Nice People on the French Riviera

The French Riviera is exactly as beautiful and romantic as you would imagine or as you've been told by anyone who's ever been there. I'll spare any more flowery language and get down to business. In addition, any puns involving the word "nice" from this point on are still both intentional and obnoxious.

The hostel that we chose, Villa St. Exupery, is the nicest hostel in Europe. Nice rooms, nice showers, free towels, and one euro beer and cookies in the bar / common room. If you're ever going to Nice and want a nice place to stay, stay there.

To be perfectly honest, we didn't do a whole lot on the first day. After blitzing through all of the main tourist attractions in the two former capitals of the Roman Empire, we kind of just felt like taking it easy for a day. So we went to the (pebble) beach with our new Australian friend Prema and just sat around until lunch, at which point we bought some bread, cheese, olives, and apples from an outdoor market, and then took it all back to the beach and ate it.

Dipping my feet in the Mediterranean

In the afternoon we walked around for a while and decided to stop for coffee at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. We were joined by Sheng, Michele, and Colleen, three Americans (well, Sheng is technically Chinese) who are studying in Salzburg. So our new multi-ethnic group walked around for a bit more, went out to dinner at a Nice restaurant in the old city, grabbed a box of wine from a local supermarket, drank half of it on the beach, headed back to the hostel, and polished off the rest of it. Again, not exciting to talk about, but definitely one of the best days of the entire trip.

The group minus Prema, who was taking the picture, and of whom I somehow don't have any good pictures

The following morning I woke up feeling like P. Diddy and was more than ready for our day trip to Monaco. On the bus to Monaco we met a Minnesotan named Joel who is studying in Tours, so we absorbed him into our group 1. because he's cool and 2. because he can speak French. We had an hour layover in a little medieval village called Eze, where we at another Mediterranean-style lunch on the terrace atop a cactus garden that had 400 different varieties of cactus. How about that for diversity?

Monaco is, overall, simply a place for the incredibly rich to engage in obscene displays of individual wealth. We visited the prince's car collection, which cost us 3 euro to see, as I recall. It wasn't even a museum, it was just a bunch of the prince's cars sitting in a showroom. I learned an important lesson from this: if you're rich enough and lazy enough, you can make an offensive amount of money by simply charging people to stare at your expensive things.

After the car museum, we walked around the harbor for a while and stared at yachts. Again, just a ridiculous display of wealth. We were probably staring at upwards of $50 billion at certain points. It was a beautiful thing.

At nightfall we headed to the old casino. We briefly thought about going in the game room, but it would have cost 10 euro and we would have had to have had* our passports with us as well, so instead of gambling we had a 45-minute conversation with one of the greeters outside of the game room. His name was Jean-Pierre and he had a few choice words about George W. Bush and about how much better things are in Monaco/Europe, but he liked us because we were multi-lingual and relatively well-cultured. So while we failed to live up to the American stereotype, he hit the French stereotype dead on.

Outside of the casino

That's one Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, two Porsches, a BMW, and an Audi. Not bad, really.

Here's where the story gets epic: our hostel guide told us that trains would run back to Nice until midnight. Well, the French were on strike that day (SURPRISE!!!!!), and the last bus was at 7 PM, so we were essentially completely stranded. We had two choices: take a cab that would cost about 100 euro, or walk four and a half hours back to Nice through winding mountain roads at night. We decided to walk. As we walked, we stuck our thumbs out in a halfhearted attempt to hitchhike. Frenchman after Frenchman would pass and laugh. The situation seemed hopeless. I mean, there were four of us. Who would stop and pick up four hitchhikers?

About 45 minutes into our journey, and just as we had finally exited the Monaco city/country limits, a giant black VW van passed us and then stopped. The driver leaned out and asked, in English, "Where are you going?", to which we responded, "Nice!" He said, "I take you closer." So, we decided to chance it and hop in this stranger's giant van.

This is pretty much the exact vehicle

At first we were pretty nervous about the whole situation, but as we opened the door we saw a baby seat in the back of the van, which assuaged our fears considerably because this guy was clearly a family man. Either that or he was incredibly good at kidnapping. We got in and introduced ourselves and eventually learned that our savior, Gabor Bretz, is actually a famous Hungarian opera singer who had just gotten out of rehearsal for a production of La Bohèmien at Casino Monte Carlo. He drove us almost all of the way back to Nice. He also offered to show us around Budapest when we take out class trip to Hungary in May.

An interview with Gabor:
http://kultura.hu/main.php?folderID=1085&articleID=269409&ctag=articlelist&iid=1

Gabor playing the part of Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWr9AjnzmgI&feature=related

So, sketchy decision #2 of spring break also turned out to be a resounding success. Take that, French train strike. Our incredible luck given the situation is evidence of divine intervention if I've ever seen it. Life really couldn't have been any better.

* this is one of my favorite English grammatical constructions. Note that six different words are required to form the verb.

The Pope, Ruins, Great Food, and Holy Week in Rome!

Let the title of this post be a testament to the importance of correct comma placement.

Our first day in Rome was Holy Thursday. I met up once again with Mike Carter (the magnificent etc) and we grabbed some pizza and gelato for lunch before heading out to meet the ND group for Mass. We also passed by/through the Pantheon, the Forum, and the Colosseum on the way there. No big deal.

Colosseum with part of the Forum in the background

We found Courtney and Maria outside of St. John Lateran - you know, the Cathedral of the Church of Rome, seat of the Bishop of Rome, and principle mother church of the Catholic faith. Again, no big deal. Also not a big deal was the fact that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was celebrating Mass that evening. While uncomfortable at the time due to the fact that I was standing on a marble floor for two hours with little to no view of the action, it was still pretty awesome.

Yes, I took a picture during Mass. Don't judge. Jesus wouldn't judge. Plus, everyone else was doing it too. It was a circus in there. Not very solemn.

After Mass we went out to an Italian restaurant called Tony's. I would make a joke here, but I feel like it would be superfluous.

Getting back to the villa that night was an adventure because, despite his claims to the contrary, Mike had no idea how the bus system in Rome worked. I think maybe part of the reason for his confusion was that the Roman public transit system doesn't really "work" at all. Mike does know how Italian works, though, and was able to ask some Italian construction workers and a police officer how to find the correct bus stop. None of these people had any idea either. We found the correct stop eventually, and to be fair, the bus did take me pretty much straight to the villa. I hope that this section doesn't offend Mike, but if it does, it means he's been reading my blog, so I win either way.

The National Monument at night

Good Friday was as its name implies. I met up with Mike in the morning and we saw some obelisks and a few churches. We also walked by the famous Trevi Fountain, which may have been nice if it hadn't been swarming with tourists. The same was true of the Spanish steps.

The highlight of Good Friday was the complete absence of a line outside of the entrance to the Vatican Museum when Courtney, Lizzie, Mike and I got there at 16:00. Instead of waking up the following morning to join the 90-person Notre Dame herd on their scheduled guided tour, we decided to pay a little bit less, skip the wait, skip getting up at 6:00 AM, and just go on our own. The museum itself is incredible. One could easily spend an entire day there. We only spent about two hours, but we got to see most of the major stuff, including the Sistine Chapel, inside which I took an illegal picture that I'm not going to publish on the internet for fear of divine or papal retribution.

On Friday night we went to Stations of the Cross outside of the Colosseum. Once again, the Pope was in charge. Most of the ceremony was in Italian, but the Our Father was said in Latin, so I was actually able to use something that I learned in high school for once. There was a rather loud group of Germans near us in the crowd, and I reveled in being able to understand a lot of what they were saying. I didn't speak to them in German, though, because that would have destroyed my ability to conduct linguistic espionage.

Note the Austrian flag in the lower right corner. Represent.

Saturday was another beautiful day, and we took advantage of the weather by cutting lines in the Vatican and climbing to the top of the Cupola. Pictures will almost do it justice:

St. Peter's

Taken with my own camera

With Courtney & Lizzie

After fighting our way back through the herd of Catholic pilgrims and Asian tourists ("Take a picture with me in front of the cute Jesus thingy!" *flashes peace sign*) we made our way to the Circus Maximus, where I challenged Mike to a race, which I won with ease. Yes, that is correct: I have won a race in the Circus Maximus.

No chance

After forgetting to feed Mike to the lions, we made our way to the Forum. Once again, pictures will suffice:

Part of Augustus' House

Prime real estate

That night we went out to dinner for the second time at Tony's. Excellent once again.

Easter Sunday rolled along and the rain rolled in. Despite the fact that we all had SEATS during Easter Sunday Mass with the Pope in the Vatican, we were nonetheless rather cold and wet and miserable throughout. It was still really cool to be there, and now I can check it off of my list of things to do before I die. My favorite part of the Mass was when the Pope tried to bless everyone with holy water as it was pouring rain outside.

BENEDICTVS

We went inside the Colosseum later that day. In an attempt to salvage what was left of his honor, Mike tried to best me in gladiatorial combat. After an early mistake that gave Mike a 1-0 advantage, I was distracted by having to apologize to a passing tourist for accidentally striking her with my umbrella, which allowed Mike to land the death blow.

That night we went out to a nice restaurant for an Easter dinner. The food was great, the wine was above average, and our waiter was totally hammered. He kept spilling drinks on the table and flirting with Courtney, and after we were done he swung a chair up and rambled at us for a couple minutes about some other restaurant that he works at and about how much he likes Radiohead. It was amazing.

We were supposed to leave at 13:30 on Monday, but Blu-Express went ahead and moved the flight to 19:30 again. I checked this time, though, so I was able to use the extra time to see a little bit more of Rome. Lizzie, Mike and I went to a castle, which was pretty cool. I may have done some other stuff too, but at this point I'm getting pretty tired of writing about what happened in Rome, so I'm just going to bring this post to an end.

Ciao!

A Turkish Delight

After a solid two weeks of traveling, I finally have enough free time to sit in front of the computer for long enough to begin to recount all of the tales of my journey. Hooray?

Our trip started off innocently enough with a layover in Munich between our early morning train from Innsbruck and our mid-afternoon flight to Istanbul. Since it was a beautiful day outside, and so as to make the most of our time in Munich, the guys decided to go out and explore the city. We walked past the Glockenspiel and ended up at Hofbräuhaus, at which point we figured, well, what the hell, we might as well go inside. When we got inside, we figured, well, what the hell, as long as we're here, we might as well get a beer. When we sat down to order, we figured, well, what the hell, if we're getting some famous Hofbräuhaus brew, we better get the Mass (1 liter size for all of you who still need that sort of help). So we proceeded to enjoy a liter of beer each at 10:30 in the morning. Sketchy decision #1 of spring break turned out to be a great success.

Delicious

Right after we arrived, we were greeted by a very nice Turkish man who invited us rather forcefully into his restaurant and pretty much force-fed us kebaps while stammering on in broken English and occasionally breaking into song on his sitar. He called us his nephews and daughters, and he was our uncle. It was awesome.

The whole family (except for Jonathan, who was taking the picture)

Our hostel in Turkey was pretty much the bomb, except for Snorlax, the lone Asian-Canadian ("Chinaman" being not the preferred nomenclature) in our otherwise ND-filled six-bed room. You can maybe guess why we named him Snorlax.

Day One in Istanbul was a pretty stereotypically touristy day, on which we hit up all of the big touristy destinations: the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia (pronounced "Aya Sophia"), and Topkapi Palace. Each one was uniquely interesting. At Topkapi Palace, there were many unbelievable relics on display, such as part of the Staff of Moses and the Sword of the Prophet David (LOL SURE IT WAS)!

Hagia Sophia

Blue Mosque

That evening we walked through the progressively colder and rainier weather to a wharf about three miles away where we were served substandard seafood and then charged an exorbitant amount for bread and water. Thoroughly humiliated, we went home, and I cried myself to sleep. Not really. I was already wet enough thanks to the weather.

Monday was cold and rainy throughout. We dealt with it by doing indoor things, like going to the Basilica Cistern, which just so happens to be the place where that awesome sequence of scenes from "From Russia with Love" was filmed. We also visited the Grand Bazaar, where we ate some great Turkish food, and where I purchased a jacket for 30 lira (~2o USD). Asking price? 60 lira. Boom. I could get used to a barter economy. But not really. It was kind of annoying.

Cisterns

We also paid a visit to the spice bazaar, where this stuff was sold:

Potent!

That evening we saw some Dervish dancing, which was ostensibly rather boring, but really quite beautiful and entrancing once the mood set in. The guys capped off the night by visiting a hookah bar right down the street, where I smoked the best and most potent hookah I've ever smoked. It lasted three people one and a half hours and tasted like apples. My lungs said no, but my brain said "For 13 lira? OH YES!"

On Wednesday, the weather became absolutely gorgeous. We took a ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of the city and walked around for the better part of the day. We hiked up a rather large hill, upon which we were afforded a terrific view of both the Asian and the European sides. We spent the rest of the early evening back on the European side, also just walking around, taking in the sights, and experiencing the chaos. So, I guess nothing really happened, and this entire day is probably best summed up in pictures:

Sailing across the Bosphorus

A S I A !!

Maiden's Tower

Easily the best picture I've ever taken. Couldn't do it again if I tried.

On Wednesday, we thought we were going to Rome in the afternoon. Instead, we spent eight hours or so in the airport because Blu-Express decided that it would just be swell to move our flight back five hours and then not let us know. It was delayed by an additional hour, too, but at that point, whatever. I also paid 20 Turkish lira for a Burger King meal in that quite literally God-forsaken airport. So much for the up-until-then-favorable exchange rate and price level. Our flight to Rome finally arrived at nearly one in the morning because we had to make a "quick" emergency landing in some city on Italy's eastern seaboard because there was a woman having a life-threatening panic attack in the back of the plane, three rows behind me. This woman, by the way, was checked out by medical personnel on the ground and then ALLOWED BACK ON THE PLANE. Everything ended well enough as we split a cab with some Americans we met in the airport who also happened to be headed the same way that we were and ended up safely at our villa to commence our stay in Rome, which, as you can probably guess, will be the subject of the next post!