Normandy Adventures: Nice Day 2

Bonjour pour la finalment temp! Today will be the last full day we spend in France and our plan is to spend it seeing the other cities of the French Riviera: Cannes and Monaco. Just for some background information, Monaco is the expensive casino city where the Monaco Grand Prix occurs and the Cannes is, of course, where the famous Cannes Film Festival takes place. Unfortunately for us, we missed out on both cities having their respective events, but it was still fun to see both cities.

We first visited Monaco and took the 20 minute train ride there. Once we got off the train, we followed the signs that led to the casino area of Monaco. The walk led us along the coastline of the city, where yachts larger than the ones in Nice were docked. We enjoyed the Gardens around the casinos. We didn't end up entering the nicer casinos because I wasn't dressed for the occasion (though Mandy definitely dressed to impress), but also we didn't feel like paying money to enter the more premier casinos. Instead, we went to one of the free casinos and decided to lose some money at the slot machines. I played at what I thought was a low stake slot machine and put in my money to see if I would get lucky. About 8 reels afterwards, I found out I lost all my credits and was left with only 0.46 Euros - not even enough for one last spin. Defeated, I printed out my receipt and was far too ashamed to cash it in and decided to keep it as a souvenir.

Norm dreaming of owning a yacht one day

Norm being silly

Posing in front of the suggestive flower

The casinos we couldn't enter

Afterwards, we left the casino and wandered aimlessly around for a while due to our lack of a map. Eventually, we found our way and found our way along the pier where we had lunch. The sun decided to show its full luminosity and it was becoming blisteringly hot with high humidity. Nothing soothes better than a coke in a glass + ice and I was hellbent to have that regardless of the price. That is definitely the wrong attitude to have when cokes were 6.40 Euros per glass! Most expensive glass of coke ever.

6.40 Euro and 3.80 Euro glasses of Coke. Outrageous but delicious.

Afterwards, we crossed to the other side of the pier and climbed a set of stairss to the summit of a cliff where the historical district of Monaco was located. We took some nice photos there and wandered around for some souvenirs and to see the other perspective of Monaco. From there, we walked back to the train station and took the an hour train ride to Cannes. We were unfortunate enough to get a train without air conditioning and it was most enduring 1 hour I experienced in Europe. So brutal. Combine that with sweaty body odour of sweaty Frenchmen, and it's no surprise that we were so relieved when we got off that train. (Mandy: At one point I wanted to sleep so that I didn't have to endure the heat but when I almost fell asleep I would wake up gasping for air. It was just that hot.)

Walking up to the hilltop

View from the midpoint

View at the top

Leaving Monaco, we realized how small the major city of Cannes is. We walked from the train station and walked along the beach towards the historical district of Cannes. On the way, we picked up some popsicles to sooth the heat. Not sure what it is about the French Riviera and the historical areas, but they are always located atop of a hill/cliff/mountain (depending on how tired and hot we felt). We got to the top, snapped some photos, and the headed down a street that was packed with various restaurants. We ate an early dinner and chose French cuisine since it was our last meal in France. From then, we took a train back to Nice, headed back to the hotel and prepared for the journey to our next destination: Spain.