European Vacation

Dammit. This is what happens when I get behind. Ok on this day I think we took the Trolley to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Only some of us went though because most people didn't watch Mr. Rogers growing up and had no idea what that meant. I told you this was a young crew. We had a nice breakfast today with many pastries and breads. The French are way better at baking than they are at making coffee. If they can just find a way to caffeinate their croissants then I’ll probably move here. It was a pretty long driving day. We stopped twice on the way to Paris but none of the stops are worth mentioning or photographing so I’ll just skip right to the action… We got in around six and got settled before dinner at the hotel. Today was salad & quiche to start and chicken with gravy and vegetables (I think) and then lemon tart for dessert. It was one of the better meals we’ve had so I was throwing a lot of Merci’s around. Dominic told me to skip the R and just pronounce it “Meh – S...

Well we have to leave Nice today. And it’s supposed to be sunny and fantastic. Oh well. Adil had the great idea to go down and see the sunrise before we left since yesterday was kind of a bust. Sunrise was around 6am which isn’t that bad – it’s like a work day – but I was up until 2am so I was pretty tired. I thought about just staying in bed but I would have regretted it and I had plenty of time to sleep on the bus so I rallied and went downstairs. We got there probably 20 minutes early and discovered that our lookout point was actually a homeless person’s bedroom. She was just waking up though so she invited us in for some tea and biscuits. It was nice. As the sunrise got closer, we realized that there was a flaw in our plan: Nice is in a bit of a cove (as is evident in my pictures yesterday) and the sun’s path was not something we considered. I just assumed it was more southerly (sure why not) and over the water. Here I point out Nice on the map. There is no way the sun would make ...

Damn! A stroke of bad luck today: It is raining in Nice. We have a full free day today so I was planning on wandering the streets and walking the promenade by the water but now I’m stuck in my room. Boooo. I got out for a little bit this morning before the rain came but it was already overcast so I wasn’t able to get the best pics in the world. I put the camera on a setting called Vivid which jacks up all the color levels so it doesn’t look as gray as it was. Oh and their water is amazing . I’m guessing it’s because there’s no sand to dirty it up. Or because someone told me so. Ooooooh preeeeeeety. On the way home from the beach I stopped at a place to pick up new sandals. Then I had to walk the rest of the way with this: It’s cool though because I’m in Europe – guys wear purses here. After catching up on some writing in the hotel, I decided it was about time I went for a run. I mapped out a nice route along the water, suited up, threw on my headband and went out into the pouring ...

Ok today involves us driving from Florence to Nice, as the title of the post suggests. I’m going to skip to the part where we stop in Pisa to see the leaning tower and take some obligatory photos of us pretending to hold it up. I don’t think anything interesting happened before that anyways. Pisa was only a 45 minutes stop because all they have is the leaning tower and all the leaning tower has is people pretending to hold it up. Here is how it went: “Come stand by me, children. We will take a beautiful picture together.” said the tower. “Thanks tower we will do that. But I see how you are looking at the girls and I don’t appreciate it. Now I shall knock you down with my super punch!” said Patrick. “Nooooo! I’ll save you tower! I’ve always loved you!” said Lisa. “You guys are retarded. Please get off my property.” said the tower. And the tower was right. The End. Before we left I ate what will probably be my last good panini of the trip. I also had one of my last good espressos of t...