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Hello! I am getting so slack at updating this thing so even though I am in Milan atm, I will tell you guys about the rest of our time in France! Lol, I suck, I know! But it’s better than nothing right? Hopefully!
So to break up the travels from Barcelona to Florence (it would take WAY too long to do in one go) we decided to stop over in Marseille, Nice and also Milan. First was Marseille, about a 5 hour train trip from Barcelona which went smoothly, yay. We were staying right across the road from the train station which was a very welcomed change as we could just walk straight out of the train and step into our hotel pretty much. A LOT easier than navigating taxis and directions!
Marseille is the oldest city in France and is maybe the 2nd or 3rd biggest. It was cute, but I was glad we were only staying a few nights haha! We did an afternoon boat cruise thingy which was interesting scenery (the commentary was entirely French lol) as they have some real crazy beaches in the little niches around the bases of cliffs etc, that look impossible to get to but would make for cool swimming! The trend of non-sandy beaches began – most of the beaches were a bit of rocks (yes, rocks in Marseille, not even pebbles; people sunbath on rocks. WTF) and then just dropped off into the Mediterranean ocean which is pretty cool in that aspect!
We spent a couple of days here, I got my jandal tan lines back which I was very happy about as it meant that we had proper sun! Yay! And we also caught a bus to the town of Aix en Provence (or however you spell it) which was a nice day trip :)
Next stop was Nice; we were both very impressed which was awesome :D We did the hop-on bus thing, of course, you know the bus I mean, right? Like the open top, double-decker, bright red obnoxiously painted “look at me, I’m a tourist” bus? Yeah, well we were sitting up top, enjoying the sun – I have actually come to like these busses on a sunny day because it kinda kills three birds with one stone (1. Sitting on my ass doing sweet f all, 2. Sightseeing and learning about where we are and 3. Sunning!) and as we passed the Matisse museum, a little s***t of a boy, about 16yo threw a balloon of water (not a water balloon, but just a balloon of water) up onto the top level. Best thing about it is, it sailed right over most people’s head and then wacked into the side of this poor old 70yo looking lady! Ha! !!!!! hhahhahaahha it was great! I tried very hard not to laugh, but it was hilarious!
Okay, back to the blog, Nice is super cute! Everything is so close that it seems like a very small city but I think it is actually quite decently sized. There is a little pedestrian mall street with boutique shops and restaurants, the shopping street has tons of shops (!!), the main promenade is right on the (pebbly) beach and then there is the old part of the city with little pathways and alternative stores, flower markets, restaurants and buskers. We got to watch a capoeira performance by these Brazilians on the side of one alley, and it was REALLY good!
We did a day tour that took us to Cannes which was very flash, and actually a very quiet town (apart from when the film festival is on). From here we went to Gourdon Village (a TINY village on top of a mountain that is in Provence) and St. Paul Village (which is VERY cool, tiny little windy paths that you get lost in, full of art stores and sculptures everywhere. Love it.). And in between these villages we stopped in at a Perfumery, as the Provence region is known for its perfumes, and also a Candy Factory. Yaya. It was funny cause the 4 others on the tour were madly buying up perfume (I wasn’t so interested) and then we got to the candy factory and I was the only one madly wanting to buy everything in the store! I ended up leaving with some oils for baking (Rose, mimosa etc etc), some coffee chocolates and some sugar covered Rose petals and Violet petals. It’s buzzy, it actually tastes like the smell of Roses and Violets!
The last night we were there we went to Monaco. What a crazy little town, man! There’s 32,000 residents there (to become a resident you need to a) have a clean police record, b) have 2mil Euro in the bank and not touch it for 2 years, and c) buy a piece of property – and it’s something like 950,000 Euros for a 25 square metre apartment!), and they have mental rules like fining people 200 Euros for littering (there are a billion or so cameras around the city to catch people doing it!). There is 1 policeman for every 32 people compared to France which is 1 policeman per 15,000 people! It’s the second smallest country and one of the safest places to live apparently. And most expensive I would assume.
Real cool though, we saw the palace, the race track for the Grand Prix was all set up so we got to drive around a bit of that, went into the casinos and had a yummy dinner also. Would def like to go back to Monaco for a proper look around, but think I will be saving a long time to do that lol!!
Now we are in Milan, and heading to Florence on Wed, so I will blog again from there :D love ya’ll xxxx
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