Nice et Côte d'Azur

En route to Monaco!!! So beautiful

Georgetown girls with Susan, our program director

On the beach!!! My mom will be so jealous when she sees it!

This weekend, all 8 Georgetown girls, plus our program director, Susan, and her daughter, Kelly, traveled to the storied Côte d'Azur, land of perpetual sun and summer.   And I don't think we were disappointed in either respect; I don't remember it being cloudy once, and with the temperature hovering in the upper-60s/low-70s, I forgot I was in France.  Since being in Strasbourg, I have come to associate France with a lot of cold and no sun, so it was quite a shocker being in a place just the opposite.  Too bad it's such a pain to get to!

To get to Nice, we took a couchette, an overnight sleeping train, because the trip would have been about 14 hours (which is not exactly a ride you would want to remain awake for the majority of!).  So we rendez-vous'd at the gare and caught our train.  There are six beds in each couchette, and I was in the one with 5 other Georgetown girls, while Susan and Kelly were in another, and two other Georgetown girls in a third.  That meant that they had to share their compartment with strangers, which would have royally freaked me out (not surprising, for those of you who know me well!).  Those two girls decided that they were going to take sleeping pills, and when we got on our bus in Nice the next day, they realized that all of their cash had been taken.  Now, I understand that European railways are notorious for having robbers onboard just looking to prey on people who make any silly mistakes, but the fact that they discussed that they were going to take sleeping pills was probably not the smartest decision ever.  The freaky thing, though, was that they were on the top bunks and their bags were right next to their heads, so the men must have had to climb up, lean directly over them, and rifle through their bags.  Luckily for the girls, neither their credit cards nor their passports (which they also chose to carry with them for some reason) were stolen.  They were still really upset about it though (understandably), and realized they could have done a few things differently.

We started off our trip on Saturday with a visit to a modern art museum.  I think that, for Georgetown to pay for a trip like this, there has to be something educational and/or cultural included, so we gladly obliged.  However, as many of you know, I HATE modern art- absolutely hate it!  I know it sounds snobby, but I could have done most of the things in that museum when I was five, so I don't see how splattering a bit of paint on a canvas can be considered high-class art.  After a VERY quick tour (thank God), and a stop for lunch, we went back to Nice, checked in to our hotel (amazing location!), and went down to the beach.  Yes, you read that right, the beach!!!  It was a little chilly because of the wind on Saturday, but that didn't stop us from getting a good few hours of sun time in.  I was kicking myself, because I had almost packed my swimsuit, but thought it wouldn't be warm enough to sunbathe.  So I fashioned a beach outfit out of a tank top (converted to a tube top) and a dress (converted to a skirt).  The water in the south of France is absolutely magnificent, with two tones of blue as far as the eye can see and rolling hills dotted with houses as a backdrop.  It is probably one of the most picturesque places I have ever been to!

After walking around and exploring some of the city, the whole Georgetown group went out for dinner together, and then, after a power hour (more like 45 minutes) the eight of us Hoyas went out to Wayne's, which can best be described as an expatriot bar.  What can we say, we're drawn to American/British places!  It was really fun- the music was a lot of American music, and we were dancing on bars, which was really fun.  The guys were sort of sketchy, which made it a little bit of a strange experience, but I still had a lot of fun with my friends.  

Yesterday morning,  we got back on the bus and drove along the coast to Monaco, which I visited during my People to People trip.  As expected, nothing had changed since the last time I had been there, and it's a good thing Jill and I were walking around together, since both of us had already been there, so didn't feel the need to spend inordinate amounts of time at the tourist sites.  It's sort of sad, though, because Monaco itself is so beautiful, but SOOOOOOO touristy.  It would be a ghost town without tourists.  

On our way back, we stopped at Fragonard, a parfumerie where I had also been during my People to People trip, where we got a tour that lasted all of ten minutes and then got a chance to shop.  I bought some soap for my host mom, and then some others for friends.  Our last stop was in Eze, a terraced town essentially built into the side of a cliff.  Again, it was really beautiful (the streets were really narrow, there were gorgeous stone buildings, and there was a flea market, which obviously caught my attention!), but again, like Monaco, it was WAY too touristy.  Once we got back to Nice, we went to the top of an observation deck, where you have a gorgeous panoramic view of the city on one side and the ocean on the other, and then were driven back to the train station.  

The couchettes weren't so pleasant the first time, but on Saturday night, I had felt like I was coming down with a cold, and by the time we got on the couchette, I was not feeling well at all.  I went to bed at about 9:45 or 10, knowing that we would get back to Strasbourg at about 8, but woke up at 4am, unable to swallow or breathe, and coughing up a storm.  One puff from my inhaler did the trick, but I have been concerned, in the past few weeks, because I wasn't home long enough to get a flu shot this year, so it could be an interesting flu season for me, especially with my asthma.  After over an hour spent reading the economist, I was finally able to fall back asleep, only to wake up feeling like death.  I don't even want to know what I looked like to the other people riding the tram this morning, but I got home and took a shower to give myself some semblance of being put together, even though I didn't feel it.  Hopefully, this cold won't last for too long, because I need to be fully awake in order to understand what's going on in my classes.  Unfortunately, I have been feeling exhausted for weeks, but other than taking naps (which I have actually been able to do since being here- I could never nap at home or at Georgetown unless I was sick), there was nothing I could really do.  So I knew I would probably get sick, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.  Nevertheless, I have decided I'm not traveling this coming weekend, because it just takes too much out of me.  

I hope everything is going well with all of you!  Keep the updates coming!

Sending you my love,

Kristen