The Beauty of the French Riviera!

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Nice was amazing.  It was good to get back to the extremely hot tempretures since we had become so used to them in Spain. When we arrived we didnt really know what we were doing except that we had to tkae a bus and then call the hostel for a ride to the Hostel.  Well we got to the bus and took that to the place we were supposed to but when we tried calling them, we did not have the correct number.  Luckily a girl that was staying at the hostel arrived 5 minutes after we got there and gave us the number.  The bus took us way up onto the hills of Nice and drove into what looked like a private house.  The hostel was in true Mediterranian style and was beautiful!  It had a huge common room with massive stainedglass and cheap food and drinks. The staff was supper friendly and all spoke perfect english, the few that were actually French.  The rest were Aussi's and Brit's.  They also provided a great breakfast and also loads of free computers with internet, although two thirds never worked.  The first night we made the poor decision to walk down the big hill and grab food from the super market because on the way back we ended up getting lost on the wrong side of the valley, having to go back down adn then up the other side.  So the rest of the time we ordered the 5 euro thin crust pizza the hostel made.  So for 6 euro's you got a 500ml beer and a pizza perfect size for a meal.  Beauty!

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The first day we headed to Monaco and had a blast.  We first checked out the Palace and the anticlimatic changing of the gaurds and then grabbed some lunch and sat with an amazing view of the country, the entire country.  We then headed back down from the hill the Palace was on and headed towards the Monte Carlo Casino along the harbour road.  The most amazing cars live in Monaco.  The sheer amplitude that these things passed by was amazing.  The first parking lot we came to had three jaguars, brand new, a BMW 6 series with styling I didn't know existed, and a brand new Ferrari Enzo, black.  From there on the amount of exotic cars that we saw was knee weakening.  Anything from a newly released Aston Martin DB9 to a Bently Continental to a Classic Rolls Royce.  This along with some of the nicest, and largest yachts with everyone on them in the same yacht titled t-shirt.  After this we came ot the Casino where even more exotics were.  Shawn took a spin at the casino but Dan and I decided to not pay the cover.  Shawn won huge and we all drove away in Lambourghini's.  Aside from this, we headed back down to the town and looked at the most beautiful Formula 1 track and I was very tempted to buy some Renualt gear. The only thing was it didn't match the Lambo.  Pity really.  That night there was some girls b-day party and we had a blast with everyone at the hostel.  It turned out, the next day, half the people there were staff, so we knew everyone fairly well.

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The next day, we met two Irish guys on our way to the beach who told us about some big Hurling match in the afternoon.  So after a day at the beach, swimming with testy jellyfish and baking in the sun, we headed to a near by Irish pub with the two Irish guys.  I had never seen a hurling game before but it was intense, and hard hitting.  It was a great game but the team the guys were cheerring for lost and they were fairly unhappy for a bit, or atleast until the next round of Guiness was bought.  The next day we finished our stay in Nice and headed off to Italy, Cinque Terre!