This week's mini European adventure led me to the French Riviera, where I quickly realized that I messed up by only booking my trip for two days. This may just be the beach-lover in me, but this little piece of heaven on earth might be the most under-rated place that I have visited to date. The weather was perfect, the ambiance was exactly what I needed, and by the time I had to leave I found myself wishing that I could stay for the rest of the week.
Quite frankly I didn't really have any expectations going into this trip. It was planned super last minute, and while my friend knew that she wanted to go to Nice and Monaco, I had other things going on last week and didn't really have much time or energy to plan. Thankfully she did, and ended up leading me on the most perfect getaway ever.
When we arrived in Nice I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were palm trees all along the coast, which I was not expecting. I didn't realize that we would be in such a tropical location, although the 70 degree weather on Halloween should have clued me in. Nice actually reminded me a lot of Florida, except that all of the locals spoke French and the beach is covered in rocks instead of sand. Oh, and the views in the background were a lot more picturesque than Waffle Houses and Dairy Queens.
In all seriousness, I was literally blown away by the beauty around us. The ocean was the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen. For those of you who have seen The Devil Wears Prada, the first thing to cross my mind when I saw the water was Meryl Streep saying the word "cerulean." We had plans to go to Monaco that night so we quickly set out in search of our hotel, but we were sure to stop and take pictures of every piece of architecture that caught our eyes along the way.
We arrived in Monaco a couple hours later, which ended up being the perfect time as the sun was just barely beginning to set. We were really only interested in getting in some good pictures, so we climbed a hill that rivals Chauncey in order to get the best views of the coast. On the way up it really set in how ritzy Monaco is. If you compare Nice to Ft. Myers, then Monaco is definitely Naples. I can't even count the number of Mercedes I saw on the road.
The rest of the evening pretty much consisted of us having a miniature photo-shoot in front of every relatively pretty thing we could find, as well as just taking in our surroundings. One of the things that I love the most about going to places like this, as opposed to the more "touristy" areas like Rome or Venice where you're constantly on the move, is having the freedom to just stop and pause and enjoy where you are in that exact moment in time.
We had to leave at noon the next day, so we woke up pretty early to give ourselves a chance to explore Nice some more. We happened to get to the beach right as the sun was rising, so we pretty much just took more pictures while enjoying the view. We then decided to get crepes for breakfast, as we had burgers the night before and needed to eat something French while we were there. We stopped at a cute cafe that was literally across the street from the beach (there's literally nothing better than eating a meal with a view) and indulged in our meals before finally setting out.
And that's about it for my little weekend getaway. Until next week.
Hayli
Quite frankly I didn't really have any expectations going into this trip. It was planned super last minute, and while my friend knew that she wanted to go to Nice and Monaco, I had other things going on last week and didn't really have much time or energy to plan. Thankfully she did, and ended up leading me on the most perfect getaway ever.
When we arrived in Nice I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were palm trees all along the coast, which I was not expecting. I didn't realize that we would be in such a tropical location, although the 70 degree weather on Halloween should have clued me in. Nice actually reminded me a lot of Florida, except that all of the locals spoke French and the beach is covered in rocks instead of sand. Oh, and the views in the background were a lot more picturesque than Waffle Houses and Dairy Queens.
In all seriousness, I was literally blown away by the beauty around us. The ocean was the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen. For those of you who have seen The Devil Wears Prada, the first thing to cross my mind when I saw the water was Meryl Streep saying the word "cerulean." We had plans to go to Monaco that night so we quickly set out in search of our hotel, but we were sure to stop and take pictures of every piece of architecture that caught our eyes along the way.
We arrived in Monaco a couple hours later, which ended up being the perfect time as the sun was just barely beginning to set. We were really only interested in getting in some good pictures, so we climbed a hill that rivals Chauncey in order to get the best views of the coast. On the way up it really set in how ritzy Monaco is. If you compare Nice to Ft. Myers, then Monaco is definitely Naples. I can't even count the number of Mercedes I saw on the road.
The rest of the evening pretty much consisted of us having a miniature photo-shoot in front of every relatively pretty thing we could find, as well as just taking in our surroundings. One of the things that I love the most about going to places like this, as opposed to the more "touristy" areas like Rome or Venice where you're constantly on the move, is having the freedom to just stop and pause and enjoy where you are in that exact moment in time.
We had to leave at noon the next day, so we woke up pretty early to give ourselves a chance to explore Nice some more. We happened to get to the beach right as the sun was rising, so we pretty much just took more pictures while enjoying the view. We then decided to get crepes for breakfast, as we had burgers the night before and needed to eat something French while we were there. We stopped at a cute cafe that was literally across the street from the beach (there's literally nothing better than eating a meal with a view) and indulged in our meals before finally setting out.
And that's about it for my little weekend getaway. Until next week.
Hayli