Turf Hotel Cagnes-sur-Mer

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.

... have an amazing view from Colline du Chateau. On saturday (November 28) we had sunshine and 19 degrees (end of November) and I was even swimming in the sea (15 gegrees), on sunday, November 29 we had rain and thunderstorms so that caused a delay of the plane of three hours. Best breakfast in town you find in "Les pains a tables" close to the market. Nice is a city IŽd love to visit once a year minimum.....

It is Sunday and very wet and miserable here in Antibes. Quite a change from the glorious day we had yesterday. Ideal for computer work in fact... (Except that then things didn't pan out as planned and it is now Monday)

It wasn't my intention to have an entry before my departure but the response to my initial circular has been so overwhelming that I feel it merited an ...

... peculator brewing, and more often than not scrambled eggs. Lunch is usually a baguette stuffed with loads of fresh salad, stinky cheese (the smellier the better!!) and Parma ham. Our dinner staples are Spaghetti Bolognaise, Pork Fajitas, Hamburgers with the LOT, Cous Cous ala Gill with chicken and of course no meal starts without the obligatory Ham cheese and olive tapas and a bottle of wine. The other stuff We need to make up our bed every evening as it is made out of ...

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 ...

... the french 'boules', which is where lawn bowling originated from. One guy had a very interesting style of chucking his ball up into the air and it would magically land in the right spot and knock out the opponent's ball. We sampled some delicious macaroon dessert thingies, which the new Lindt chocolate store in Chaddy sells and they call them 'delice'. Well, whatever they were, they were awesome, the lady at the store cut up a whole lot and gave us mini taste tests, as there were many ...

... hotels and apartment blocks in the direction of Antibes, a mix of ziggurats and hanging gardens with their layers of terraced rooftop gardens. We'd noticed these on our drive through the day before - huge, very modern, but striking and distinctive.

After an hour or so we decided to make our slow way back to the campsite. We stopped for a break in the town, having a beer at a street bar; we also found a patisserie open during the siesta ...

... and took it all in... I window shopped all the high end designer stores and had to laugh when I noticed that these stores are open for like 5 hours a day. Maybe this is common in Europe where they value that leisure time more than we do, but I also just figured when the people are going to drop that much you don't need the quantity. The one thing that I did love about Monaco was the yachts!! The harbor was just utter ridiculousness. Its just really hard to ...

... that was empty with what looked like miniature spouts. Obviously it was a fountain, but dry for some reason or another, maybe cleaning. But we saw pictures of it when it was filled, and you could actually go in it! Almost like a mini water park! We stopped at a little place to eat lunch, where we all had salads except Erin. Kara had a salad with cheeses and walnuts, Dana had one with crab meat, Erin had a breakfast dish (a crepe with eggs fried in it), and Ashley and ...

... all of a sudden she called someone, walked out of the hostel and motioned for me to follow her. So I did and we crossed the street and walked into a hotel. She paid the guy at the hotel (a lot more than what I paid her for the hostel) and the guy, who did speak English, gave me my own hotel room. It was very nice. I guess the hostel was overbooked, so I was given my own hotel room. Other than getting about 40 bug bites that one night (I counted 11 on one foot alone), that was ...