Day 1: Nice, France- “Nice is Nice”
We stayed at the most amazing Hostel yet! Villa Saint Exupery (rated one of the top hostels in the world). Was a cute villa up in the hills of Nice where the whole staff was from Australia. We woke up, took a shuttle downtown (Luckily we bought tickets because our tram was raided by the Police!) where we found a cute fresh flower and fruit market. We bought lunches consisting of a French baguette, pesto sauce, strawberries, and cheese and made our way to the beach in bikini’s! Found a spot up against the wall where the “rock beach” sand was semi-soft and didn’t move until 5pm that evening when the sun was setting. The Mediterranean sea was too cold to swim in, but it was beautiful to look at!
Around sunset we walked up to a lookout point where we could see the entire city and the sun setting over it (while an accordion player was playing music in the background) Perfect photo opportunity!! That night we ventured to a popular bar (Waynes) where dancing on the tables was the standard and a live band played American songs all night long (Including Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”
Day2: Eze, France- “KABOBS”
Took a bus from Nice to the base of a mountain to begin a 45 minute hike to Eze. We were told to get food at the bottom of the hill because the restaurants in Eze can be quite pricy. We found a sandwich shop and got some Kabobs. We asked the worker there if 1 sandwich was enough to share. She looked at us “Americans” and said we each needed our own. When they were finally ready, she brought out sandwiches that were almost up Sara’s waist!! (about 3 people could have shared 1) We got to work on our sandwiches, making frequent stops (about every 5 minutes) to take a bite. About 8 minutes into our hike, a serious looking hiker coming down the trial said in words of encouragement “Boy, your girls have a LOOONG hike ahead of you.”We weren’t feeling too good once we were deep into the hike. We decided to ditch our sandwiches, after eating about a third of them, and got into real hiker mode. We continued searching to Eze. Somehow we found our way to the top, without any troubles. We walked around the cute little town of Eze window shopping and were ready to relax back in Nice.
For dinner we followed the advice of Rick Steves to go to a local rugby restaurant, L'Occitanie. To our luck, there was a big game going on that night, but no worries, there was 1 table open for us…right under the TV. We enjoyed and amazing meal consisting of steak and potatoes for only 9 euro, and one of the best desserts yet (or at least until we get to Paris). The staff was so friendly and we ended our day with a evening walk on the boardwalk!
Day 3: Monaco, France- “Casinos Casinos Casinos”
Sprinting in the train station, we nearly missed our train to Monaco! Somehow we all barely made it on and arrived into the ritzy country of Monaco! (2nd smallest country in the world- behind out neighbor Vatican City) You should have seen the people walking around us- everyone just screamed money. We walked into the city past rows of yachts, million-dollar cars, and every designer shop you could imagine. Making it finally to the Monte Carlo Casino in our dresses and poker faces on, ready to test our luck at the slots. We then realized it didn’t open until 2pm.
Day 4: Paris, France- “TOURING THE CITY”
We got up early in Nice and board the flight to Paris. We had about an hour train ride from the city to the airport, then we had to use the metro to get to our hostel…such city girls. Our hostel appeared to be very nice-St. Christopher’s Inn hostel. The only problem was that it was a little outside the city, but we still managed to get around just fine. After checking into the hostel, our friend Blake, a sophomore at Marquette also studying abroad, met us and we started out into Paris!!
We took the metro and came out staring right at the Louvre Museum. Walking over to the glass pyramid was beautiful! It was such a nice day outside- so we sat on the fountain and soaked in our surroundings. Eventually we entered the museum only to realized, its free admission for all European students! How great!! Found the Mona Lisa in a room of her own surrounded by people (it was kind of crazy) but very cool to see nonetheless.
Not really having much interest in spending the whole day in the museum we left and walked through Les Tuileries- the most central park in Paris. (Seeing our first site of the Eiffel Tower- Goosebumps!!) It stretches from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde. We approached the Arc de Triomphe and got some French bread to munch on.
Finally wondering through the streets we found the Eiffel Tower!! It was the most amazing thing we have seen and looked better in person than any postcard we have ever seen. We were approached by about 15 different middle-eastern guys who had sculptures of the Eiffel Tower for sale yelling in our faces “good price, good price” but as our moms keep telling us- “no buying junk!” so we resisted.
After staring in awe for about an hour we took a metro over to the Notre Dame church. Luckily when we entered into it church has just started so we sat down and had Eucharist in the Notre Dame Church. (A little change from St. Margaret Mary’s and St. Vincent De Paul- our parishes at home)
Finally made our way to the “Latin Quarter” district and ate at a cute family owned restaurant then took the metro back “home” to our hostel…
Day 5: Paris, France- “Eiffel Tower turns into DOOMS DAY”
Woke up egar to start another day in Paris. Locked up all our belongings in the lockers provided and headed out for the Eiffel Tower. Again, being harassed by all the men trying to see mini steel Eiffel Towers to us and Gypsies everywhere (asking us “you speak engligh??!”), we held our purses tight and made our way to the short line at the tower. Karma must have been on our side because the line to walk to the top was super short! We started the 1665 step hike to the top, excited to hopefully see a marriage proposal on the way. Made it finally to the top (Sara’s fear of heights didn’t help the situation much- but she survived!)
Paris looked so beautiful and we could see up to 40 miles away from the top! Talking millions of breath taking pictures we then left and went to the Jewish Quarter where there is amazing shopping and good Chinese food (who woulda thought!)
Had a little pricy lunch due to the fact that we didn’t understand the ordering process and shopped in the afternoon. Once it got dark we made our way back to the Eiffel Tower to see the light show! On the hour, every hour, the Eiffel Tower does a 5 minute light show and it was unbelievable! So pretty glowing in the night. We finally made our way home in great spirits from everything we witnessed that day. Nothing could made us upset, so we thought….
We did have ONE misfortunate thing happen when we were in Paris….We barge into our hostel room in high spirits after such a fun day in Paris. We go on and on telling our roommates in the hostel how great our day was and so on. After about 10 straight minutes of talking their ear off they look at us and say “So I’m assuming you haven’t heard the news yet?”.They go on to explain that someone has broken into our hostel and went through all of our belongings and broke through our locks. They stole our roommate’s brand new mac books pro computer, and our other roommates new I touch. A few other things got stolen from the other people in our room too. We both got very lucky to have had everything valuable with us that day, so nothing got stolen. Either way, we still thought it was very creepy that a stranger had gone through all of our clothes and decided to throw them everywhere. We keep reminding ourselves how lucky it was that no one was in the room when he decided to break into it!
After taking with the manager, he decided to give us a refund on our room rates and we had free food and drinks at the bar that night…
Day 6: Paris, France- “yummmm”
Because of the events that happened yesterday, Audrey our roommate decided to leave Paris early and went onto London to visit her boyfriend and Rima had to attend the police station all day to fill out police reports so Maggie, Sara, Betsy, and Jessie started the day with shopping and wandering around Paris. Had lunch at a cute sideway café and made it to the Orsay museum. The artwork was everything we had learned about since grade school (Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Etc.) After the getting lost in tour groups in the museum, we were on a mission to find the famous dessert place La Dauree (this is famous because is it the company that made all the desserts in the movie Marie Antoinette!!)
It was decorated like an old English castle with the best desserts we had ever seen. After eating our desserts which was a taste of 10 minutes of heaven- we wondered down the main street and walked through some fancy stores such as Louis Vuitton, PRADA, Christian Louboutin, and Chanel. Found our way to the Metro and took it to the famous stop, The Moulin Rouge!
Right off the metro, we knew this was a different part of Paris we had yet to see. We took our pictures and left before it got too dark out!!
Day 7: Paris, France- “Then there were three”
Day 8: Amsterdam, Netherlands- “loony town”
Arrived into Amsterdam into the Flying Pig youth hostels uptown. It was such a different feel that any other hostel we have ever been to- it was super relaxed and chill. We dropped off out bags in our 5th floor room (yes, we had to walk up the worlds smallest staircase to get there.)
Day 9: Amsterdam, Netherlands “Tour de Amsterdam”
After eating our free breakfast at the hostel we walked over to a park where you can rent bikes for a whole day. Buying insurance (you never know what will happen with us) we had to do a few practice runs before we could take on the real streets of Amsterdam. We went over to the Anne Frank house and waited in line for about 30 minutes talking to a cute couple who met studying abroad and now live in Germany! The tour through Anne Frank house was really interesting and sad. It was surprisingly bigger than we thought it was going to be. It sad to think that people had to live in complete dark for 4 years- all the windows were blocked out and there were hiding rooms everywhere.
Day 10: Travel day home- “Home Sweet Rome”
Found our way to the Amsterdam airport after receiving horrible directions to the bus stop from the hostel. (We think they wrote them while being blindfolded!)
Our Plane was delayed about a hour- we were perfectly content just sitting in the airport "people watching" but leave it to the Italians in their Puffy Coats to freak out. They were all pacing back a forth yelling in Italian. It was complete chaos- but enjoyable to watch. This was just a preview of what we were returning to in Rome! We finally boarded our flight and return to our Home. Exhaustion doesn't even begin to describe how we felt!
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