Au Revoir Cote d'Azur!

Nadal!!!

Prince Albert

(I actually took this picture!!!)

The Cascade on the Castle hill

Ahh, it looks like I might finally be heading back to the states! Although, I haven't actually gotten on the plane yet, so who knows what will happen?

This trip was amazing for so many different reason! I played my very FIRST international volleyball tournament!!! I met a lot of fantastic people, volleyball and otherwise. And, I saw by far some of the most beautiful places on earth! I really wish I could put into words, or even show you with pictures how gorgeous these spots are. Even the pictures don't do it justice! They really mean it when they say Cote d'Azure aka blue coast. The water is sooo blue, and so many different colors of blue!

For a short synopsis on the trip-

I flew into Nice and stayed my first night here. I didn't get in until late (missed my connecting flight) so I pretty much went to dinner, walked around some, and then went to bed. Next day I walked around a little, bought some strawberries and a croissant from the market (Cours Selayar) in Old Nice. The Cours Selayar is a very famous flower market/farmer's market in Vieux Nice (Old Nice). I went and met up with Cayley, and hopped on a bus to Monaco.

We made it into Monaco, checked in, and changed to go practice. We walk down to the beach and after many failed attempts to actually get down onto the beach (getting out of the hotel was tricky) we finally made it to the court. Remember, 99% of the beaches around here are rocky so we're walking down wondering how in the world this will work! We got to the court, only to find no net and no balls. No problem, sort of, at least we brought our own ball! However, we were only allowed to use the last 10 feet of the court, haha. It was a short practice to say the least. We showered and changed for the tourney dinner that night. First, we watched a sponsor tourney (the sponsors had a few representatives and they just goofed around playing matches), then they drew for positions in the pool. Only two teams were seeded to begin with, Latvia- the European Cup Champs, and France- won the tourney last year. They literally drew names out of a hat to seed the rest.

Anyway, we had dinner and went up to bed to rest for Friday. Friday we played Switzerland first. It wasn't a bad match for us, but it wasn't great either and we ended up losing to Switzerland, which proved to be a really bad loss :( considering that was the one we needed to stay in the tourney. We had a lot of time off so Cayley and I did a little site seeing in between matches. Then the next match was Denmark, who we beat in 2. Still wasn't an awesome match but we started finding a groove. They were just an interesting team to play because they were small and kind of unconventional aka they mis-hit the ball a lot and things like that. After that we had even more time off, so we went upstairs to the hotel room to relax. Before we went upstairs we asked the Swiss girls who they were playing next because we wanted to watch their match against France so we could scout France. They assured us that they were playing Denmark next so we went upstairs for a few hours, only to come back down and find out they either a. just didn't know what they were talking about or b. lied so we couldn't watch the match (we're still not sure which one it was!). After all that mess, we ended up losing to France. We actually played decently well but needed to execute our game plan just a little better. I'd say for having to 5'9" girls playing a 6'4" girl we did pretty well though! Haha

So, that was the end of the tourney for us, but after our last match an American, John, came over and introduced himself. He has lived in Monaco now for about 3 years so he invited us to come hang out with him and his friends. After a lot of chatting with tournament people, the cute little tournament helper boy Ludovic (who happened to be the President of the tourney's son and our BIGGEST fan there), and other random photographers and people, we made our way to hang out with the group. They ended up being great people and we sat and chatted for a few hours. We then went straight to dinner, still dirty, with some tournament people and players. While at dinner we ran into..... drum roll please..... Rafael Nadal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Soooooo cool!!! We finished up dinner, quick showered and changed, and then went out to meet up with the tourney people again. It was nice of them to set up a little get together at a club/bar type place, so we went and said hi. But we had arranged to meet up with our American friend and his friends so we left after a little bit and met up with them. We had a super fun night!!! The people we met were just such a great group of people that it really made the trip for us!

After a really late night, we hung out at the pool for awhile, and then, went to watch one semi-final game and the final match of the tournament. Finals were Italy vs. France. It was actually a very fun atmosphere and a pretty good crowd! Italy ended up winning it all which I was happy about because the girls couldn't have been any sweeter. Oh and we met the Prince of Monaco!!! Prince Albert!! Our group of friends from the night before had come back to hang out, so we sat with them and hung out for a few hours. Ended up going out with them again which was just so much fun, again! We went to the casino for a little bit, which was really really neat! Such a different feel than any casino I've been in. It was very serious and formal, and definitely not cheesy like Vegas!

Sunday, Cayley and I did our touristy thing a little and went to the palace and got some souvenirs! At one point, we were trying to get to the casino by bus (it's a 5-10 min walk, but we had our luggage and it's uphill) and we just missed the bus we wanted. We were thinking, no big deal, we'll just catch the next one, it shouldn't be more than 15 mins.... wrong!!! 40 mins later the next bus came and it was jam packed! Kind of a random story, but it was hilarious at the time. After that fiasco we finally hopped on a train to Cannes!

The train to Cannes was also packed because there was a train strike and lots of trains weren't running that day. Oh, not to mention no one in Europe could fly anywhere because of the dumb volcano!!!! That was another fiasco where Cayley and I literally just forced our way onto the train, stacking our luggage on other people's and getting tons of dirty looks along the way. Haha. We made it into Cannes late afternoon so we checked into our hotel (we got lost first, of course) and did some site seeing. We pretty much just walked around and took pics, and found a place to eat. We were so exhausted from the long weekend that we went back and passed out afterwards!

Next morning we got up right away and hopped on a train then bus to Saint Paul de Vence, a cute little artsy town built in an old castle area. It really was just adorable!! And, we found more souvenirs (mostly for ourselves :D ). The one thing we were told to do there was to eat at/look around Colombe d'Or- thanks Holly McPeak! Now, I didn't know much about it, and neither did Cayley but WOW! First of all, it was beautiful. Just a really old style restaurant/hotel with lots of greenery, cute tables, beautiful artwork, great view, etc. And, the food was awesome! Pricey, yes, but awesome. And the waiter we had was a character! He was an older man, and the first thing we said to him was, we'd like to eat at your restaurant, and can we leave our bags here? Which is funny to us now because we know how nice of a place it is and probably how big of a deal itw as for us to ask!! Haha. Anyway, the waiter looked a little suspicious of us, but we sweet-talked him and he ended up loving us by the end of lunch! So, lucky for us we got to leave our luggage there all day so we could tour with out, such a relief! A few hours later, we came back to get our stuff and head back to Nice. By the way, if it gives you any idea of how popular/exclusive this place is, we saw people turned away from going to look at the inside because they weren't patrons. So weird!

We had about a 40 min bus trip, where we both took power naps, and then we were in Nice. This is when craziness began! Long story short (too late, I know) we sat at a McDonald's for a good 7 hours! Why one might ask? Because that's the only place we could get internet!!! And, my computer didn't even work, only Cayley's so we had to take turns! We needed the internet because I found out my flight was cancelled and Cayley had no idea what was going on with hers! In the end, Cayley's flight went on schedule and I got rescheduled to leave Thursday! Which was actually super lucky because I got 2 extra days in an incredible place, but wasn't "stuck" here for a week and a half like some people.... oh and by the way, this is only true if my plane tomorrow actually takes off. I guess there is still a possibility I could be here for another week, haha, but I'm going to assume my flight will go as scheduled tomorrow.

So, did I pout and mope around because my flight was cancelled? Absolutely NOT! I checked into a new hostel close to Vieux Nice, and went site seeing on my own! I went to Cours Selayar and got cheese and apples, had a nice little snack on the beach, then walked up to the old castle area. WOW! You walk up quite a ways, to find yourself at a beautiful park (the castle is long gone) and overlooking all of Nice! Whenever I talk to people about my time in Switzerland I tell them how Interlaken is probably my favorite place in the entire world... and now I can tell them that the top of the castle in Nice is a close second, or maybe even tied for first. You can't even imagine the views! Not to mention the waterfall! Yeah, a waterfall on the side of this hill/mountain/castle thing... just incredible! After a great day, I came back to my hostel where I met my 3 American roommates whom I proceeded to go to dinner with. Super fun! I just love meeting people! We hung out in Vieux Nice after dinner then turned in for the night.

Today I was going to go to St. Tropez but it was a little expensive/hard to get to and around so I decided to save that for another time. Then, I was going to go to Eze ( a little midieval town just east of Nice), so I called my friend Yana that I met in Monaco and she met me at the train station there! (Side note, Yana is Russian so it made me think of Anna the whole time we hung out :) ) Apparently, Eze has two parts, Eze sur mer (by the sea) or Eze Village (up in the mountains) and we went to the boring one, boo. Yana had looked around already, so I literally got off the train to say hi to her, and then we hopped right back on the same one and went back to Monaco. We were going to get on the bus that went up to Eze Village but we couldn't figure out when it came and we knew it was only once every 2 hours or so. So, we walked around a few places I hadn't seen, and then had lunch and chatted. She's such a great girl!!

And after a bus ride, and a dinner and glass of wine by myself (I love being independent), I am back in the hostel catching up on internet-ing!

Hope I caught everyone up. I wish I could describe better how AMAZING this trip has been! I definitely recommend a vacation here to everyone! :D

And now, I'm finally going to get some sleep!

Goodnight y'all!

PS I'm going to have to figure out a way to post albums because I have a million pictures to share!