Today I woke up early and had a yogurt and fruit for breakfast. Even though I was awake early, I was still late to be downstairs. We hopped on a fancy bus and headed to Monaco. During the bus ride, we listened to music and sang along. Once we arrived, we had the choice of visiting the aquarium or a palace: I chose to visit the palace. We took a guided tour in French, and saw the historic rooms and furniture. I am really excited to be in the Nice program!
Next, my friends and I walked to Monte Carlo and enjoyed lunch along the river. For lunch, I ate pizza and salad. I drank a coke. The food was good and inexpensive. My friends and I discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of the trip. We decided to go to the shopping district. After we paid and started walking, we realized the walk was farther and more uphill than we expected. By the time we go to the top, we were tired. Luckily, we had tons of water. In the downtown area of Monte Carlo, we found the hotel where the movie Monte Carlo was filmed. We took many pictures and talked about how Selena Gomez had probably stood in the same place we were standing. After we walked around and saw a lot of clothing stores and ice cream shops. We also tried to look for a Ladurée, but we couldn’t find it after we walked around for a long time.
My friend had never tried the macaroons before and they didn’t have a store in Nice so we really wanted to find one in Monaco. We had to run to the bus stop so that we could get back to the palace in time. When we got on the bus, we did not have a lot of time to get to the palace so we were worried that we were not going to make it back in time. After a long bus ride, we eventually got back to the palace and we ended up being five minutes early! After everyone got back to the meeting point, we walked back down to the bus and we drove to the perfumery in Eze. When we got there, everyone was tired but it was interesting to hear about how they made all of the different scents and how they figured out which scents smell good together.
After our tour of the perfumery, we were able to go to the store to buy lotions, soaps, perfumes, and other things. When everyone was done buying things, the group leaders walked us up to the town of Eze. We walked around the city and there was lots of art stores, boutiques, and restaurants. We tried to find the “Jardin exotique” but when we found it we discovered that we had to pay to get in. We walked back down and we ended up finding a pretty small church. There were a man and woman who were getting married and they had a beautiful wedding. I took pictures with my friends by the church.
After a long time of taking pictures, we all became very hungry so we tried to find a café where we could buy baguettes with ham and butter and some drinks. We found a café that was on the way back to the meeting point and it was very good. At first, I did not think that I liked ham, but after having a ham and butter sandwich I realized that I did like ham. I also tried to teach my friends to speak Spanish but they could not seem to pronounce any of the words right. It was funny hearing them try to speak another language instead of French. I also tried to show them some of my favorite Spanish songs and they liked them all! After we finished our meal at the café, we walked back down to the perfumery to meet our group by the bus.
When everyone got back to the perfume store, we took our bus back to Nice. The scenery was very pretty but a lot of people fell asleep on the ride home because we were all very tired from all of the walkings we did that day. When we got back to the residence, we had couscous and chicken for dinner which was good. I am learning that I like a lot of different foods that I have never tried before! After dinner, I got dressed for our free time in Old Nice. Our group leaders had to make sure that we knew that since it was Bastille Day that it might be a little crazy in the streets, but they trust us and want us to experience the true French culture.
When we got to the main square my friends and I decided that we want to go to a café and have a calm night since we were all super tired from our long day. We ate crepes and ice cream and laughed about things that had happened during the week. We sat there for an hour and a half until we had to meet back up with the group and go back to the residence. When we got back to the residence, we all sat in my friend Ella’s room and hung out and watched a movie. We watched the movie Monte-Carlo since we had just gone there and we wanted to see if it looked different in the movie than it did in real life. The movie was very funny, but some of my friends ended up falling asleep in the middle. We had an amazing day and I can’t wait for the next week with the Abbey Road Programs.