"Get up offa that thang..."
Day 8
Another early and snowy cold morning. Another long bus ride. Another trip without any catch up sleep. I am going to have the puffiest and biggest bags under my eyes when this trip is over. It’s worth it though, it’s going a lot better than what I thought it would be... making some really cool friends and having lots of laughs, which is what this is all about! The bus ride is a chance to catch some z’s, but most of us usually spend the time chatting and choosing songs on iPod’s to play. Which reminds me, we have a “wake up” song by the White Stripes which is played every morning when we get on the bus. It’s our song to get us up and going for another bus trip, I think it’s called “Hotel Yorba.” We also have a song that is played every time we are coming up to a rest stop - James Brown’s “Get Up Off That Thing,” very awesome song choices, I like both songs a lot and must download them when I get a chance to.
So we arrived late at the hotel in Nice because their Carnivale is just finishing and every man and his dog is trying to get out of the town. We were supposed to arrive earlier than we did so we had at least an hour to get ourselves ready to go to the dinner in Monte Carlo, Monaco... we had 15 minutes instead. That was fun! We raced up to our rooms, touched up our makeup, sprayed deoderant on and changed our clothes and made it back to the bus with time to spare. Who says females can’t get dressed and looking nice quickly? Me and the girls are proof that this once we could do it!
The bus ride to Monace was short and uneventful. We passed the street and cliff where Princess Grace Kelly died and also went through the tunnel where the Monaco Grand Prix drivers race through as well. Monaco is exactly how I remembered it-small, beautiful and plenty of great things to see. You should have seen some of the fancy boats we saw after we parked the coach and got off. They would put the boats in WA to shame and back. We did a small walking tour which lead us to the “Palais” (would have loved to have done a tour but it was far too late to) and then to the Monte Carlo Casino, before going through the back streets to the restaurant where we would be eating our optional dinner.
It was in this small Monte Carlo restaurant where we were served another 3 course meal (holy crap I am going to get so much fatter than I already am on this tour!) which was so great and yummy. We got a antipasto type dish which was like a foccacia pizza and this champagne cocktail, I had the chicken and vegetables for dinner (although I scraped the sauce off) and then we had icecream for dessert (which I secretly think was Vienetta!). We also got free wine, which was mediocre (thanks Dad, you’ve turned me into a total wine snob... the French wine so far is CRAPOLA) but drinkable. Dinner as usual was a rowdy affair-this group is great at talking loud, drinking lots and shouting over each other whilst laughing lots. Need I say that the group comprises of mostly Australians?
Once dinner was finished, we walked back to the Monte Carlo Casino where we found out it was 10 Euro (crap, don’t have the Euro symbol on this computer) to enter. Yeah screw that, I wasn’t paying 10 Euro to walk inside when I didn’t have any money on me to gamble. Not many people ended up going in, so those of us who didnt walked around for a bit, took lots of scenic and silly photos and then ended up going to the cheaper and less fancy casino around the corner. Nicole won 20-something Euro on one of the slot machines but I had no coins to play that night, I completely forgot to withdraw any cash to do it. Drinks were so expensive in there as well-5 Euro for one Sprite or Coke! Rip off!
We only had a short amount of time in Monaco before we had to get back on the bus to go back to the hotel, so we walked around a bit more and took some more photos before meeting everyone to get back on the bus. Again mostly everyone went back to their rooms when we got back to the hotel... Nice is where we can recharge the batteries before we go down to Italy because apparently in Italy it is going to get crazy busy big time. Oh, by the way, our bathroom is blue. EVERYTHING is blue... even the bidet. YES, we have a bidet. And NO, I dare not use it!! :P
P.S. Have I mentioned it’s cold here?
Another early and snowy cold morning. Another long bus ride. Another trip without any catch up sleep. I am going to have the puffiest and biggest bags under my eyes when this trip is over. It’s worth it though, it’s going a lot better than what I thought it would be... making some really cool friends and having lots of laughs, which is what this is all about! The bus ride is a chance to catch some z’s, but most of us usually spend the time chatting and choosing songs on iPod’s to play. Which reminds me, we have a “wake up” song by the White Stripes which is played every morning when we get on the bus. It’s our song to get us up and going for another bus trip, I think it’s called “Hotel Yorba.” We also have a song that is played every time we are coming up to a rest stop - James Brown’s “Get Up Off That Thing,” very awesome song choices, I like both songs a lot and must download them when I get a chance to.
So we arrived late at the hotel in Nice because their Carnivale is just finishing and every man and his dog is trying to get out of the town. We were supposed to arrive earlier than we did so we had at least an hour to get ourselves ready to go to the dinner in Monte Carlo, Monaco... we had 15 minutes instead. That was fun! We raced up to our rooms, touched up our makeup, sprayed deoderant on and changed our clothes and made it back to the bus with time to spare. Who says females can’t get dressed and looking nice quickly? Me and the girls are proof that this once we could do it!
The bus ride to Monace was short and uneventful. We passed the street and cliff where Princess Grace Kelly died and also went through the tunnel where the Monaco Grand Prix drivers race through as well. Monaco is exactly how I remembered it-small, beautiful and plenty of great things to see. You should have seen some of the fancy boats we saw after we parked the coach and got off. They would put the boats in WA to shame and back. We did a small walking tour which lead us to the “Palais” (would have loved to have done a tour but it was far too late to) and then to the Monte Carlo Casino, before going through the back streets to the restaurant where we would be eating our optional dinner.
It was in this small Monte Carlo restaurant where we were served another 3 course meal (holy crap I am going to get so much fatter than I already am on this tour!) which was so great and yummy. We got a antipasto type dish which was like a foccacia pizza and this champagne cocktail, I had the chicken and vegetables for dinner (although I scraped the sauce off) and then we had icecream for dessert (which I secretly think was Vienetta!). We also got free wine, which was mediocre (thanks Dad, you’ve turned me into a total wine snob... the French wine so far is CRAPOLA) but drinkable. Dinner as usual was a rowdy affair-this group is great at talking loud, drinking lots and shouting over each other whilst laughing lots. Need I say that the group comprises of mostly Australians?
Once dinner was finished, we walked back to the Monte Carlo Casino where we found out it was 10 Euro (crap, don’t have the Euro symbol on this computer) to enter. Yeah screw that, I wasn’t paying 10 Euro to walk inside when I didn’t have any money on me to gamble. Not many people ended up going in, so those of us who didnt walked around for a bit, took lots of scenic and silly photos and then ended up going to the cheaper and less fancy casino around the corner. Nicole won 20-something Euro on one of the slot machines but I had no coins to play that night, I completely forgot to withdraw any cash to do it. Drinks were so expensive in there as well-5 Euro for one Sprite or Coke! Rip off!
We only had a short amount of time in Monaco before we had to get back on the bus to go back to the hotel, so we walked around a bit more and took some more photos before meeting everyone to get back on the bus. Again mostly everyone went back to their rooms when we got back to the hotel... Nice is where we can recharge the batteries before we go down to Italy because apparently in Italy it is going to get crazy busy big time. Oh, by the way, our bathroom is blue. EVERYTHING is blue... even the bidet. YES, we have a bidet. And NO, I dare not use it!! :P
P.S. Have I mentioned it’s cold here?