The Riviera

The last two stops we have had, reminded us that we were indeed on a vacation. The three days we had in Nice were relaxing and spent under the sun. We arrived early evening to our hostel, Villa Saint Exupery, which is supposed to be one of the nicest hostels in Europe. We went downstairs to this converted monastery to have dinner in the hostel bar and settled in to our room. Melissa's three friends from California, Mike, Pat and Danny, would be arriving later that evening so we hung out for a bit in the room until they arrived. When the boys came in exhausted after a long day of traveling due to a delayed flight (looks like we aren't the only ones that have trouble in Europe!), we decided to go downstairs to have one of their dollar beers before we called it a night.

The next morning, Melissa cooked a breakfast of eggs for everyone, which was a great change from the usual toast and cereal (with warm milk) that we have gotten so accustomed to. Afterwards, we got on the train to check out the French Riviera's beaches. We first went to a beach in Nice called Villefranche, which happened to be only one train stop down the line. We laid in the sun, swam in the refreshing water, and compared stories of our travels thus far. After a few hours, we decided to get back onto the train and head a little bit farther down the coast line to Monacco. We were welcomed by giant yachts, ashton martins, and, you guessed it, gelato. We enjoyed the pebble beaches that these two locations had to offer and for the first time in a few weeks we finally found refuge from the heat. Upon returning back to our hostel, we decided to utilize the hostel kitchen and cook our own meal. We picked up the necessities at the local supermarket and ended up with a plethora of pasta with chicken, tomatoes and mushrooms as well as a salad with all the fixings. It felt like a feast for kings and we had so much left over that we decided to leave it in the fridge to eat for the following day as well.

It was obligatory that we discover the famous nightlife that Nice is known for. We headed downtown to check out some of the local bars. The first bar we went to Wayne's Bar, was jam packed and only the brave entered the dance floor as one was instantly drenched due to the body heat upon entry. After a drink we decided to venture a little more and ended up at this underground dance club which was just what we were looking for. We salsa-ed to remixes of American music and jumped to techno. After finally finding a taxi to take us back to the hostel, we retired very quickly to our beds after an exhausting day.

Sunday brought us to another beach. We had heard of this amazing beach with caves and rocks to jump off so we packed our towels and Tupperware of pasta and set out to discover it. After a few wrong turns we found it and enjoyed another long day at the beach. We concluded our time in Nice with a quiet evening of reading in our hostel room before getting up early to catch our train in the morning. We said farewell to the boys at the train station and headed off on our four hour journey to Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre was awesome! This collection of five beach towns on the Italian Riviera provided us with another relaxing break from the sight seeing. The weather was more mild than we have been experiencing in this unbearable heat wave and the sea was great to dip in after our long four hour hike through the towns.

After arriving Monday afternoon, we decided that we would save the hike for the following morning. Therefore, we took our time to check into our private flat right in the center of downtown and walked around the cute town of Monterosso. We stumbled upon this great restaurant right on the water and decided to have a nice sit-down dinner as the sun set. We ordered our caprese salad to start and a bottle of white wine and then had some of the best, if not the best, food of our trip to date. The seafood was fresh, the tomatoes ripe, and the wine was perfect to wash it all down with. We went to bed very early that evening to get ready for the day we had ahead of us.

Tuesday morning we took the train to Riomaggiore- the first town. We had an easy and relatively flat hike to Manarola then hiked some mountainous terrain culminating in 382 stairs up to the third town of Vernazza. After a gelato and foccacia break at Batti Batti's, we decided to take the train instead of hiking to our home base of Monterosso (also the last town). The hike provided us with the opportunity to see the candy-color painted houses stacked atop of each other of the cliffs overlooking the sea, the rolling hills of green valleys and vineyards, the crashing of the crystal blue water onto the shores and not to mention exercise. We retired our day at the beaches of Monterosso and headed to an "American Restaurant" for some sandwiches and cheeseburgers while jamming to old-school music like Nirvana and Little Bow Wow.

Now we head to Rome for some busy days of sight-seeing before Angela flies home to the states and Christian and Melissa continue their journey to Venice. We can't wait to see all that this historic city has to offer!