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HI Everyone
Well what a wonderful place Nice is. We were there for four nights and could’ve stayed longer.We did a day tour from there to the Provence countryside which started with a stop at a Perfumery at the city of Grasse. Grasse is considered to be the world’s capital of perfume. It was really interesting & I just had to shout myself a bottle.
From there we drove up to Gourdon - a lovely little medieval town built high up on a hill where we had lunch looking out to a fantastic panoramic view of the countryside. Then our next stop was at a candy factory where they crystallized rose & violet petals in sugar. What Amy saved by not buying any perfume she certainly made up for in the candy factory!!
Our last stop was at another gorgeous medieval village called St Paul de Vence which is apparently the second most visited village in France. It was full of art galleries & little antique shops with lots of little cobblestoned lanes, statues, fountains and sculptures. ElizabethTaylor apparently has a room booked all year round there she loves it so much.
Our other highlight of our few days in the French Riviera was Monaco. It’s the second smallest country in the world after Vatican City & perhaps one of the safest with 1 policeman to every 32 people compared to Nice only next door with 1 policeman to every 15,000 people!! A little city full of security cameras ready to fine you $400NZ for dropping litter so it is also very clean. They even are out in the middle of the night washing the streets!
They had set up for the Formula One race that starts on May 13th so we got to drive part of the circuit. That was interesting to hear all about the race & how locals rent out their apartments for the three days to international press for exorbitant amounts like $50,000Euros just for three days.
Went to Monte Carlo where the casino is & what an awesome building it is, also the hotel there called Hotel Paris. You have to show your passport when you go to the casino & they say this is so they know if you are a resident or not because residents of Monaco are not permitted to gamble in the casino!!
Nice itself is also a cute town & the old historic part was full of great energy with lots of people, restaurants & little alleyways full of shops. Nice is right on the coast so the beach runs forever but what a weird beach - it's not sand but large pepples & everyone just lays on their towel on these rocky blimin pebbles. Very strange.
From Nice we trained to Milan for a quick 2 night stopover on our way to Florence & we are glad it was only 2 nights. The rain didn't help & it poured so one afternoon we took ourselves off on a shopping mall tour. They told us to bring our passports & we ended up going to what we thought was like a Dressmart mall but this was in
Switzerland!! And yes it was like Dressmart with everything 30% to 70% less than retail but it was all designer stores like Prada, Yves St Laurent, Guicci...OMG there was nothing in our price range!!!
Also, couldn’t get over the amount of graffiti in Milan. It was disgusting.It was everywhere -even all the beautiful shops full of designer gears at night they pull down roller doors which are covered in graffitt.Yuk…I thought welcome to Italy.
But……..then we arrived in Florence. Haven’t seen any graffiti & just love this city.
We arrived yesterday and are staying for 7 nights & have got a great apartment thanks to Amy!! So I will say Ciao for now then let you know how we get on here. xxxx
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