Sunday
So we had decided to go to Monaco on Sunday, since we were only a 45 minute train ride away from there, even though we realized that on a Sunday morning, all the rich people are sleeping in and all the shops are closed, so we wouldn't see too much. We took the 10:01 train to Monaco and got there shortly before 11, and walked out to a huge harbor filled with superyachts. These yachts were absolutely massive, and had home ports from all the glamorous places all around the world. Absolutely amazing to see how much money people would spend on them.
After wandering around some, we eventually stumbled upon the Monte Carlo, so we took some photos of it and meandered around the absolutely gorgeous landscaping outside of it, that as far as we could tell, was just maintained by the principality. It seemed a lot like the medians in our roads, but that the bill for the landscaping probably cost more than building the road to begin with...
We eventually found the tourist center and decided that we were going to walk through Monaco. First on our way was the shopping mall. It wasn't that big and nothing was open, but it was absolutely gorgeous. All marble floors all over and crystal chandeliers over the staircases.
After that, we walked over to the Japanese Gardens. It's a Zen-inspired public garden and one of the free things for us to do. If you haven't started noticing a theme, we were definitely doing Monaco on a student budget (i.e. $0).
We decided that we were all getting a little bit tired from the whole weekend and decided that after we saw the palace and the cathedral, we would go back to Nice and get ready to go home. On our way to the palace and cathedral, though, we ran into Mark and Chad, two other GTL students in Nice. They said that they were going to check out the town while Eric was going to catch up to them, so we convinced them to come with us. A quick lunch was first at a market that was just about to close up (I got a chicken cheese and tomato panini) and then climbed up the staircases to the palace at the top. We didn't take a tour of the palace, but we did walk around the corner and go to the cathedral around the corner. Unfortunately, my camera's battery died there, but we didn't have too much more time there, so I was somewhat lucky.
After walking through the cathedral, we took our time getting home, and actually missed the train back to Nice by about five minutes, so we had to wait another hour. We decided to get some gelato while we waited for the next train that was coming in an hour. Once we got back to Nice, there wasn't much time besides dinner at a Chinese take out place, picking up our bags at the hostel, then going to the train station to catch the train home.
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| The Japanese Gardens |
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| The cathedral in Monaco |
Great pictures. Too bad your batteries died. Monte Carlo is beautiful. You'll have to go back once you've earned your first million or won the lottery!!!
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