February 1, 2010

So this weekend we traveled to the French Riviera. We drove a rental car from Torino to Monaco (The country), to Niche, to Cannes, to Grass, to Mercaille,to Martigues, and then to tigues. Niche was incredible, we stayed a night in a hostel there that was amazing. The hostel had about 9 flat panel computers on the wall that had free internet access and there was a club built into the side where you can meet people from other countries. We met a group of Australians traveling to Italy (Of all places). At about midnight, this supposedly world renowned pianist who was going through Niche to get to Milan in order to do a concert came into the club and started playing some of his music. He was unbelievable, i think he was at the hostel because the hostel owner was a friend of his or something.
The beach and the view in Niche are probably the best that i have ever seen in my entire life. Niche is right on the waterfront were the mountains meet the shore. We were able to climb on top of a mountain that was in the middle of the city to get the most spectacular view of the city, the Mediterranean, and the mountains. (First picture) The sun was setting as we came down the mountain and we decided to walk out to a relatively famous lighthouse in the area and watch the sunset. We spent the night in the hostel and then got up the next day and rented bikes to ride along the coast. Biking is huge in Niche because of the "tour de france" influence and so they have bike paths that stretch all along the coasts. After we finished riding along the beach, we traveled to cannes (Home of the European film festival), and then to Martigues where we stayed in a really cheap condo for a night. The way we broke it down the condo only cost us 15 dollars each a night, and it was probably a little better quality than the apartment Sam rented this past summer in Miami.
Actually, it took us about 3 hours to find the condo because we got lost in this small town. We got really frustrated after driving around for a while so we decided to eat pizza at this local shop in town. We asked the waiter in broken french how we could find the condo, and he disappeared into the back. About 25 minutes later he emerges from the kitchen with a map and like 5 or 6 other people from the restauraunt. Before long we had the entire restauraunt gathered around our table, like a war room, arguing in french about the "location" of the condo. It was incredibly bizzarre and chaotic until this stereotypical frenchman silences everyone by walking into the jumble of people holding up a "GPS". They fooled around with the GPS for a while until they finally just decided to just drive us to the condo. (Which is borderline impossible to find). When we woke up the next morning we drove into mercaille to see some of the sites. On the way we started driving through the French alps and we decided that it would be a good idea to pull the car over and try to climb one of the smaller mountains to get a view of the Mediterranean. This of course is a horrible idea because we were obviously on private property and the temperature was well below freezing, but we did it anyway. After about 1 hour of climbing the altitude was too severe, and i started to feel like passing out so i turned around and headed down. On the way down i saw the owner of the properties trailer and his collection of junk yard dogs. Thank God their was a gate. haha After we all got down, we visited as many cathedrals as we could and headed home.