Riva Menton

ok, it was more "collecting a new country" than being really interested in Monaco. Strange, when you go there from Nice airport by bus it costs you 18 € one way, when you go from Nice bus terminal it costs 1 € one way. Monaco is a very clean city. I have never seen so many big and expensive cars. I saw the casino and the castle. Nice, but not spectacular.

I know I always write the same...great weather, such a nice city, good food....but I have to say that Nice was a (very) big surprise for me, I can say that it is my favourite city in Europe (ok, number 2 after Lisbon). You have the mountains, the Cote dŽAzur (when you see the water you know why the name is Cote dŽAzur), the market with fresh vegetables, fruits, honey, oil, soap, you have great restaurants ...

... upon me it feels very strange and somewhat daunting. But to my knowledge no one has ever died from teaching children so I am sure I will survive.... My Amazon book order should arrive soon to inspire me. I am really looking forward to discovering the 100 things you can do with a paper plate. Life is never going to be the same!!

More when I start travelling...

... if we want to via a plug in the side of Scooby. We've only hooked up to mains twice and found that we can charge all our gadgets from the leisure battery without running out of power. Laptop, Camera, phone, iPod, eBook and GPs. The fridge goes 3 ways off Mains when plugged in, off battery when the car is running and off gas when stationary. Mad Mary We have a GPS with EU maps installed. She was christened Mad Mary by the previous owner due to her sometimes ...

On this morning we left Switzerland and travelled south into Italy en-route to the French Riviera. The scenery was pretty spectacular, with snow-white capped, jagged mountains that seemed to swallow the highway. Surreal!

When we arrived at our hotel we had about 30 mins to get ready for our trip into Monaco! On our drive to Monaco we crossed the bridge that Grace Kelly was killed on in a car accident. The roads are ...

... chick who looked after Dee was delightful and even though she also did not speak much English, Dee tried as much french as she could and of course those amusing hand gestures are always helpful, and Dee thinks that through this combination they were mostly able to understand each other.

Unfortunately our sun-bathing and pool time that we had put aside for the weekend didn't quite work out as planned as it was overcast and rainy (bloody weather report on poddie is not to be trusted ...

... All our days are spent walking around the tiny streets which are filled with cafes, Boulangerie (Bakeries), and Patisserie (Pastry Shops), which are heaven, we have been overindulging on these lately but we keep going back for more. Every morning we head to the marche (outdoor market) to get our fresh ingredients for the day and have a pan aux chocolate along the way.

... the Hotel dedn't expect to arrive so they had to wait until 6pm before they could give it to us. We sat in the bar while the staff were counting down the minutes along with us over a drink. We had visions of someone arriving as we were getting the keys and then a big hoooha etc but it didn't happen at all. We got the room and went upstairs and opened the door to an amazing view and ...

... dinner locally. It was a good excuse to save a bit of money and we ended up finding a yummy little pizza place in town that costs half the price. After dinner we walked down to the waterfront and grabbed some icecream and desert also very yummy. We then headed up the steep hill to the Grand casino where the others would be. Some people from out tour paid the 10euro to get into the Grand Casino but most of us just used ...

In our quest to outrun the Mistral, we ended up in Menton, on the border of Italy and France. What a great place! Excellent food, chilled out town, not outrageously expensive, killer beach. Yowza. The italian food was really good and cheap, and I had the absolute best tiramisu ever ...