Barcelona to Nice

December 14th 2006 barcelona->nice

From spain to nice

well our time in Barcelona is over.... begining to realise that 2 night in the one place, really means you arrive into the city, late afternoon, get one day to explore and then you're out of there early the next morning.

another long day on the bus, bit of a cold start to the morning with a temperature of 3 degrees... got warmer as the day progressed though cloudy and rainy most of the way. scored a sapre seat next to me, so i got to spread out and sleep! NICE!

played a game of perfect match... which was rather amusing... some of the answers were rather freaky! then we had a country quiz... which we came towards the bottom of the pile... mmmmmm some of the questions were hard..

though we did get 13.5/25 that's not to bad we still passed!

should mention that 90% of out tour is from australia, with 4 NZ, and 4 south africans, and one token american!and that there's a huge age range, of 17-36, with most people being striaght out of school at 18, and straight out of uni at 23... so it's a pretty young croud.

and i don't think i've mentioned it but i'm rooming with this really nice girl... but her only downfall is that she sounds like a tractor when she sleeps...but it's bad... i've been throwing things at her to try make her stop... no such luck... she's such a deep sleeper...

i think i'mgoing to make it my mission to work out a way to make her stop... that or just drink copious amount everynight, and knock myself out :O)

Arrived into nice at 6pm, lots of christmas lights up around the place, and theres this massive, and i mean massive ferris wheel outside the hotel... the whole town is in dissarray as they're ripping up the roads to lay down tram tracks... so everything is everywhere!

got taken to this little french restraunt around the corner from our hotel, got this cheesy pastry thing, followed by chicken, with weird garlic and butter potatos(not good at all) but the boys liked them so they got lots of exras from the rest of us... followed by a slice of icecream cake, with rasberry sorbet on the bottom,and vanilla on the top. interesting.

from there we followed dave and derrick like good little kiddies to a local pub, and one of their favourites.... called waynes pub...i should mention that it was derrick and daves day off tomorrow... so they drak lots! managed to score a fair few free sex on the beach cocktails... no idea how that happened, but they were really good... need to work out what goes in them cause they'd be a great one to try make when i get back...it was great, all the bar tenders were aussies, so you actually got what you ordered, and didn't have to mime everything...it was a cool pub, never been to a pub where they encourage you all to get up on the tables and dance! which we did of course!

it was really fun...it was a bit dissapointing that we had to leave at 12am cause they had to close...though by the looks of some people once they hit the fresh air... it was a good thing...somehow we managed to get ourselves back to the hotel... cant say our driver and guide were much helP! HAHAHA both needed to be helped home! and neither could remember just how they came to be tucked up in bed the next afternoon either!

loved the bathroom.... the shower was about 1/2m x1/2m and no shower curtain! lol meant a completely flooded bathroom was to be had which at 1am... was entertaining still impressed i didn't fall and break something!

December 15th 2006 (free day in nice)

no wake up call today thankfully, got an actual sleep in.... well until 9am! would have been extremely easy to sleep longer than that, but i felt guilty being in a whole new city, and i can sleep after the tour right..Headed downstairs for breakie... got to love the fact that my roomie really isn't a morning person... and these continuous early mornings are really getting to her! it's funny... and i know i shouldn't laugh but it's hard not too... even funnier that most of the time the phone ends up being on her side (evil aren't i) so every morning,she has no choice but to answer it!

headed out for a walk about town.... still strange seeing the sun begin to rise around 9... walked down to the beach. lots of people out and about, all along the street people were selling fresh christmas trees, it's funny in the way that all of the real xmas trees here are already mounted on wooden stands... which is kind of cool, cause you don't have to go through the hassle of trying to get it to stand up unsupported once you get it through the door..but at the same time... i guess it wouldn't last as long. they definitely don't have the traditional piney smell to them either... which is a shame... but it does make it feel all christmasy.

it really doesn't feel like christmas at all... i guess cause we've been so busy and all and christmas is one of the last things we've been thinking about, as there's so much more happening before hand.

anyways, back to the beach... many of you would already know that most european beaches don't have sand... they have pebbles... and this was no exception, there were tons of them everywhere, all with the same flat shape, and not all that uncomfortable to sit on.. the water was actually fairly warm, though the cold afterwards wouldbe a killer. the colour of the water was an amazing blue colour. the colour you'd normally associate with the great barrier reef, which is a surprise, cause most of the water over here is more of a brown colour.... and rather icky.

after relaxing at the beach for awhile we headed up along the main street, and found the train station (extremely exciting i assure you!) before finding a random internet place, to check emails, and send off a few to start organising possible jobs for when i get back to london.

from there we all decided to check out the local shops! found a monoprix, which seems to be a shop that sells a bit of everything, it has deli, mini supermarket, then about 4 floors above with clothes... kind of similar to Big W and K-mart back home, only with a small designer lable section... ended up picking up a bagette and ham and some drinks for lunch there, for our picnic on top of the hill.

kept wandering along the street checking out shops here and there... got totally lost...anyone who knows me should know that i cant read maps! hahahaha, but i told them that.... but no one listened!!!! hahahah and i got us lost good and propper... but hey we got to experience the back streets of nice! eventually worked out that we were going in completely the wrong direction but on the right street... (i was kind of going the right way... just in the wrong direction....) and i blame the fact that we went in one door of this shop and came out via another that looked exactly the same! so eventually we found ourselves back on the main street and headed back towards the beach, before following it along till we got to the chateau...

group decison to take the elevator rather than climb the stairs... they were all hungry so we caught this scary little lift up the middle of a rock, and then we were a top La Chateau...and oh what a view...the lift opened to reveal and amazing view over nice.... and being such a lovely day you could see forever,

lots of littleorange topped roofs, for miles... and the water looked even more amazing from up there.... i think we all just stopped and just looked before all the cameras were out and we were all snappy happy!

found a few park benches and sat down to enjoy our >3 euro lunch (cheapest yet!) overlooking nice. afterwards walked around the top admiring the views from all angles.... and taking way to many pictures...we headed back down the stairs... so we could admire it more as we headed ownwards...met up with a few others that were thinking of heading up, and told them that they had to go up so they did...every city that we've been to so far seems to have it's own colour scheme.... here it's the orange roof tops...there's not a single house with a roof any other colour but orange, and it really looks spectacular.

wandered along the beach for awhile, before disturbing the silence with a few heated rock hopping competitions! before heading back to the Albert... our strange hotel! (got to love the safe windows... most of the hotels we've been at have floor to ceiling windows that open right out... and they obviously haven't heard of fly screens, it's just a freefall... not all that safe if you have an adventuous kid... though the boys have found a new past time, of hitting locals on the head with peanuts...scary thing is their aim is getting better... so it's not safe to walk under the hotel we're staying at anymore!

had a bit of time to play around before getting ready for our night out in monacco... boarded the busfor our scenic trip along the winding coastal roads, nice and high up in the mountains, (well it would have been scenic had it not been dark! but the lights were nice!) took us about 30mins to get to monacco, whih looked like a glowing orb from afar, the whole place was lit up with thousands of lights.

headed up along to the palace, where our gang of 50 contikites were quickly hearded on by the security, as you cant take pictures, especially in big groups... must have looked like terroists or something, us all dressed up nicely and armed with cameras! following a contiki guide!

found our restraunt for our dinner, with only a few wrong turns... helps having a guide that can find his way around...tried rabbit.... which i can say i've tried, will probably never eat again... but i can say i've tried it....  had the best dessert though... this brownie type thing that wasn't a brownie but it was really good!

wandered past the palace again, and got evil looks from the guards...and boarded the coach to head to the famous monte-carlo casino!

lol it had to be one of the funniest things ever.... the whole place was empty except for 2 or 3 people playing on the tables..and in walks 50 young people clumped together, who are so obviously not the people you'd want in your casino! who have just been scamed out of 10 euros to get in! to find the cheapest thing you an do is the 1 euro pokies... hahaha but even then... it took us like 15mins to realise that in order to work them... you needed to exchange your money for chips!

lol... the guys in the cashiers booth were mocking us all!and as we walked though, all the people working the tables just stood and watched us.... hahahah.

of course there were a few who decided to test their skills on the tables, and of course as soon as one of our own as playing, everyone would crowd around... (a funny site too!) the cheapest table was 10 euros... and they went up to 10,000 euro's! everyone HAD to use the loo.... i say that because the toilet were unique here... they were all electronic and operated by sensors, it's flush by itself, then this cloth would come out, and the enire seat would then roate completelya round and the cloth would clean the seat, ready for the next person...and of course being the idiots we all were... all you could here were giggles from the toilets.... hahaha the strange lady collecting money must have thought we were nuts!

some decided to have cocktails which cost them a whooping $30 each...eventually everyone congrigated around the entranceand we headed to the sun casino... the one more in our price range... and we didn't have to pay to get in... always a bonus our poor tour guide discovered a new game.. the hightest card wins... and lost a whole heap of money... while another tourmate won it all!!!!(one was definitely not a happy chappy! :O) spent an hour or so there, before heading back to find that the coach had be banned from stopping because our driver had decided to try cleaining the bus outside the casino, and they didn't like that, so they'd banned him from coming back to get us! so after hiking it up the hilll, we eventually found our bus, and headed back to town!