how NICE is this??

After spending the beginning of the week wrestling with the decision of whether I should travel that weekend or just stay in Lugano to save money, I finally silenced the exhausted part of my brain and decided to travel to Nice, France. I knew that I would look back and be angry with myself if I didn't take advantage of my rail pass and seize the opportunity to see the south of France while I could.

Thus, myself, Megan, Mitch, Jack and Jordan booked a hostel (praying it would look better in person than it did in the online pictures) Thursday and boarded our train early Friday morning. We took a series of trains and were greeted with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean sea and sunshine only 8 hours later. We found our hostel pretty quickly and were pleasantly surprised when it looked more like a nice hotel than a scummy place for backpackers to sleep (prayers answered!!).

We were anxious to see this beach in person, so we dropped our things, grabbed a quick bite and headed to the beach. The sun put us in a great mood and we spontaneously decided to grab a couple of bottles of wine while passing a supermarket. The store owner was really nice and told us all about the organic wine, and we listened politely until he realized that we were only interested in the cheapest bottles. He opened them for us and waved us goodbye, promising he would come to America one day.

When we got to the beach, we found a nice spot to sit and sat back and relaxed, grateful for the chance to smell the sea and listen to the waves for the first time in a while. We watched as tourists seized photo opportunities, sometimes assisting them in doing so, and as little children approached the ocean and then ran from the waves screaming, only to courageously repeat the process. We sat there and perfected our rock-skipping techniques until the sun set and then we headed back to shower and figure out plans for dinner. We spent a lot of time hanging out in our hostel and then wandered out in search of a cheap and easy option for dinner. After walking a few blocks without luck, our frustration and hunger took over and led us to KFC where I ate fried chicken! America!

After dinner, we took off in search for Wayne's Bar-- a place that that everyone who had already been to Nice said we absolutely couldn't miss. We found it eventually and hung out by the bar where I made friends with a newly engaged couple from Georgia. She proudly showed off their professional photos from the Eiffel Tower proposal and I attempted to find mutual friends by listing about everyone I knew who goes or graduated from UGA. We talked about life and she told me everything she wished she had known when she was 21 8 years earlier (the standard "live it up!" and "don't waste time on stupid boys!" speech). A couple of drinks later, we headed home, exhausted from our long day.

The next day, we woke up late and the front desk man recommended a place called Wally's for lunch. It had the feel of an Applebee's, with random objects from American culture stung on the walls, but with a bit of a diner feel. The place was packed and despite the crowds, the staff still managed great friendly service. We ordered the burgers and couldn't believe it when they were some of the best we had ever had. They even had little baby american flags stuck in them! Look how cute they were! Overall, a successful lunch!

From there, we went to the station and took a 30 minute train ride to Monaco. When we got there, we followed signs to Monte Carlo and walked around the gardens in front of the casino. Then we ventured into the casino itself, hoping that our attire would be nice enough to get us in. Nobody seemed to mind our jeans and we walked in, intimidated by the luxury that surrounded us in every direction. That's when I heard my dad's voice in my head ("Why are you nervous? Walk in like you own the place!") so I rolled back my shoulders, picked up my chin and strut into the casino confidently. Hey, I was a princess for all they knew! Megan and Mitch played the slots.. lost immediately.. and then Jack and I tried our luck at the roulette table. He made me go first so that if I embarrassed myself he could learn from my mistake. I put 5 euro on the table, the dealer handed me a single chip and I place it on my lucky number 16! 18 seconds later, I was 5 euros poorer. That's when Jack put his on 11 and I reminded him that 11 was the one that was just called. "What?! It was?! I should have played when you did! I would've won!" He spent of the rest of the day beating himself up for making me go first and dreaming of what could have been.

We walked around Monaco for the rest of the afternoon, checking out the extravagant hotels, cars and yachts. My favorite part was walking along the marina and inspecting the insane number of megayachts that were squeezed in side by side. When we were done planning out our dream boats and imagining what we would do with so much money, we grabbed gelato and walked back to the train station.

When we got back to Nice, it was raining so we lounged around the hotel and then went to dinner. We were determined to actually get a good meal, so we walked to the Old Town (The Colley Ave. of Nice, except times like 20) and settled on one when we found a menu that we liked. Our three course meals consisted of delicious Caesar salads, various seafood and steak dishes (paired with their corresponding recommended glass of wine.. only the best for us wine connoisseurs) and ice cream desserts! I ordered an amazing and shared with Megan, who got linguine with salmon. YUM!

After dinner, we went out to a massive club that was another "can't-miss"on the list of things to do. That's when Mitch bought two rum and cokes, not realizing it that they would cost 15 dollars each (we could not stop laughing) and I made friends with a 30 year old woman who had an entire VIP section to herself and her 4 friends. She thought I was funny because I responded with "comme ci, comme ca"when she asked me how I was. I still don't get why that was so funny, it just means "so-so", but whatever, it got me into VIP! We were really confused when it was suddenly much later than we thought and then we realized that the EU daylight savings time occurred. Time travel!! Weeee!! Back to being 6 hours behind the US. We walked home, of course not before Jordan jumped down onto the beach and and insisted on feeling the water, and our doorman (man, this hostel is NICE! ..get it??) greeted us.

The next morning we woke up, checked out, and spent our last few hours in Nice back at our favorite spot at the beach, this time without all of the wine. Around 2, we walked to the train station and headed home. Our trip home was much smoother with less connections and we got home much faster, arriving in Lugano around 8. The presence of a ginormous hunk of chocolate also aided in the quality of this train ride. Happy Easter to us!

Next weekend starts our final 10 day break: Amalfi Coast and Greece! Until then!

linds

hey czech this out!!! -- prague

During the weekend of March 21st-24th, Megan, Rachael, Emily, Taylor and I traveled to Prague, providing me with my first overnight train experience. We arrived in Zurich around 7:00 Thursday night and left for Prague at 8. During our hour-long layover, we ran to a nearby supermarket to buy cheap red wine, brie and crackers- all part of our genius plan to make our train experience more enjoyable.

We got on the train and then soon found out that the 6th bed in our sleeper car would be filled. We were nervous about our stranger roommate and swapped "what-if" stories until the train came to a screeching stop and we realized this person would join us at any moment. We grabbed our belongings and secured them and then felt silly when we met this nice German mountain man who was probably more intimidated by us than we were by him. After all, WE were the ones blasting Taylor Swift, drinking out of wine bottles and passing around hunks of cheese. His english wasn't great, but we bonded over the fact that we were both wearing Patagonia jackets. He was actually nice to have around, considering we were all about to die of a heat stoke when he managed to pull open the window (we may or may not have screamed when it finally budged and we were blown back by the air pressure that rushed in). He left our car and went to the restaurant car with his friend, so we didn't have to hang out with him too much.

Sure enough, our plan worked brilliantly and the red wine put us to sleep only a little over an hour after boarding, even despite the claustrophobic and rattling environment. We still slept close to our belongings, not fully trusting the mountain man, but we all slept through the night without trouble, giving us perhaps one of the longest nights of sleep we've had all trip (12 hours!! unheard of!!!). We woke up, brushed our teeth in the teeth brushing room and boom! We were in Prague!

Trying to get to our hostel was not easy, even with our specific printed directions, because every sign was completely foreign to us. In other countries, we can usually figure out certain phrases and get around with ease, but not in the Czech Republic. I guess we missed a sign because we realized when we got on the subway that we never paid for a ticket (woops... I should probably be in Czech jail right now) and we somehow got to our hostel, where we converted our Swiss Francs into Korunas. The currency (20 USD= about 405 Czech Koruna) exhausted my mental math skills by the end of the weekend.

After leaving our luggage in lockers (too early to check into our room), we made our way to Old Town Square to meet our free tour guide. We got there with an hour to kill before the tour, which was good since the square was jam-packed with merchant tents set up for the notorious Prague Easter Markets. We walked around admiring the hand painted eggs and indulged in Trdelnik, a traditional Czech pastry that reminded me of a churro. We also sampled hot wine and sausages.. yum!!

Then we met our tour guide and mentally prepared ourselves for a freezing 3 hour tour. For anyone else, this may be miserable, but we are seasoned veterans of these things so we were prepared with toe warmers and extra layers. Our guide took us all around the city and told us about Old Town Sqaure and the Astronomical Clock, Charles Bridge, the Church of Our Lady, the Old New Synagogue & the Golem, the Old Jewish Quarter, Prague Castle, St. Nicholas' Church, the Prague uprising of WWII, the Jan Hus memorial and more.

Back to wearing our "uniforms"

After our tour, we went back to our hostel and got ready for the famous Prague Pub Crawl. I've heard about this particular pub crawl from a ton of people and everyone says it's a must-do. Before leaving, we decided to get dinner at Belushi's- the bar that is connected to our hostel. We figured this would be quickest and would leave us plenty of time to walk to our meeting place for the night. WRONG-O!! The food took forever, causing us to have to scarf down our food and take a cab to the bar. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because the can wasn't expensive and we got there much quicker than we would've if we had walked. The pub crawl was AWESOME. We arrived just in time and headed to our first bar, where we had unlimited drinks for an hour. Then, we stopped by a few other bars with various drink specials and finally made it to the last stop: a 5 story club that played different music on every floor. We spent most of our time on the oldies floor, where we knew the words to almost every song and we could dance like idiots without anyone caring. We finally ended up walking home, but not without first stopping at a place called Burrito Loco- the closest thing to Taco Bell I have found yet.

The next morning we slept in until 11 and then walked to a place called Bohemia Bagel for brunch. Despite having to wait for our food for a while (what is it about Prague and taking forever to make food?), the meal was pure heaven. My bacon, egg and cheese bagel was the first one I had since the day I left the states and MAN was it good. Going from having a bagel basically everyday to not having them at all has been a tough adjustment and we were all nearly crying happy tears at the sight of a real bagel sandwich.

Afterwards, we walked over to Prague Castle and did a self-guided tour. Inside the castle walls was an entire village and they had replicated rooms and dungeons that made it easy to pretend we were back in the medieval time. The cathedral in the center of the village housed stunning stained glass that reflected all throughout the church. Beautiful.

Next, we walked over to the John Lennon wall, a wall that has been a canvas for anti-communist quotes and symbols of peace since the 1980s. We spent some time reading all of the graffitied tidbits, took some pictures and then moved on.

From there, we walked back to the Old Town Square to explore the markets some more before dinner. We consulted our handy TripAdvisor apps on our iPhones and found the perfect place: a tavern that brewed its own Czech beer and offered a wide variety of cheap Czech food. We recieved our first round of beers and ordered our food, anxious for our meal when out of nowhere the power goes out. Everyone got our their phones and some started playing music. We just sat there laughing and continued drinking our beers, hoping it would come back on soon. Our waiter said it would be back on soon and brought us another round before coming back and breaking it to us that it would be more around 2 hours. We left in search of another TripAdvisor gem and found it a few blocks down the road. Starving, we ordered more food than we could eat and couldn't believe how good it was when it finally came. We all ordered different dishes and passed them around. I had the pork brisket and Megan ordered a stuffed chicken breast. The best was Rachael, who ordered an entire pork knuckle that ended up being bigger than her head! By the end of dinner we could barely move.

before the lights went out.

and after!

Rachael's massive pork knuckle!

After dinner we went back to the hostel and freshened up before going out again. We hung out at the Belushi's bar for a little while and it got late very quickly. Exhausted, we packed up our things and went to sleep.

Sunday morning we woke up and had breakfast in our hostel before taking a cab to the train station. Due to construction, we had to take a bus instead of the normal train to our first stop, which we thought was going to be horrible. It ended up being better than any train, offering plenty of room to recline and relax in big leather seats. The ride home was a little different from the ride there, since it wasn't overnight, but somehow thanks to a plethora of books and movies it passed by pretty quickly. Before we knew it we were back at the Montarina... left only with the task of studying for our exam the following morning... Yikes.

Next weekend: Nice, France!

linds