Monte, this seems strange to me
I am in CinqueTerre right now, on the Italian Riviera, but I am a few days behind in my updating, so you probably won't hear about my adventures here until I am in Venice.
More importantly, TWO days ago (Thursday) ended up being QUITE good. Didn' t I tell you all that things were getting better? Weren't you all a bit worried about me, worried that I wasn't having enough fun?
But I will be brief. I me this guy Jannes in the hostel, from the Frisian Islands of Germany, but speaks about 4 languages, plays in a band, is friends with the Notwist, likes a lot of the same music that I like ("Do you like the Magnetic Fields?" "Of course!" "Do you like the Cocteau Twins?" "Of course! Do you like Blonde Redhead?" "Of course, I saw them play within the last year!) It has been fairly easy to meet people on the trip, slightly harder to meet nice people, but MUCH harder to meet interesting people. Not to worry, any former travel companions of mine who might possibly be reading this! I liked you! But I actually like SO few of the people that I encounter! Anyway, this guy was fun and spoke good English.
He was heading to Monaco that day for an interview with a yacht design company. I decided to come along for sightseeing during the day.
What a ridiculous place! Carved into a cliff, only about 7,000 permanant inhabitants, very few roads, lots of rules and TONS of money. Fancy cars and yachts everywhere. We passed by the local real estate office and noticed some listings for houses selling for 80 million Euros! We had cheeseburgers and espresso by the harbor, wandered through the city gardens (decorated with bulls?) and hiked up to the "rock", where the Prince's palace is. We admired the expensive lunches that the more appropriately dressed tourists were enjoying and descended the mountain for a 2 Euro beer snack that we purchased from a snack shack. And drank under an awning. Not quite the glamour one might expect from Monaco, but one must do with what one has, correct? Smile.
We split up here, because he had the interview and I was planning on having dinner with those Nicois I met the day before. Unfortunately, I got very lost, even in the small country of Monaco trying to get back to the train station. It was raining, harder and harder, and I became soaked and soaked, and I ended up in a tunnel construction sight, lost and confused. A construction worker led me out a secret door which led me quickly to the train station, and I safely made it back to Nice.
Monaco is lovely in its way, even if it is much too posh for my taste. This was the first place I had been that made Iceland look impoverished, but I loved the curving stairs that connect the low streets to the high streets, and the underground passages and elevators for those not inclined to climb.
I showered and got ready for the Nice people to pick me up for dinner. And the rain began to pour hard. So hard that traffic seemed to stop, and everybody paused under the nearest overhang to avoid drowning. I stood for 10 minutes next to two backpackers, a chasidic Jew and a vendor of some sort waiting for the rain to stop.
It did, but my friends from Nice did not arrive. I was half relieved. When I thought about it, dinner at the house of two total strangers might not have been the funnest, especially if they lived far from the city center.
Why didn't they come? Possibly they decided it would be too much trouble. Possibly a a language miscommunication caused me to show up at the wrong time. Perhaps the rain delayed them by more than 30 minutes. Maybe they decided that I would flake because of the rain.
Regardless, I found my own dinner, a delicious tuna sandwich (even the cheap food in France is delicious. I am amazed) and took a long walk through Nice in the rain, enjoying the music on my iPod (rapidly walking through a storm, listening to the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia"). I checked my internet and returned the hostel.
Jannes came back from his interview. We split a bottle of Spanish wine I had purchased in...Spain, which I was glad to get rid of because it was weighing down my bag. And we decided to "go out" for the night.
It took us a long time until we found something open, but in Old Nice we discovered a small bar, which appeared to be inhabited by all locals. A DJ was playing reasonably listenable music, we had a few beers, people watched at laughed at the absurdity of the scene.
We tired of this, and after a few false starts found Wayne's, the popular foreigner bar. The experience of which was directly opposite to what we enjoyed at Trappa, the first bar. Here, the bar more or less resembled any American college bar, except everything multiplied by 10. EVERYBODY dancing on tables, beer and champagne flying through the air, bottles breaking, Bon Jovi blaring out of the speakers, college aged students grinding on each other, relishing the fact that no one would ever see another again. We stood by the side, drinking yet another beer, both still amused. What a thing to come to Nice and find a caricature of America, performed by Americans.
Walked home, stopped for a Doner Kebab (probably one of the best ideas of the trip. I had been hungry all evening, and to finally eat this spicy lamb delight was an A+ experience.)
And that was the night.
I liked Nice. It was nothing special. But it was a good place to get my bearings back, buy some things I needed (like contact solution), serve as a base for the daytrip to Monaco and enjoy a bit of French food.
The weather prevented any suntanning on the French Fiviera, but since when am I in to the beach?
More importantly, TWO days ago (Thursday) ended up being QUITE good. Didn' t I tell you all that things were getting better? Weren't you all a bit worried about me, worried that I wasn't having enough fun?
But I will be brief. I me this guy Jannes in the hostel, from the Frisian Islands of Germany, but speaks about 4 languages, plays in a band, is friends with the Notwist, likes a lot of the same music that I like ("Do you like the Magnetic Fields?" "Of course!" "Do you like the Cocteau Twins?" "Of course! Do you like Blonde Redhead?" "Of course, I saw them play within the last year!) It has been fairly easy to meet people on the trip, slightly harder to meet nice people, but MUCH harder to meet interesting people. Not to worry, any former travel companions of mine who might possibly be reading this! I liked you! But I actually like SO few of the people that I encounter! Anyway, this guy was fun and spoke good English.
He was heading to Monaco that day for an interview with a yacht design company. I decided to come along for sightseeing during the day.
What a ridiculous place! Carved into a cliff, only about 7,000 permanant inhabitants, very few roads, lots of rules and TONS of money. Fancy cars and yachts everywhere. We passed by the local real estate office and noticed some listings for houses selling for 80 million Euros! We had cheeseburgers and espresso by the harbor, wandered through the city gardens (decorated with bulls?) and hiked up to the "rock", where the Prince's palace is. We admired the expensive lunches that the more appropriately dressed tourists were enjoying and descended the mountain for a 2 Euro beer snack that we purchased from a snack shack. And drank under an awning. Not quite the glamour one might expect from Monaco, but one must do with what one has, correct? Smile.
We split up here, because he had the interview and I was planning on having dinner with those Nicois I met the day before. Unfortunately, I got very lost, even in the small country of Monaco trying to get back to the train station. It was raining, harder and harder, and I became soaked and soaked, and I ended up in a tunnel construction sight, lost and confused. A construction worker led me out a secret door which led me quickly to the train station, and I safely made it back to Nice.
Monaco is lovely in its way, even if it is much too posh for my taste. This was the first place I had been that made Iceland look impoverished, but I loved the curving stairs that connect the low streets to the high streets, and the underground passages and elevators for those not inclined to climb.
I showered and got ready for the Nice people to pick me up for dinner. And the rain began to pour hard. So hard that traffic seemed to stop, and everybody paused under the nearest overhang to avoid drowning. I stood for 10 minutes next to two backpackers, a chasidic Jew and a vendor of some sort waiting for the rain to stop.
It did, but my friends from Nice did not arrive. I was half relieved. When I thought about it, dinner at the house of two total strangers might not have been the funnest, especially if they lived far from the city center.
Why didn't they come? Possibly they decided it would be too much trouble. Possibly a a language miscommunication caused me to show up at the wrong time. Perhaps the rain delayed them by more than 30 minutes. Maybe they decided that I would flake because of the rain.
Regardless, I found my own dinner, a delicious tuna sandwich (even the cheap food in France is delicious. I am amazed) and took a long walk through Nice in the rain, enjoying the music on my iPod (rapidly walking through a storm, listening to the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia"). I checked my internet and returned the hostel.
Jannes came back from his interview. We split a bottle of Spanish wine I had purchased in...Spain, which I was glad to get rid of because it was weighing down my bag. And we decided to "go out" for the night.
It took us a long time until we found something open, but in Old Nice we discovered a small bar, which appeared to be inhabited by all locals. A DJ was playing reasonably listenable music, we had a few beers, people watched at laughed at the absurdity of the scene.
We tired of this, and after a few false starts found Wayne's, the popular foreigner bar. The experience of which was directly opposite to what we enjoyed at Trappa, the first bar. Here, the bar more or less resembled any American college bar, except everything multiplied by 10. EVERYBODY dancing on tables, beer and champagne flying through the air, bottles breaking, Bon Jovi blaring out of the speakers, college aged students grinding on each other, relishing the fact that no one would ever see another again. We stood by the side, drinking yet another beer, both still amused. What a thing to come to Nice and find a caricature of America, performed by Americans.
Walked home, stopped for a Doner Kebab (probably one of the best ideas of the trip. I had been hungry all evening, and to finally eat this spicy lamb delight was an A+ experience.)
And that was the night.
I liked Nice. It was nothing special. But it was a good place to get my bearings back, buy some things I needed (like contact solution), serve as a base for the daytrip to Monaco and enjoy a bit of French food.
The weather prevented any suntanning on the French Fiviera, but since when am I in to the beach?
posted by Jed at 9:53 AM
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