It was an awesome first weekend! We went to with the school to nice, Monaco, and Monte Carlo. the day started at 8 am meeting down town for the bus to Nice. We spent the day on the pebble beach and swimming in the amazingly blue water! It's really weird to swim because the water is so salty so your more buoyant but at the same time its more work cause its harder to move through. Around 3 we went for a hike up a hill kinda to take pictures and look around at the view! We then tried to take a tour of old nice… but then got gellato instead. It was incredible and they have every flavor you can think of. They even have beer and tobacco flavors. Gross. I got chocolate and raspberry. It was a very relaxing day. Then we got back on the bus to drive a little over a half our to our hostel in Monaco. It was absolutely beautiful! It was this huge garden with little rows of rooms.
We all showered and got ready quickly before dinner at the hostel, and then headed off to the Monte Carlo casino! To be honest, I expected the casino to be like Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods and have like a mall or other entertainment beside gambling, but it wasn't like that at all. It was a great big beautiful baroque inspired building... and that's about it. From the architecture side it was really interesting to see, but once I talked to my professor that came on the trip, she pointed out all the little details that showed it was not authentic baroque, and it was just meant to imitate, it was pretty disappointing. She said that at the time it was built, the rich basically just hired an architect out of Paris and said make this look fancy and expensive, so that's what they came up with. There wasn't any music playing except for a small live band that played very sophisticated music and there was a 10 euro cover to get to the gambling room. The drinks were around 12-20 euro and I mean it was pretty and all but I did not need to spend two hours there. It was much more sophisticated than imagined it being… I definitely was not disappointed in the experience, but it just was not what I expected.
The next day we woke up to get breakfast at the hostel and then went off to explore the city of Monaco. We watched the changing of the guards at the palace of Monaco which was interesting and then we walked around a little bit. We went into the aquarium which was amazing! We saw all the fish that are native of the Mediterranean sea. We then got to go on the roof of the aquarium for an amazing view. Everything is just so beautiful it's a lot to take in. On the way home from our trip we also stopped at the perfume factory and got a tour of how perfume is made. We were able to climb a trail to this amazing little town that I already forget what it is called. It was basically carved out of the mountain side. It was really fun to walk around and see how different life would be living in the little village.
Overall it was a very long weekend, but I had a blast. Now its back to reality... kinda!
We all showered and got ready quickly before dinner at the hostel, and then headed off to the Monte Carlo casino! To be honest, I expected the casino to be like Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods and have like a mall or other entertainment beside gambling, but it wasn't like that at all. It was a great big beautiful baroque inspired building... and that's about it. From the architecture side it was really interesting to see, but once I talked to my professor that came on the trip, she pointed out all the little details that showed it was not authentic baroque, and it was just meant to imitate, it was pretty disappointing. She said that at the time it was built, the rich basically just hired an architect out of Paris and said make this look fancy and expensive, so that's what they came up with. There wasn't any music playing except for a small live band that played very sophisticated music and there was a 10 euro cover to get to the gambling room. The drinks were around 12-20 euro and I mean it was pretty and all but I did not need to spend two hours there. It was much more sophisticated than imagined it being… I definitely was not disappointed in the experience, but it just was not what I expected.
The next day we woke up to get breakfast at the hostel and then went off to explore the city of Monaco. We watched the changing of the guards at the palace of Monaco which was interesting and then we walked around a little bit. We went into the aquarium which was amazing! We saw all the fish that are native of the Mediterranean sea. We then got to go on the roof of the aquarium for an amazing view. Everything is just so beautiful it's a lot to take in. On the way home from our trip we also stopped at the perfume factory and got a tour of how perfume is made. We were able to climb a trail to this amazing little town that I already forget what it is called. It was basically carved out of the mountain side. It was really fun to walk around and see how different life would be living in the little village.
Overall it was a very long weekend, but I had a blast. Now its back to reality... kinda!