nice was nice....but monaco was nicer

Nice, wow where do I begin. The south of france is so different from Paris I cant even believe it.our hotel is no more than a football field away from the beach and right inside one of the busiest pedestrian squares in town. We walked around a little bit and showered up to get ready to go out. The girls we went with were staying at a different hostel, the hostel we originally wanted to stay at but here were no beds available. Their hostel was incredible. It has been voted top 5 hostels worldwide for 2 years now, and for all the right reasons. The hostel was once a monastery, the common room is right inside where the chapel once was, with all of the stained glass windows still there from the original chapel. The hostel itself looked like a stone village out of Tatoonie from star wars, or maybe a better example would be some stone houses out of Iraq? Either way it was cool, the entire grounds of the hostel was a big garden, with a GIANT brand new kitchen with windows all the way around it that looked into the gardens. We stayed there all night as the beers were 1 euro for tallboyz, everything was so cheap, from the food to the beer nothing outrageous, it really felt like a cozy hostel. We headed back late night and missed the tram by about 30 seconds and ended up having to take a 10 euro cab ride which was no big deal, we had fun. Oh an I forgot, we met this kid from Australia named Daniel who was an incredible person, probably the nicest most outgoing person ive ever met in my life. He has been traveling the world for 6 months and plans to extend it another 6 months to travel all of North and South America. He had some of the craziest stories ive ever heard, even one about seeing someone murdered in Morocco, but if you want to know more about that your going to have to ask me. We really hadn’t planned on going to Monaco because we were told it was only for the rich, but Daniel had been there before and we decided that the 5 of us would meet up the next day to take the 15 minute train to Monaco to see what it was all about. 5 People turned into 13, as we had a giant group from the hostel and decided to take the bus which was cool because it was only 1 euro and only took about 25 minutes. Once again the drive was amazing; it was all through the mountains with the Mediterranean glowing bright blue from below. We arrived in the 2 square kilometer city and I was just blown away. Billions of dollars just sitting in front of me. We headed towards the famous Monte Carlo casino. The cars man, the cars, it was like something out of a movie. Im not even exaggerating when I say this; 8 Bentleys, 2 Ferraris, about 10 Porsches, among about 20 other super high end luxury cars. After taking many many pictures we headed for the beach. In the distance you could see all the trillionaire’s yachts, some bigger than some cruise ships I’ve seen, helicopter pads on them, 6 jet skis with matching crane to lift them off the top and set them in the water, it was surreal. The beach isn’t really a beach, but a bed of millions of tiny pebbles. I actually prefer the pebbles to sand as its much cleaner and laying on them is almost therapeutic. None of the pictures I took or anything I say can ever do Monaco justice. I thought Ibiza was paradise on earth, well move over I found a new one. We spent the day frolicking around the sea and eating ice cream and drinking beer. It was nice to be in a such a big group as fresh faces are always fun to talk to. We ended up staying till about 6ish and then headed back on the bus. We planned to meet up later that night at the hostel but things went a little south. While at dinner the waiter accidentally dumped an entire glass of red wine of my lap, which wasn’t that big of deal as accidents happen you know. What made it a big deal was the way they handled it. Now I don’t know how it works in France, but in the states if you were to dump a glass of red wine all over someone’s clothes, which totaled to about 300$ mind you, your meal should be paid for, MAYBE AT LEAST THE WINE THAT WAS DUMPED ON YOUR LAP. I explained to the waiter that I was not upset with him that I wanted my meal paid for. The manager proceeded to come out and laughed in my face. That is not a figurative laugh in my face either, he literally laughed in my face and told me that it was not a big deal. I kept my cool very well because those of you who know me well know that I am the person that would flip over a table in a restaurant in a situation where I am that angry. We ended up not even eating, which was a huge bummer because Alex ordered mussels which looked amazing, and I ordered the frog legs which looked delicious. They took our dinners away and we left, only after paying for the wine, that the dumbfuck spilled on my lap. We went home to soak my clothes in cold water and to grab a change of clothes and headed up to the other hostel to meet up with everyone. We got lost as hell and just by chance we ran into them as they were walking down towards the beach. This was a godsend as if we would have not seen them we would have been sitting in the hostel bar just drinking by ourselves. We followed them down to the beach which was a story in itself. We had about 16 people drunk singing various songs all the way down there. We headed down to the beach and sat around sipping wine and skipping stones into the French Riviera. After that everyone but us headed back and Alex I walked around for a little bit to find a bar and we sat down to have a drink. We got a good nights sleep that night and I got to webcam chat with my parents which was a treat. We checked out that morning and stored our luggage. We met up with the girls at the merry-go-round and searched the town for some oysters, which was unsuccessful. I did get to try Foi de Gras, which is duck liver and I loved it. We spent the day just walking along the boardwalk admiring the multitude of blues the ocean presented to us. We hopped on the night train to paris which was hands down top 5 coolest experiences so far here in Europe. The train was like one big party. We were hanging with some Parisians and a few soldiers from Senegal. Make sure you ask me about this if you see me, Alex and I had a blast on the train though. We got to Paris right on time the next morning and had breakfast at a little café, right now we are sitting on the train about 3 hours away from Amsterdam. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited we are. This is the Mecca, the place Alex and I have been wanting to go to as soon as I found out about it. I am giddy just thinking about it, our hostel is right inside the red light district and our train is scheduled to pull in at around 2:30. I don’t know when im going to update this next as im not going to even know what to expect once we get there. Its kinda sad that the one place we are looking forward to going to most is Amsterdam for obvious reasons, but at the same time I could care less, I am just bouncing off the walls right now in anticipation for the city. I will update this as soon as I can but don’t expect anything to interesting to read, im trying to keep this blog sorta PG as ive said before and im not trying to post my exploits of Amsterdam on a public internet domain. So make sure to ask me about Amsterdam next time I talk to any of you and ill give you the real story of this city……See you on the moon J