Last but not least: Nice (pronounced 'Niece')

For our last stop, we were debating going back to Spain for a little while (Madrid and around), or the southern coast of France (Nice) to the French Riviera....so basically seeing more basilicas and town squares and castles....or the beach. Even though it would've been nice to have traveled around Spain some more (especially considering my job), we opted for the beach (shocker). Hey, I haven't started working yet. 

We stayed at another nice hostel (ok, our standards of "nice hostel" are basically if it has a bar/restaurant attached to it where everyone is hanging out...the rooms/bathrooms aren't necessarily great, but what do you expect in a ten-person dorm room?). We've been having good luck with the hostels -- we stumbled upon this grouping of what is called "Europe's Famous Hostels" when we randomly stayed at one in Italy by chance, and ever since then we've been trying to book them whenever we could. And it was another good call -- a little ways away from the city (5 minute drive), but they had a free shuttle van running until 2am like every 10 minutes. Pretty ideal. 

Anyway, day 1 we went out Monaco for the day, where everyone was driving around in their super fancy cars and going to the Monte Carlo Casino...while we laid at the beach all day. Now this is the beach part of the vacation I had been waiting for. 

And day 2 we did the same...except this time in Cannes (you know, the place with the film festival). So I stopped to get a picture on the red carpet like a bunch of other saps, and then, yep, more beach time. Pretty relaxing way to end the vacation...definitely not regretting the trip to the French Riviera. 

It was a eight-hour train back to Barcelona today, where we are now. And guess it's the last post...because tomorrow it's an early morning flight back to Michigan! And back to reality...

Living the Highest Life in Pair-ee

We decided just to bite the bullet and live the high life in Paris—stay in a five-star hotel along the banks of the canal near the Eiffel Tower, grab some snails and frog legs as a snack in little French bistros, and spring for a 300 euro t-shirt in Prada. Okay, fine, you caught me, we didn’t actually get the t-shirt—not because it wouldn’t have easily fit in our souvenir budget—but because they didn’t have Justin’s size.

Alright fine so we stayed in a hostel. And trying duck, ratatouille, and croquets were as daring as we went. We did go in those shops…I just had to pause first to hide my fake rip-off Ray Bans (literally, they are rip-offs of rip-offs) in my purse. And then they broke when I was trying to stuff them in there…

We spent the first day and a half exploring the city and going on a couple of walking tours around Paris. We actually met a guy from the University of Michigan at a little café who, turns out, was in Honduras in August working in La Union for a few days as part of a microfinance organization…this is also where I was last August because it’s where one of the Abundant Life schools is. He said he met some of the teachers—who knows, maybe I met him! Small world. Actually, we haven’t met all that many Americans on this trip. We’ve met some Americans and Canadians, a few people from Central/South America, a handful of Asian people, quite a lot of Europeans, and A TON of Australians. On one of the tours and in our ten-bed hostel room we were the only Americans! Times are tough…

The second day started off with a trip to the Notre Dame. We went inside the church and then climbed the winding staircase for a few extra euro to get to the top, basically just because our guide from the day before told us that, if we were lucky, we might catch a glimpse of the hunchback. We didn't, but I did see this sloth-man trying to be a hunchback...

Next we went to the Louvre. Now, the Louvre is great and impressive and all, but most of all it is just obnoxiously and unnecessarily huge. I think our tour guide said if you were to walk it all twice you would have walked a marathon. I mean, really, an entire corridor dedicated to Northern Irish oil paintings of Central British Kings from the early 15^th century? Ooookay. At some point you’re just letting old lesser-known and amateurish paintings sneak into the Louvre’s collection because they fit with a theme. Just point me towards the Mona Lisa already; that’s all anyone wants to see anyway.

So we finally did find her and when we did it’s just kind of funny, because it’s just this little painting on this huge wall...



...opposite like the largest painting in the entire place.



And this painting is literally behind this 5 foot thick wall of bulletproof glass. What do they think I’m going to do, shoot her? So we stared at her for a little bit…what do you do with art, really? Okay, so maybe I’m not the best person to go to an art museum with.

But I had vowed before we got in that we would spend at least four hours in this thing. And we tried, we really did.  So we ambled through a few corridors filled with ancient Etruscan sphinxes (sphnxi?) from the early medieval era; we traipsed through the halls depicting artifacts and recreations of the great Napoleon’s apartment-mansion; we moseyed around a wing dedicated to sculpture from the Low Countries portraying the ancient gods of the early 2nd century B.C. All this while snooty ladies are yelling at me in French to shut off my flash. And then, an hour and a half in, even Justin goes, “After a while all of these paintings start to look the same.” And then just two hours in I imagined Justin saying, “Man, I can’t wait to see the colossal statue of King Ramses the Second.” (Or at least I hope I imagined it.) So by hour three I’m literally collapsing on the ground at King Ramses’ feet, and it’s then that we decide we can’t subject ourselves to this any longer: we high-tail it out of there before we completely lose our minds beyond repair.

We grabbed a bite to eat (tried some French delicacies) and then did the best thing you can do in Paris and fulfilled my lifelong dream of swimming in the fountains beneath the lit-up Eiffel Tower at nighttime. (Why isn’t that in the guidebook?) Okay, so I didn’t even know there were fountains beneath it until I got here. But had I have known, it would’ve been my dream. What a great way to cap off our trip to Paris…and now it’s off to our last stop: the French Riviera.