After a long first week of classes (it felt longer due to the lack of internet in the dorms – what am I supposed to do at night?), it was finally time for our first weekend trip – the French Riviera. Specifically, Nice. It’s a great beach city and within close proximity to two other well-known places: Monaco (the home of the Monte-Carlo, rich people, and the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix, and Cannes, the home of the star-studded Cannes Film Festival. The film festival was happening as we were there, and the Grand Prix was going to happen on the weekend after we were there. I was more excited to visit Monaco, so me and a friend added Monaco on our list to visit and explore for the one day we could walk around Nice.
I had a problem checking in to my dorm the night we arrived, though. It was 9 PM, but we arrived in a place different than where I was expecting (the train station in Nice). Instead, we were dropped off at the main plaza in downtown Nice, about a 15 minute walk from where my hostel was located. I didn’t know this, and I didn’t know where we even were. I had to ask someone where we were so I could orient myself and find where I was staying. I stayed at a different dorm from everyone else because I wanted something cheaper, so while just about everyone stayed at one of two hostels, I was the only one that booked at the Hostel Baccarat, near the train station.
I met some cool people in my hostel, though. Three of my hostelmates (is that a word?) were college students and former high school buddies who decided to hitchhike their way up to northern France, starting from Nice. They were set on getting there whatever it took. They drifted apart as friends for a while before meeting up again and deciding to embark on this trip. Another person in my room was a student from China, was going to school in the Netherlands, spending a semester abroad in Paris and the weekend in Nice. Brownie points if you got all that on the first read. Finally, I met a filmmaker who actually had a movie at the Cannes Film Festival, but not one of the main competing films. Nevertheless, his film was selected for screening at the festival out of a pool of hundreds, which is an honor in itself. He is a professor of filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. Finally, I met a Japanese man in his late twenties who was recently laid off and decided to spend money going around Europe before finding another job. “It might be stupid,” he told me, “but I won’t know that until I do it.” Meeting these types of people is what I love about the idea of hostels. While everyone else had rooms with each other, I got to meet totally new people with different reasons for being here. And the Chinese girl who was staying in my hostel said she wanted to go to Monaco, but didn’t know how to get there, so she joined me and my friend, Scott, on our trip around Nice and Monaco.
We made it up to the Chateau, a very nice observation point over the coast of Nice and the Mediterranean, when we met one of Scott’s hostelmates, going to Nice for the weekend on his own. He told us about this village called Eze. I had no idea what to expect except for “it’s very old and it’s very cool,” so we decided to go ahead and find out when the next bus to Eze left from Nice. A big plus was that there was a bus that went from Eze to Monaco, so our schedule for the afternoon was set. We made our way from the Chateau to the bus station…and the bus never came at the scheduled time. So we decided to wait an hour for the next bus and get kebab burgers instead, which weren’t so bad. But when the bus finally came, I was ready for Eze.
Eze is a small village, just as Scott’s hostelmate said, and it was also very cool. It’s been around since 2000 BC, and it was at the highest point in the area surrounding it, making it a very important strategic military point in ancient and medieval times. The alleyways of Eze were very narrow, probably to help keep the sun away during the summer. It was very hot up there, so the shadows of the buildings above us helped. The best part cost five euros, however. It was a botanical garden filled with cactuses and other plants, and it included one of the best views of the Mediterranean and the mountains surrounding it, trumping the view of Nice from the Chateau. Scott said it best when he said “I have literally no words for this.”
We spent a lot of time up there taking pictures of the horizon and the cacti, but we had to catch a bus to Monaco because they only came once an hour. But before we did, Scott went to use the bathroom, which costs 0.40 euros, my first run-in with a paid bathroom. As he was in there, though, we saw the bus come into Eze. I wanted to tell him that the bus was coming, but we were too far from the stop to catch it before it left, and the woman running the bathroom ‘ticket booth’ wouldn’t let me into the bathroom. So we missed a bus…again. We decided to make a quick stop at a grocery store for some bottled water (sold in the handheld, totally-normal-for-France 1.5 liter bottles here) and then stopped at a small bakery. I ordered the usual chocolate croissant to go with my huge water bottle, while Scott and Wen (our new Chinese friend) ordered this strange pastry called a meringue. Scott told me to try it, so I looked at it and asked what was in it.
“Egg whites.”
“Oh.” There went my hunger.
“But it doesn’t taste like it, it’s really sweet.”
I tried it anyway. It tasted pretty good, but I had a weird taste of mouth. Egg whites. Nasty. I had to drink a lot of water to get the taste out. But at least I tried something new. And the bus finally came to take us to the principality of Monaco. That’s right, I learned that Monaco is essentially its own country. I should’ve known that when I heard it being called a ‘tax haven.’
And what a tax haven it is. And a car haven. Upon getting off the bus stop (which, by the way, was painted gold), we were only a short walk away from the Monte-Carlo, one of the most well-known casinos in the world. The rich absolutely love to be seen here, especially in their nice cars. The people whose cars are parked in the front of the casino never fail to impress onlookers’ eyes. And neither does the architecture itself. There were Lamborghinis, Rolls-Royces, Daimlers (as in the company that merged with Chrysler – that specific car had TWO V6 engines inside!), AMGs, and even a US military Jeep. I had to stop taking pictures out of rich person envy.
The Monaco Grand Prix was still a week away, but the track, fences, bumpers, and grandstands were all set up and ready to take on spectators at any moment. We walked along parts of the track, noting the tight hairpin turns that F1 cars would be making here in only a week and the insanely high prices of getting grandstand or even food at a restaurant with a view of the track. The entire city/principality was basically made as a playground for the rich, and the peasants like myself were allowed to visit and ogle at them. I think Monaco motivates people try making more money just because they see how the rich live with their valet-parked cars and luxurious casinos.
At this point, my feet were reaching the point where they were ready to collapse under the weight of the rest of my body. Walking up to the Chateau of Nice, the mountaintop village of Eze, and the mountainside principality of Monaco can do that to you. By the time the three of us made it to the bus (which, by the way, wasn’t covered in my unlimited one-day pass in Nice because Monaco isn’t really a part of Nice…or France), I passed out. And rightly so, because we left at 10 AM and arrived back in Nice at 10 PM. It was a long day of walking and exploring, and I’m glad that I got to see so much, especially considering how other people told me they ended up just laying out on the beach or going shopping. I do a lot of both in Florida, but you can only visit Mediterranean mountains, luxurious places, and ancient villages only a few times in your life. And that was only the first weekend.
