Four Seasons in one Day? Try Four Countries!

Hey all,
Well, we left lovely Lauterbrunnen and headed off to Naughty Nice! The bus ride over took us on quite a trip! Quite a delight really! And this one’s for Caleb! We thought we’d never get to go to Italy, but our Busabout trip to Nice was right through Italy! We got stopped at the Italy border, and was all asked to get off the bus, and our bags were searched and had a sniffer dog too! Those Italians really love their country, ey? But we figured they just wanted to check out the pretty girls – only the pretty girls had a ‘proper’ search – alas, I was not one of them. After about 6 hours of driving, and now well into Italy (which is just gorgeous by the way) we stopped for something to eat. And what do you know, Paul and Emily are at the same stop! It was such a shock, but was the best feeling to see such a nice, familiar face! Paul took a photo of me and Adam and sent it to my Dad. We then parted off, but going to the same place – Nice!

(Seeing Paul and Em in Italy)

After going from Switzerland, then through Italy, we travelled through the glorious Monaco! It was a very brief bus ride through, but we were determined to go back! We then arrived at Nice and luckily our hotel was 3 blocks down from the busabout drop off! And our accommodation wasn’t too bad, either! We we’re pretty happy! On the first night we met up with Paul and Emily and went out for dinner. Really great dinner at a rather reasonable price too – for Nice anyways. Nice, which is in essence the Cote d’Azur or French Riviera – is seriously super super expensive – for anything! So it was a constant mission to find budget food. After a late night of catching up on our travel stories, and heading down to the beach, we went off to bed.

Bright and early in the morning (which felt great to get up at 6am again! Truly.) We met up with Paul and Emily for some breakfast and to kick start our day! Our first stop – Monaco! We adored this place – and it was seriously loaded! Ferraris, Lamborghini’s, Mercedes, Porsche, anything crazy expensive, it’s there. We stood at the corner of Hotel de Paris for about half an hour watching all these amazing cars drive past, or to watch the stupidly rich people arrive and have the valet take their Ferrari – it was insane. But there is no wonder that the application fee to apply to live there is 1 million – it is a super nice place to be! We went up to the Palace, which was awesome cos we got to see the changing of the guards. The palace gardens are the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen – I wanna live there, can’t say I have an extra 1 million laying around – unlike Michael Jackson who applied to live there (and yes, the application fee alone is 1 million, even if you get rejected) and, well, lets just say he’s not currently a resident of Monaco. But Bono is! We saw his house, and he has his own private island. Quite nice. And we saw the Grace Kelly rock – the one she fell off and died – quite tragic really. But they loved her there! The city is as beautiful as she was. Simply stunning.

(Paul, Em and Adam in Monaco)

We then caught the train over to a place called Villefranche – a real hidden gem. Such a beautiful place. All the tourists go to the beached in Nice, but not many people know about Villefranche. The most gorgeous hidden town – if you walk along the beach you wouldn’t know the town existed. So we wondered the mini labyrinth and sat on some quaint steps amongst the 6 storey high walls that shaded us, and had a delicious French baguette with ham, cheese, egg, mayonnaise and tomato and lettuce. After a little relax, we headed down to the stunning beaches for some more relaxing in the hot hot sun. It was about 27 degrees or so, and not a cloud in the sky. And the water was crystal clear blue. And Paul loved the topless tanned beauties, baking away on the sand – but all the men did – these women were just gorgeous (fat cows…bitches…) simply stunning. We went in the water, and it was really quite lovely, even though I lasted about 20 seconds then had to get out. But it was ok, I laid on the san and worked on my tan, which is coming along nicely!

(Adam with one of the many very nice fancy fast cars!)

After that, we headed back to Nice, and had some really nice dinner and had a few reds with Paul and Em – Paul has gotten me onto red wine now – Tom, I’m sure you’re glad to hear that! Even though it was a 2 euro bottle, it was called ‘Bordeaux’ so you can’t go wrong! We’ll be stopping in Bordeaux soon too!

(View from Monaco Palace)

After our lovely day, we went off to bed – very drunk, and woke up with a bit of a head ache. We had some nice French breakfast – croissant and Nutella, coffee, and some of the Ovomaltine we got in Switzerland. Then we all headed off to see a bit of Nice – which is just a lovely place. The promenades, and boulevards, beaches and hidden streets are just oozing with celebrity style vacancés. Quite a nice preserved city – very boring and not a lot to see – this place is really designed for pure relaxation – sea, sand and sun. and sadly we had to finish up early, but only to head off for our St Tropez boat cruise.

We got on the bus and drove for quite a while – through the lovely Cannes and Grasse – I have never seen such gorgeous architecture – the French really got it right. Mind you, these houses were mega houses worth millions upon millions. Just gorgeous. Adam fell asleep on the bus, but my eyes were peeled out the bus window, wowing at all of these beautiful French villas – or mansions. What ever you want to call them. We then stopped at a place called Port Grimaud – which was a gem. Housed in complete walls – this was the exclusive and very private side of the Cote d’Azur – like a mini Venice – bridges, gondolas, and mini boutiques. Stunning. We then continued on down to St Tropez (pronounced ‘San Tropay’) and jumped on the yacht. We had an open bar so Adam and I made use of all the free booze – not matter how bad the beer was – I stuck to my red wine! And we got a commentated tour of St Tropez and Millionaire Bay. We saw Brian Adams house, Mohammed Al Fayyad’s, George Michael’s, Brigid Bardot’s, and the Heineken house – the most expensive in all of Europe, valued at 44 million euros. We also saw the L’Oréal house, Calvin Klein’s summer house, Mercedes house, and the Rolex house. And this one is for Lauren – Johnny Depp’s house! And we also saw P.Diddy on his brand new mega yacht – taking it for a test drive. And the funniest thing – the paparazzi helicopter – they would chase boats! And get as many photos as the can and would just spend an entire day just chasing speed boats and yachts. They even came over us!

(Villefranche - just gorgeous!)

So that was Nice! Lots of fun, lots of sun, can’t beat it! Who made heaven a place on earth?

Love you all,

Ash and Adam in Nice.x

P.S - we got some amazing photos and we wish we could put them all up on this blog - but we can't. So we've put them into albums on Myspace. Follow this link for the Albums and just browse through - you will probably have to go to the second page of albums to see the photos from the Cote d'Azur. Here's the link:



http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewAlbums&friendID=149380279