Nice, Cannes and Monaco - May 22-23

This weekend was action packed. Not only did we find our place to stay last minute, but the Grand Prix was in Monaco and the last day of the Cannes Film Festival was happening. Amazing.

It's not that I meant to forget it. it's not a forgettable trip. It was just sandwiched into a few weeks and I forgot the weekend... Ok, so I forget.

We started off at something like 6AM on our way to Cannes. The night before, we had the great idea of going to Milan to go out for the first time in a while. Although it was fun, it was a late night... Later, we learned how to make it work. The drive over was gorgeous and fairly uneventful. We drove along the autostrada, which is not exactly the way to do it, but we wanted to get there fast.

We got in town fairly early, parked our car and went off to Nice. I've already been to Nice before and to be honest, it's not that wonderful. I guess it was terribly hyped up for me as well, so it made it a lot less wonderful. Although Nice has a gorgeous little old town and a nice view from the old castle, that's about all it has going for it. The beaches are pebbly (which nobody believed until they saw it) and the town has a lot of old people in it. It was nice for a day, but I definitely wouldn't spend more than that there. There's far nicer areas on the French Riviera. We took some pictures and wandered around. The guys really wanted to eat at a place with a good view. I really don't like eating at those touristy places. it's usually terrible food for 2-3 times the price it should be because they think they can justify it with the view. There was one exception, there's really not much of a view. It's a bunch of umbrellas over the ocean. I had a seafood pasta... which wasn't that spectacular, but oh well.

That evening, we went to Monaco. The train ride there was relaxing. The train goes right along the coastline, so it was quite a beautiful ride. There were tons of people going to Monaco, but not near as many as the next day. Since we didn't get tickets, we wanted to go the night before to see some of the action. Wandering around town, we saw the track which the racers drove on the next day and practiced on the day before. We had dinner at a lovely small restaurant on a bluff which overlooked the bay area. It was a nice location, high cost, but good food... so it passed. We had some pita and hummus, but they gave us falafel sauce instead of hummus, so we got another order of it for free.

That night, we just wandered around the Grand Prix track and Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo had SO many expensive cars parked in front of it. I think the most memorable was the Tesla, the eclectic sports car. It was bright orange. There were also cars that were flown in from the UK and Dubai. Some of the cars made Ferrari look like it was cheap. It was nuts how these people can blow so much money in one weekend without a care. There were also a ton of gorgeous yachts, probably those people who also own the nice cars.

The next day, we went to Cannes. The film festival was having its closing ceremony that evening, so we were just walking around before it and taking pictures of outside the film festival and around town. Cannes is a beautiful small town with sandy beaches. I only wish we got a chance to go when the Film Festival was going on and there were people around. Maybe we could've bumped elbows with someone famous.

The second day, the guys also wanted to eat on the beach, so we at somewhere which also had pretty terrible food for not a great price. The view was the only thing that compensated... the view of an old lady without a top on. I had an overly oily chicken, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, so I suppose I should be thankful.

That was about all for this trip....