Justine goes to Scotland!

I am in France! This is my first time out of the UK since January. I flew from Newcastle and met my family in Nice. We are renting a house in Vence which is a small town about 15 miles outside of Nice. The house we are staying in was built in the 1200s and even better than what I expected. Since this is a small town, not everyone speaks English, so we manage by looking up words in the phrase book, speaking broken French my dad learned in High School, and by using a lot of hand gestures. Everyone is very nice and some people try to speak English to us even if they know just a few words.

The day after we arrived in France, we started our morning with a Cafe Au Lait which is a very small, but strong cup of coffee (we all needed it). There are so many cafes with outdoor seating which is wonderful to just sit and absorb in the surroundings. Sometimes just sipping on a cup of coffee and people watching is the best part of traveling. Since it might rain later in the week, we decided to go to Monaco on the first day instead of on Tuesday. My dad and sister wanted to take a relaxing day to orient themselves to Vence, so my mom and I were the ones who went and took a bus and train to the second smallest country of Monaco. I have dreamed about going to Monaco ever since watching a Samantha Brown travel show on the Travel Channel. I just imagined everyone who lived there would be rich and own yachts. And I did see a lot of yachts! My mom and I first went to a cafe in Monte Carlo right next to the famous casino. While we were there, we were keeping an eye out for famous people and also the rich residents of Monaco. There was an old woman, probably in her 80s, sitting at a small table by herself and she had a huge purple hat on her head. She was wearing fancy clothes and a lot of make-up and just watching the people walk by. My mom kept saying that she thinks that she was probably a famous person when she was younger and looked like a very mysterious and interesting character. Have you ever seen the movie Sunset Boulevard? She reminded her of the main character in that movie. After that, we went into the casino to gamble! It was my first time gambling. We walked into the building and were taken back by how gorgeous it was. I wish we could have explored the rest of the building, but we just went into the foyer and one other room. We decided to only bet 5 euros and we ended up leaving with more money than we came in with! (Well, we won 1 euro, but it was still so much fun because we did not loose any money!). I can’t wait to try gambling again. Next to the casino was the Hotel de Paris which was designed by the same architect as the casino. We walked through the revolving doors into a grand foyer with marble floors and huge columns with a detailed ceiling. I would have loved to stay in that hotel! We saw a menu for the restaurant in the Hotel, and there was caviar for 550 euros! I do not think I have seen anything that expensive on the menu. After we went to the hotel, we walked around the port and saw beautiful views of the water and the old town from the hill across from us. By the time we walked to the old town, we relized that we have been walking almost all day. We decided to go back to Vence at that time since our feet were pretty tired of walking. For dinner, we went to a cute restaurant in the heart of Vence and I enjoyed the best muscles I have ever tasted.