Angie took everyone who wanted to go out to a bar where you could dance on the tables. I was tired, so I headed back to the hotel with a large group of other people who didn’t feel like going out either, and went to bed.

Next - More of France!

Onto Florence and the Italian Countryside

**EDIT. Thanks to Anonymous for naming all the landmarks that I never bothered to learn the names of. I have now added the names to this post.**

December 29 – We got all our bags packed up and got on the bus to go to Florence. So many people were hung over from the open bar. I think a few were even still drunk. When Angie went around handing out barf bags, tons of people took one. I was sure someone would spew and set off a chain reaction.

We got to San Gimignano without any troubles or spewing to stop for lunch. It was incredibly beautiful. I ended up wandering off on my own to take in the view, and walked along the edge of the city. By the time I got to the end of the trail, I had found some people, so I decided to just stick with them. I had some pizza for lunch, and we looked around and shopped a bit, and I made sure to get some gelato before we got back on the bus.

Looking through the old city towards the view.

The view!

Walking around the outside of the town.

Walking through town.

We got our rooms for Florence assigned while we were on the bus, and I found out that my roommate got switched from Bianca to a girl that had just arrived late the night before. We got to Florence and had some free time before our included dinner, so I had a nap.

The dinner was at a weird restaurant with bizarre murals on the walls. Everything was very gaudily coloured and over-the-top. The dinner wasn’t very good either. We had mediocre garlic bread, boring spaghetti with tiny chunks of meat and watery sauce, salad that was essentially pure lettuce, and not a good dessert.

After the dinner we went to a bar for karaoke. It was pretty fun. People were ordering huge towers of booze with firecrackers on top, so that was pretty neat to see. Unfortunately, some of the songs didn’t have lyrics, so that made things a little hard. We did convince Angie to get up and sing though. As per usual, there was only one legitimately good singer the whole time I was there, and she wasn’t from our group. I left early because I wanted to be able to get on our bus for free, and I was pretty tired anyway.

The next day we had an early wake-up. I got up, had breakfast and got ready to go, and then we headed up the hill to get a good view of Florence and take a group photo. That was where we saw the first replica of David.

View of Florence from up on the hill (it wasn't the nicest day).

Then we went to a leather factory downtown so we could learn how they make Florence leather boxes (for jewelry or other things) with layers and layers of leather. They also told us how to spot fake leather, and then we got free time to look around their shop. They had tons of beautiful things, including Florence puzzle rings, but even with the Contiki discount they were offering us, I couldn’t find anything I liked at a price I was willing to pay.

Santa Croce on our way to the leather factory. Even though there's a Star of David, this is a church, not a synagogue.

After going through the shop, there was still a little time before we had to meet our local guide for our walking tour, so Bianca and I decided to go into the Chanel store to stay warm and dry off a bit from the rain. There were tons of sales clerks in there (even one to open the door), and we did feel a little like we were being jerks just for wasting their time, so we didn’t stay long.

Once our tour guide got to the meeting spot, he walked us around for a while. He wasn’t quite as good as our first local guide, and sometimes he was a bit hard to hear, but he was pretty good, and he did point out that the David’s hands are too big for his body, which I hadn’t noticed before (2nd David replica of the day).

This replica is much better than the one up on the hill.

There were some chains where people had attached all kinds of locks.

Ponte Vecchio - cool bridge.

We ended the tour at a big, fancy church (the Duomo), so I looked around that a bit because we had some free time. Then I decided to go find some food with a couple other people. We found a tiny little Mom & Pop café near the church run by an older couple who hardly spoke any English. They were adorable and kept us well fed, giving up some free bread and little meat/cheese (/I’m not exactly sure) filled pastries as appetizers. We had a delicious little lunch (I had gnocchi), and the prices were good too.

Duomo - church.

Inside of the church. Surprisingly simple in comparison to the outside, no?

After lunch, we headed towards the Accademia to meet Angie and get our tickets. The museum itself was a bit of a let down. It was cool to see David, but there wasn’t much else there, and the stuff that was there was not stuff I found particularly interesting. They had a section about musical instruments (which was not nearly as good as the Sibelius museum), some old artwork, and a room full of statues (which wasn’t explained very well). Since I had already seen 2 replicas of David that day, it wasn’t even all that exciting to see him, but it was neat to get the full effect of him being displayed in such a grand room.

I really blitzed through L’Accademia, so I ended up leaving with a different group of people than I came with. We wandered for a bit before we decided to go find some gelato (supposedly “the best in Florence”). We found it (with some help from Angie after we ran into her), and although it was really good, the serving was entirely too small for my tastes!

After we met up with the rest of the group, we got on the bus and went back to the hotel. We had a bit of free time to get ready for dinner, and then we were off into the Tuscan countryside for our fancy Florence dinner.

The dinner was pretty good. We got to eat a big ol’ roast pig. They even put a sparkler on it as they brought it out. The best part of the meal was the table I was at though. Everyone was having a great time. We were the only table that danced to the YMCA, and we danced to a bunch of other songs too. We were sitting right next to the old man that was DJing, and he had a great time finding things like The Macarena for us to dance to. We even did the electric slide when the South Africans at my table were trying to teach it to us.

Straight from dinner we headed off to the disco. We all had cards for 1 free drink (I gave mine away). Everyone had a great time dancing everywhere (stages included). I caught a cab home when a bunch of other people decided they were ready to go, and I spontaneously got a nosebleed when we got back to the hotel, so I just waited outside for it to stop (and my roommate to come home with the key).