Aurevoir Nice!
We planned on waking up early today to hit Nice and the surrounding area. But “early” ended up being 10am 
We’re in a 9 bed mixed dorm, with a 10th bed shoved in the middle of the room for Colene. It’s actually pretty funny since she’s situated right in front of the bathroom door.
We spent today in the small town of Eze, which is some medieval town with some heritage of the area. Frankly, it was so boring I can’t even remember the historical tales. Just our luck, today was totally fogged in at Eze, so the promised picturesque views ended up beign views of cloud cover and fog. So we were left with a medieval town tourist trap trying to sell us perfume, olive oil and expensive sandwiches.
After the eventful trip to Eze, we took a short bus ride to Monaco so we could pretend to be James Bond at the Monte Carlo Casino. Well just like the rest of this day, the famous Casino was nothing but a disappointment We’re told that it’s better at night, but the only the only 2 highlights in Monaco were:
1. The doorman at the Monte Carlo telling our Australian companion for the day, Adam, to speak english to him. Insanely funny becasue the dude was speaking english and repeated himself 4 times asking when the Casino opened. I guess this makes Australian’s harder to understand that Canadians. Eh?
2. Doing the “precise” calculation of whether it was economical to spend 4 euros on a bus “day pass” for unlimited travel. Our precise calculation ended up just a bit off We opted against the day pass and ended up spending over 8 euros. Damn, there goes the budget.
We finished off the evening eating dinner at a restaurant recommended in the Frommer’s Europe guide called Eclat de Cours. While the appetizer of Fish Soup was excellent, the rest of the meal can be summed up in a single word — meh. Nothing spectacular, butjust like Paris, the bread was fantastic. Could have saved a bundle of money on dinner by just going to a local bakery instead
We’ve decided against staying another night in nice and instead heading to Cinque Terre tommorow morning, after which will be Rome then to Florence. We’re both excited about Cinque Terre which should provide for some great pictures and relaxing nights.
We screwed up on our Eurorail pass by only getting a 3 country pass for Italy, Germany and France. After we leave Florence, we were plannign on taking a night train from Florence to Munich, but it turns out that Austria is between Italy and Germany. Who knew? It’s our own fault for not even looking at a carefully enough when we bought the Eurorail pass. I just wish the travel agent in Vancouver gave us the heads up about Austria basically sabotaging our plans Luckily it will just cost us about 30 euro to pay the difference in the segment prices.
Even though Nice wasn’t as excitign as we expected, we definitely don’t regret coming here. The hostel has been fantastic and the people we’ve met here are great. We’re even planning on meeting up with a few of the Auzzies in Prague and Germany while we’re there for Oktoberfest.
