Day Five: Day In Nice! And Night in Monaco!

After much deliberation over the useless ticket machine only accepting coins and nothing else, we boarded the train to Nice. When we arrived only 25 minutes later, it was the most beautiful day. As we approached the shops for a relaxing day of shopping and chilling, we walked into the Notre Dame of Nice and saw a table covered in Palms. It was Palm Sunday. Next to no shops were going to be open.

Before coming to terms with our failed shopping attempt, we stopped at a busy cafe on the main street and got a great cappucino. Mind you, Dax and Lauren bought disgusting watered down iced coffee things and Marc and I just revelled in their disappointment a little too much.

 We wandered down the streets and came across quite a few shops that were open. We all bought a few souvenirs and then headed down to the beach. Along the way we passed the cinema; "Pathe", and toyed with the idea of watching a french film with no english subtitles - just for the fun of it. But then decided against it. We saw the cutest little Will-Smith's-child-lookalike on the street:

Wow such a pretty beach. We spotted a very French looking restaurant with cute blue umbrellas on the beach and decided it was our lunch destination.

We ordered from a rather rude French waiter who obviously knew we could not speak much French at all. The Pizzas arrived and we were a little disappointed with the bulky cheese toppings that had hardly melted, but it only served a reminder that Italy was around the corner and Pizza was going to be exceptional there.

After lunch we went and lay down on the deck chairs in the sun out the front of the restaurant, only to be ushered away for refusal to pay a 15 euro day hire fee for what we had assumed was part of the restaurant. Stingy Europeans. You pay for everything it seems in Europe - even the toilet, and everywhere too! We paddled in the mediterranean sea - just because we could! Was a touch cold but exciting all the same.

The Hotels and Casinos along the beach side looked expensive and classy. Nice was a very stunning place. This photo, taken from a view which we unfortunately did not get to see, really shows how beautiful this part of southern france really was;

Next, we wandered through the shops, making little discoveries along the way;

We headed back to the train station and met everyone else. We got back to the campsite in no time at all with a short amount of time to have dinner and get dressed up in our formal attire to go to Monaco!!! We were all very excited! Everyone looked gorgeous. Even the boys whipped out their best for the occasion. Along the way we all were taken back by the outstanding beauty of the Cote D'Azur. It was just unbelievable! We stopped and just had to take a few photos;

We arrived in Monaco - the so called separate 'state'/'country' in itself. Monaco looked amazing. Garai counted down our approach to the official starting line of the Grand Prix and Marco sped up the bus to build the excitement. We passed Grace Kelly's memorial also, on our way to the Royal Palace of Monaco. Garai led a walking tour of the Royal Palace and Cathedral which really added to the experience, but was quite a walk considering half the girls were wearing rather high heels - myself included!

The view right near the Palace was just incredible....

We headed back down to the bus and made our way to - wait for it - THE Monte Carlo casino!

After deciding that it was good enough seeing on the outside and not making a fool of ourselves by betting any of our budget away.. we checked out the ridiculously expensive cars parked outside the nearest flash hotel. Felt like royalty standing next to these million dollar cars..

We still wanted the casino experience, so we went into the Sun casino right beside the Monte Carlo and bet the minimum (5 euro) on roulette. It was all good fun really. The excitement was contagious and dangerously tempting to keep going while you were ahead. I came out with 1.50 Euro profit which I was happy with haha. Another guy on our trip left Monte Carlo with a 250 Euro profit which was most impressive! Drinks on him - was the general consensus of the bus.

We made our way back to the campsite, dropping some of the boys off at McDonalds along the way... Oh only a 35 min walk from McDonalds to the campsite. Wayyy too much effort.
Sleep occupied everyone's thoughts and to bed we went. Rather satisfied with our busy day of sightseeing... and our last day of "La francais belle".

ITALY TOMORROW!