France and a bit of Italy

Ok, I really thought Id be able to blog more, Im sorry Ive been so bad at keeping in touch.
Where are all the apostraphes you ask? I cant find the key on the keyboard of the computer in Pisa that Im using :)
Also, cant upload pics here but Ill try to add some in later.

France was awesome! We spent a few days in Montpellier, in the South. I loved it there, it was a laid back place with lots of other young people and lots to see and do. We visited some great parks and old town cafes, walked along the river, caught a photography show and rode the citys tram serveral times.



Next it was off to The French Riviera, I think riviera is French for "expensive"! We stayed 5 nights in Nice and spent a day in Cannes and a day in Monaco (technically its own country!). It was so nice there and we had fabulous beach weather, we went "swimming" in the Med (we got in the water a bit)!! Cold!!




Cannes is much smaller than Nice with a little less to offer in the way of shopping and sight seeing but we climbed the hill along the port and visited the museum thats at the top and took in some nice panoramas of the town. We each have a picture on what were pretty sure is the red carpet outside the building that houses the famous film festival.



Monaco was definitely not our scene! It is a beautiful town perched high on the hills over looking the port, and home to too many luxury cars to count, expertly manicured lawns and overpriced clothing stores. They were already setting up the famous Monaco Grand Prix car race so we missed out on the usual port view (big, expensive boats!). We tried our luck at Monte Carlo, and it turns out we didnt have any. I was up 20.00 Euros at one point, but lost it all to slot machine. Matt tried his hand at roulette and was even less successful.



All in all our experience in the south of France was great and I hope to return one day, with a little more spending money!

We then wisked ourselves off to Northern Italy, first stop Venice(ish). We stayed at a little hotel in a town called Campagna Lupia. It was only a few minutes to the local train station where we caught trains into Verona and Venice for a couple of fabulous day trips! Verona was so beautiful. We saw Juliettes balcony (massive tourist trap) and the old Roman arena and main square.



As usual we wandered the city streets aimlessly and came across old squares and cafes that take you back to another time. Venice is an interesting place, its hard to believe that a city can seem like its floating on water. Its made up of over 100 tiny islands connected by over 400 islands, and the tiny walkways and streets seem to go on forever in a maze. Its hard to understand how anyone knows their way around and can maneuver the streets on a daily basis!



We spent part of our afternoon there on the Lido which is long spit off the city with a nice beach and a fraction of the people (although Im sure it gets busy in the summer!). To cap off our day, we took a gondola ride! We had a really nice gondolier who gave us a little tour of the area and some history. I will get the pictures up as soon as I can.




More to come on the rest of Italy in a few days, including our day here in Pisa before heading south to Naples and Pompeii the back up towards Rome. Also, I can hopefully attach a few pictures when I have some decent wifi.

Ciao!! Michaela