Italy day July 18

I was a bit too ambitious.
Knowing that Torino is about 4 hours from Ventimiglia (the city closest to the French border), I thought if I oculd wake up early enough, I can manage to go there and come back late, since there are many trains back from Ventimiglia to Nice.
Of course, it's Europe, not Japan. There were not many trains to go to Torino, and the trains were often 10, 20 minutes late. So I gave up when I realized I didn't have a connection to go to Torino early enough. I changed my plans to go to Cuneo, a city between Torino and Ventimiglia. I checked everything, went to the designated platform on time, and got on the train, just to realize 3 stations later that it was not going to Cuneo, it was heading for a small city between Ventimiglia and Genova.

God.

Fine.

So I had to change plans again. Either I took a train 2 hours later to go to Genova, which would have been nice, but I would arrive at 5:30 pm, or I go back to a city a bit close to Ventimiglia that is still on the coast: San Remo.

So that's what I did. It wasn't the best because I had not done any research on San Remo at all. There didn't seem to be any special sights there except for a couple of villas. So instead, I did a lot of shopping! ><
Italian shops were also on sale, and things seem to be a bit cheaper than French's. There were so many shops selling lingerie and bikinis...amazing, and perfect because this is the exact kind of thing that is expensive in Japan, but often gets abandoned after a while, especially bikinis.

I also went for a long stroll along their beach, which was so much more crowded than that of Nice, perhaps because Nice's beach is so long people tend to spread out more.

I had spaghetti for lunch, wanting to know if their spaghetti is really much better...but...the truth is NO. It is just like any I have had before...

There were tonnes of ice cream shops of course...I swear I saw at least 10 shops that just sells ice cream and another 20 that sell ice cream among other things.

But it really is so important to know the language when you visit a place. There was a funny and frustrating little episode when I was looking at their lingerie. In Italy,, apparently, they do not use the system of ABC etc. They use 123. So I picked up one that I wanted, but wasn't sure what size the "3" represented in size. I asked for clarification in English, but the staff only spoke in Italian. She could proabably understand a bit of English.

So it went something like this:
Me(pointing to the number "3"): What is this in French size? (since the city was so close to France, I supposed it was ok to ask her this way)
Staff: C
Me(drawing the letter C in the air): C?
Staff: C/Si (I wasn't sure which one she was answering now)
Me(a but confused and just want to know the damn size): So this is 90C in French size?
Staff(pointing at the number "3"): B
Me(now frustrated): This is B? But you said it was C.
Staff: C/Si (again, not sure which one she was saying)

You can imagine the rest of the disaster.

Cannes, Antibes, Cagnes-sur-mer, le 14 juillet

There was no school today due to the 14th of July, France's national day, so I decided to make a quick tour to the west of Nice.
It took me about an hour and a half to bus to Cannes, where there was a nice promenade lined with palm trees next to the sea, interesting painted walls on buildings that are inspired by the movie industry, and handprints of famous hollywood stars that I didn't manage to find.
Yeah..I had a map, and I was probably only 10 metres from it, but I just couldn't find it!
Not surprising. It happens to me often.

Next, Antibes. It was beautiful in the old town. I have to say that I find most "old towns" very similar to each other, no matter where they are in France. By now, I am more attracted to all the ice cream shops that are in these areas than the actual area itself. But the ice cream is worth everything.
I was lucky though, because usually the museums are not opened on Tuesdays, but the Picasso museum was surprisingly opened~ so I went and got a discounted admission by saying I am a student, although later I found that on the ticket, it says I am above 65 years old. What?!??!?!?
Incroyable!

Then I went to my last stop: Cagnes-sur-mer. This place was beautiful, but a bit dead because it was a national holiday. I went to the top of the town though-a medieval village built on a mountain. The roads were so steep it's hard to imagine how people lived at that time. They would have to walk up and down everyday...
There was a church up top and also a museum. But this time I was less lucky so the museum was not opened. I also missed the Renoir museum and olive garden, which I would love to go to.
Well, things can't be perfect.
The village itself was already very impressive.

Finally, after the whole day of journey, I went home and took a shower before I headed out to see the fireworks for the 14th of July. It was very nice, and the fact that they closed the road totally makes it nice because it wasn't super duper crowded. I did see a little mouse crawling around the beach though! Makes me think twice if I should be lying on the beach here...><

Beaulieu-sur-mer and Saint Jean Cap Ferrat July 11

Literally meaning "beautiful place", it is indeed beautiful.
This place Beaulieu-sur-mer is only about 15 minutes bus ride from Nice. From there, a peninsula sticks out, called Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.

In Beaulieu, there was a Greek Villa that people can visit to see the lifestyle, architechture, and art of the Ancient Greeks.
You go through the villa room by room, and is introduced to the room and its history on a mobile phone-like machine.
There were mosaics on the floor everywhere, paintings on walls, decorated ceilings, sculptures, marble sinks, big marble baths, dome-shaped shower room, bed-like chairs for meals since the greeks ate lying down, etc.

Saint Jean Cap Ferrat was nothing less than Beaulieu though. There was also a villa open to all to visit, called Villa et Jardin Ephrussi de Rothschild. This villa is surrounded by nine gardens laid out over 7 acres. It was designed by Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild, a girl born to a very well-off family, who later married a banker. She was able to travel the world, and was able to collect treasures from all over the world and also create designs inspirated by the world.
Some unique points of this villa include that
It is all pink on the exterior, and many personal things shown indoors were also pink because it was the Baroness' favorite color;
The villa has an endless view over the sea;
The gardens originally started with a French garden, Japanese garden, and a rose garden, but at present time, there is also a spanish garden, Florentine garden, Provencal garden, Ialian garden, and an Exotic garden;

After visiting these villas and having lunch on one of the many beaches nearby, I made a tour on foot all around the island. There was a scenic path on the side of the peninsula for people to go around the island.

C'etait magnifique!

Parc Phoenix and Musee d'arts asiatique July 8

A parc in an area with banks, offices, and near the airport--it has a big greenhouse with all sorts of exotic plants, an insectarium (which was really gross by the way), prairie dogs, lots of varieties of birds, etc.
It's quite nice for 2 euros--you can really take your time to walk around, there weren't a lot of kids even though the vacation has already started for them. There were some groups of kids from summer camps, but they were not annoying or anything.
The most annoying was just seeing a bunch of gross insects at a close distance. aarrgh... my goosebumps appeared again.

The Musee d'arts asiatique was a nice building, and must be very impressive for the French, but for someone like me, it was no surprise. There were several rooms with arts from Japan, China, Korea, India, etc. There was a large area for the history and art of Buddhism, and art related to Genghis Khan.
For me, it was a nice quiet place to cool off from walking a long way in the heat before I headed for the parc. Wahaha...
It was nice nonetheless.

Beautiful day, nice walk!

First dive in Nice!

Today I went for a dive for the first time in Nice, and in Europe!
It was also the first time I went without my honey, so I was a bit unsure of things at first.
I set up everything by myself, and interestingly, the bottles in France often have 2 openings, for people who want to put two sets of regulators apparently...or for some reason like that.
At the end, I was paired up with a German guy called Martin, who has Advanced open water, but has done fewer dives than me. Good buddy cuz he really made sure I was around during the whole dive, but I think it was also because there really wasn't much to see.

The only most amazing thing was this 2 feet long yellow/blue spotted eel like fish. Other than that, there wasn't much color, aside from a couple of small purple jellyfish at the surface, and some tiny blue fish at the bottom. There were no corals...
But to show that I was actually diving in Europe, there was a cross with Jesus on it! It seems like a part of a cathedral that fell in there, but maybe it was placed there on purpose.

I was thinking of doing one more dive today, but after seeing what was there, I gave up. At least for today. Plus the water was cold! about 19 degrees!

Beautiful day though.

Monaco

I probably was lucky and unlucky at the same time.
Without checking the bus schedule, I arrived at the gare routiere just 5 minutes before the departure of an express bus to Monaco.
Great! So I hopped on, thinking that I would get there sooner than expected.
Then I realized that probably the bus wasn't the best idea because kids just started their summer vacation, and on top of that, it was the grand opening of the Tour de France from Monaco!
So we went quite slow on the highway for a while...
but, the lucky side is that I got to see how crazy people were of this event!
People would wait in the sun for the racers to come by, just to cheer then for 5 seconds. Still, it was pretty impressive. I am not sure if the race actually takes place in the same place as Formula 1, but it's pretty much the same area.

So I arrived there, and without waiting for the racers to come, I headed for my destination-the Palais Princier.
At this palace, there are guards outside that change every once in a while (I hope).
But at precisely 11:55am everyday, a special changing of guards takes place, when about 20 or so guards have some kind of march, with a higher ranked guard/general saying something like "left, left, left right left" in french of course.
They would march along with their long rifles, in their white uniforms (in winter, they are in black). There would be some drummers and music as well.
Lots of people gather to see this...it was interesting to see but I hope they don't put on this show just for the tourists or something.

Then I went to the Cathedrale de Monaco. It was a nice cathedral with more candles than some smaller ones. There are even signs in 6 languages, including japanese.

After that, I went to the Musee Oceanographique, where there is a floor of aquarium, some exhibitions, and restaurants up top.
The aquarium was nice, but I have to say that the Japanese are much better at this.
The best thing though, was that at the end, I got to see the cutie puffer fish that looked right into my camera! ^^

After that, I took a walk around Monaco ville, but there were too many people on this day of tour de france~!!