fast cars and freedom

This post brings me to the next stop on my European adventures tour...Nice, France (and its surroundings).

We had been planning this trip for a while because, for some reason, Nice was super cheap to fly to. After visiting Rome the weekend before, Tatum decided she could use a coastal vacation on the French Riviera as well (let's be honest, who couldn't?), so she decided to join us.

I'll continue the saga with Earl Falsity #12: Fridays are NOT always open for us...

This Friday in particular was the due date of our final exam before the start of ISP period for our big research projects. We were initially told (or so we thought...?) that Friday afternoons were always open for students to travel. However, this particular Friday, this was not the case. We had to hand in our TAKE HOME final that was given to us the prior MONDAY that Friday at EXACTLY 16h00. Why? I could not tell you. But after threats that handing it in earlier (yes, handing in an assignment EARLY) would be "suicide" and that we would be docked points if the papers were submitted early via email, we decided we didn't really care after all, handed in our finals at noon, and were off to l'aeroport. Merely the start of our adventures...

After waiting at the airport for about an hour still not having been assigned a gate, I get a text from Tatum telling me that the Nice airport has been closed and that her flight had been re-routed, mid-air to Marseille, 2 hours outside of Nice. Cool. As the rest of us still in Geneva frantically tried to get information (a nearly impossible task with Easyjet), before a gate even came up on the departures board, our flight came up on the screen at the gate we happened to be waiting at and about 150 people magically appeared in a massive blob at the door to the plane, pushing, shoving, and trying to conceal that ever-problematic forbidden second carryon, all in typical Easyjet organized fashion. An hour and half late, we were FINALLY off to Nice.

As we flew over the crystal clear waters of the French coastline and were literally 10 feet off the ground, the plane decided to NOT touch down but rather, take off once again and fly for another 20 minutes due to "operational problems." We were assured that this was completely normal. Sine when are operational problems ever completely normal?

Landed, we receive word from Tatum that she had been put on a bus from Marseille to Nice and should be there in about 2 hours. The kicker? She was supposed to get in 3 hours before us...

FINALLY getting into Nice, we reached our hostel, the little beacon on the hill that it was, and checked in. To paint a picture of our 13 person dorm: there was a man who talked to himself constantly and smelled like feet sleeping above me, an old couple sleeping next to Chelsea, the man of which looked like a Grecian god (not in the good way...), and then there was Dennis. Dennis the supposed escort who has had an 'extended stay' at this hostel for the last...YEAR. There were 2 signs taped to our door advising Dennis to keep his belongings off of other guests beds. Best line of the trip-Lauren to Dennis at 4 am after his wild night: "I know you can understand me, can you please be quiet? You are being TRES RUDE."

After being too exhausted to do much that night, we ate at the (really great) restaurant in the hostel and went to bed. The next morning, we woke up and took a bus for 1 euro and 30 minutes to Monaco and Monte Carlo. What a magical place. I've never felt so poor in my life, but at the same time, it was possibly the most beautiful place I've ever seen (and I got to feel like I was in the James Bond movie upon visiting the Monte Carlo casino, so that helped). Fast cars, big boats, great fashion, the track of the Monaco Grand Prix, the Prince's palace, etc...all along a beautiful coast lined with perfectly kept gardens and cliffsides.

The remainder of the evening was spent back in Nice sitting on the beach for 2 hours with a bottle of French wine watching the sun set. I could not have been happier. I won't talk about the nightlife of Nice because there isn't really much, but I will say on the first night, we got introduced to European electro-punk in the most firsthand way possible...yikes.

The next day we walked through the famed flower market (which sold fruit, vegetables, soaps, lavender, spices, pretty much everything) and climbed to the top of the ruins (forgot name??) to find the so-called 'magnificent cascades' (eventually gave up on trying to find them, only to get a glimpse of them on the other side of the cliffs after we had made the descent back down) with our bags and all, we are such troopers.

I think I've come to the conclusion that, as wonderful as the tourist destinations are, I am much more a fan of the less populated locales where you actually have to make an effort to speak the language, aren't constantly bombarded by people dressed like gladiators trying to sell you things (for the last time, no, I do not want to go on a bar crawl through Rome, nor do I want to buy your bracelets that say "Venice, best friends forever"), and don't have to be on such a strict schedule to see x, y and z. Nice and surrounding was much more up my alley, and it's only gotten better from here...