Heads up - this is going to be a long one, to make up for the two previous anemic posts. Bonus, there will be lots of pictures!
Going way back, the week that I left for my trip went way too quickly. I had my last week of classes, only half of which I made it to. Monday I spent, as previously mentioned, in a panic. I had no idea what city I was flying back from, which was making it particularly difficult to plan my trip. After hours of trying and failing to make Croatia happen I gave up and decided to fly back from Naples and booked myself a hostel for my first night in Nice. To celebrate my accomplishments in delayed decision making I went to some LSE Student Union bar night with Valerie and Jardena, which was completely empty. Apparently bar nights the last Monday of the semester are not a big draw, so we ended up at another East End bar until it closed, which led to me sleeping into my class the next morning, which led to me giving up on Tuesday entirely. Didn't really get out of bed until just about sunset and accomplished literally nothing at all that day. Wednesday was just prepping for my trip, since I flew out of Gatwick at 7 am Thursday morning. Despite all my previous experience with having to literally run to catch the train, I once again left a bit on the late side and had to beg for directions to the train station from some construction workers. The good news is that I finally, once and for all, can find the London Bridge train station without running into and then out of the London Bridge Tube Station!
Now for the fun stuff - TRAVELING!
I flew into Nice early in the morning and began my day by unnecessarily spending over 3 euros on a bottle of water to make change I didn't end up needing for the bus into town and prompting forgetting to actually take the bottle with me when I walked away after paying for it. I caught the bus into town and found my hostel, which was only a few blocks away from the train station, where the bus dropped me off. The hostel looked distinctly closed, but despite the lights which were turned off (turns out there was a timer switch I didn't know to look for) and the locked door, I was able to check in, change and head out to explore the town. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I was apparently the only one who noticed this, because while I was dressed in a tank top, skirt and flip flops, everyone else was dressed in coats, gloves, scarves, hats and ugg boots. A few blocks down the main street towards the beach was the Nice Christmas Market. I really, really admired the city's determination to have a white Christmas despite their location on the Mediterranean
The Christmas market was adorable, just a few rows of little wooden stalls, selling various candies, sweets, mulled wine, crafts, Christmas related ornaments, gifts etc.
I tore myself away and kept going towards the beach, stopping to admire the fountain statue wearing a crown of ponies, I don't know who this dude is, but I like him
The beach in Nice is one of those very startlingly blue paradises with an unfortunate rock beach and lack of waves. I had forgotten to pack my bathing suit so I had to settle for ambling along the shore on my way to the Cour Saleya farmer's market. I was too afraid to actually try and order anything at the market since I don't actually speak French, so I continued my wandering until I reached the end of the beach at the Parc Du Chateau, the closer and rather indistinct hill in this beach picture. No, not that one. This picture doesn't really do it justice.
I climbed up to the top of the park, stopping to admire the panorama view
the view of the mountains in the distance
an extremely enthusiastic waterfall
and the harbor full of yachts
and took a picture to prove that I was in fact, there
I spent a good hour or so clambering all over that hilltop, the site of ancient fortifications, an ancient church, recent playgrounds and fun little paths that snake all over. I also stumbled across (purposefully but ultimately by accident when I couldn't find it on purpose) the Jewish Cemetery.
It was definitely the most unique Jewish cemetery I've ever been in. They had a very moving memorial to both the Holocaust victims and child victims of the Holocaust. The individual tombs were also the most extravagant that I've ever seen in a Jewish cemetery
and appeared to have multiple inhabitants
After spending hours in the Parc I finally made my way back down to do some more wandering, this time through the old town of Nice, which is incredibly charming, and tried to visit the Cathedral but realized I was underdressed. This was also the first time I realized one downside of being on vacation during the low-season. Everything is under renovation. The cathedral was completely covered in scaffolding
I made it through the Old Town and into the harbor area to admire the yachts up close. An extremely chatty old french man who kept trying to hold my hand gave me a walking tour of the harbor and in case anyone was wondering what they could get me for my birthday
That night I went out with some of my hostel roommates to find a bar. This proved way harder than any of us imagined. Apparently Nice is a place that shuts down at night. And we were not looking in the right places. But we did find Christmas lights
And these giants light sculpture/ornaments all over town that you could sit inside as the lights danced across them
and past this WWII monument on the headland
the night ended after we finally found a bar on the Cour Saleya street, where the beers were extremely overpriced and the DJ was playing Euro-club music while facebooking
I tried really hard to take this picture without compromising the DJ's privacy, but he took my camera and insisted on taking the picture himself, so if you want a multi-tasking DJ in France, I suggest you talk to.
After my first night in Nice I figured I had taken care of seeing the actual city and wanted to explore the Riviera a bit more. The original plan was to spend the morning in Antibes to visit the Picasso museum there and then train from Antibes to Monaco for the afternoon. My plan was derailed when I showed up to the train station and found out that the only train to Antibes left at 6am or noon and given I had missed the 6 am train I would have to choose between Antibes and Monaco. I chose Monaco, mainly because it counts as visiting another country. There was also a train strike (I found out later) so the trains were emphatically not running on time. I eventually made it to Monaco, the train first passing through some extremely cute little French villages perched on the mountains above the sea. Once I got there I spent the day, like the one before in Nice, wandering. And just like the day before I started at the Christmas market.
From there I climbed up to the top of the headland, past apparently necessary signs on the way to the Palace
with increasingly picturesque views of the harbor (full of yachts!)
At the top of a fairly enthusiastic flight of stairs, partially built of hard-to-use, wide, sloping steps. Once you reach the top you arrive at the side of the palace, where there is a statue dedicated to the man who made the first attempt by the Grimaldi family to seize the Monacan fortress
"Dressed as a Franciscan monk, François was greeted at the gates of Monaco's castle, only then to seize the castle with his cousin Rainier I, Lord of Cagnes, and a group of men behind him." His attempt was only good for the next four years but obviously persistence paid off eventually.
I spent quite a while up on the headland, checking out the secondary harbor,
and admiring exactly how well defended Monaco is by its ridiculously steep and tall cliffs
I loved loved loved the small town up on top of the headland. If you ignore the millions of souvenir shops, it's a wonderfully compact, tiny little walkable European town.
And it is also home to the Cathedral where Grace Kelly got married, which at the time I visited was full of dioramas? I think maybe somehow related to Christmas.... but it was ...confusing
also, while you are visiting the Cathedral you can make those stretched out pennies that everyone loves so much!
On the advice of my guidebook I took the time while up on the headland to visit the Musee Oceanographique and Aquarium. I set myself up for failure to enjoy this museum by convincing myself that Musee "oceanographique" was actually just French for "aquarium" and ignoring that it was the Museum of Oceanography AND Aquarium. So I spent the first part of my visit unsure why they had chosen to exhibit the history of exploring the oceans
On reflection, it became clear that it was totally appropriate for these exhibits to be the focus in a museum of Oceanography. That didn't really go far enough to explain why there was also an exhibit that focused on the recent royal wedding though (other than perhaps, a lack of museums in Monaco?)
Once I made it through the exhibition I found my way to the roof and admired the view and played with my self-timer function
Before I finally tracked down the aquarium (it was in the basement the whole time). I enjoyed the heck out of the aquarium. Especially because that was what I had thought I would be spending the whole time looking at. It was a fairly small aquarium as these things go and it was full of high school students, but I still learned a lot and got a lot of fun/weird pictures
After I got my money's worth out of the museum I took a flight of stairs down to a random garden, on the edge of the cliff and realized exactly how impressive the museum building is
Having finished up on the headland I took a different route back down to the harbor/yacht club, past an amphitheater on the hill
I took the time to walk slowly around the harbor and individually admire each yacht, and while walking up the hill towards the Monte Carlo ran into a boy who was staying in the same room as I was in the hostel in Nice! We chatted for a while and he explained that he was following the route of the Grand Prix, which is marked with paint and are places where the street has a sloped curb so the cars can run up on it around the corners. I finished up my afternoon in Monaco visiting the Monte Carlo, which mostly meant standing around with a bunch of other people outside taking pictures, and admiring the luxury cars parked outside the entrance.
I did take a few minutes to walk inside, where EVERYTHING IS GILDED, but since it costs 10 euro to go inside any of the gambling rooms and I'm way to risk averse for actual gambling I just peeked inside and left. No pictures allowed, but it was kind of exactly how you would imagine it. Like I said, everything is gilded. There are a lot of people wearing suits. And I guess as a result it was a lot less depressing that the gambling rooms in a Vegas casino. That wrapped up my day in Monaco and I took the train back to the hostel in Nice and spent the next few hours frantically sleuthing the Internet to find out where exactly my bus to Venice was leaving from the next morning at 4 am. HOURS.
The next morning I woke up at 3 am and blearily made my way through Nice to the bus meeting place. Given the lack of an obvious nightlife in Nice I expected to be pretty much the only person on the streets, but was surprised to find I wasn't entirely alone, which made the whole "walking through the dark city in the middle of the night" experience less creepy. The bus ride to Venice from Nice was 10 hours. The first four or so hours were some of the most miserable of my life. I was in the back of the bus sitting by a group of French kids who spent the next hour and a half talking in normal voices. The only ones on the bus. From 4 am to 5:30 am. TALKING AND TALKING AND TALKING until the Australian girl behind us asked them to please shut up. We stopped once at the border while they had drug sniffing dogs check the bus, while we waited outside in the cold, and stopped for breakfast at a town in the mountains where it was 0 degrees Celsius and the toilets were squat-toilets. I was also not super impressed with the bus itself, the seat didn't recline, there wasn't a bathroom, and I know this isn't their fault, but once the bus emptied at Milan and there were only three of us left on the bus, one of the guys moved into the row behind me and started to snore.
The bus dropped me off in Tronchetto in the afternoon. In some sort of industrial carpark, not obviously near anywhere or anything identifiable as the city of Venice. I knew I needed the Santa Lucia train station, but the driver didn't speak any English. When I asked him where we are, he just said "no hablo" and when I tried again "But, I need to know where I AM!" he was equally reticent. Until I asked in Spanish "Donde Santa Lucia" and all of a sudden he was a literally fount of knowledge. In Spanish. He told me that I just needed to take the monorail/train thing we were parked at the base of and it would drop me off right there! Thank goodness for 10th grade Spanish or I would probably still be looking for a way into the city.
The directions to the hostel seemed confusing without any context, things like "cross the small bridge and then past the Wind shop and then there is a plaza and to the right is the hostel but you have to cross a little bridge that goes right to the Green door," but I was able to find the place without any real trouble. I spent that afternoon taking my Uncle Tony's advice and doing my best to "get lost" in the city. This was harder than I thought it would be, though I did my best to just walk in the opposite direction of the crowds and I immersed myself as much as I could in the city.
I found a gas station for boats(!)
really intimate buildings
and while trying to get lost managed to successfully get lost for reals when I tried to go back to the hostel once the sun set.
That night I played flip cup in the hostel and watched Barcelona play Madrid at an Irish pub down the street with a bunch of Americans who were on their way home after spending semesters aboard, in undergrad.
The next morning I spent walking around Venice with a couple of those Americans, who had been studying in Paris. We said goodbye when they had to go catch their plane and I spent the next 7 hours walking. Walking and walking and walking and walking and walking all over Venice.
I started with the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. It was a lot more austere on the inside than I would have expected.
I left the basilica and took the next couple of hours to walk the outside of the island I was on until I got to the train station.
Don't read too much into the previous pictures, mainly I took them because they were pretty. But I couldn't resist the shot of the Venice traffic light or the boat, which was actually moving in reverse. Finally, the church in the above photo, took the Brussels idea to the next level, by covering up the construction site with a giant picture of the structure under construction, and then covering THAT up with a giant ad.
That afternoon I got a delicious lunch at the kosher restaurant, Gam Gam, and sat outside by the canal. A fine idea, and great for people watching. Bad because apparently the restaurant is on a location of the canal that requires every passing boat to sound their horn. But still, delicious food!
The restaurant was also right near the Venice Ghetto. The original Jewish ghetto, and the one that lent its name to all the others that came after it. I got accidentally lost looking for it, finally found it and took a tour of the ghetto run by the Jewish museum there. There were no pictures allowed in the synagogues but it was still really cool to see them. They were in the attics of ghetto buildings, separate synagogues for each service, Italian, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, etc. There were five total. The first was designed as a Venice theatre in miniature. The second also had a woman's gallery around the top, but had a series of metal screens that were "obviously closed when the services were being held." The second synagogue was also decorated with pictures (without any representations of people in them) of biblical scenes, because the painters were Venetian, not Jewish and thought that the paintings would be appropriate. This was a theme in all of the synagogues I visited actually. The last synagogue we visited was one that is still in use by the Venice Jewish community. It is used in the summer, while the other large synagogue is in use in the winter. This synagogue was built by the wealthy Jewish immigrants, using only the most expensive materials available at the time. It is beautiful, but the women's gallery is about two stories up, overlooking the room. My favorite part of the synagogue was that there was a deliberate mistake made in the pattern on the floor, for purposes of humility, because man, not being divine, always makes mistakes? Something like that.
The buildings in the ghetto are insane, the height of the floors are extremely low because they had to fit so many people in such a small area
Once the ghetto tour ended I walked to the Piazza San Marco, it is super famous, dominated by St. Mark's Basilica. The Basilica is free to enter, but once you get in there and want to do anything other than walk around on the floor you have to pay. Want to go upstairs? 6 euro. Want to see the Treasury? 3 euro. Want to walk around to the back of the altar? 2 euro. I would rather you charge me 2 euro to enter and then let me do whatever I want, but once I enter a place for free you aren't going to pry a cent from me.
And pictures of the piazza
I finished my picture-taking extravaganza and moved on to the Dali Universe exhibition. It was across this ridiculous little bridge with views like this
The Dali Universe had been on display in London, and I tried to visit it with Anna when she came to London, but it had moved to Venice... now that I was finally in the same city I finally succeeded in seeing it. It was incredible. I LOVE Dali.
On the way back to the hostel I got accidentally lost again. The sun had set and I'm not making this up, I'm pretty sure I got lost in the exact same piazza I had been lost in the night before. Once I found my way home I spent the night at the hostel, playing drinking games and hanging out, nothing too exciting.
That's it! I reached Sunday, and I'm not blogging more than one week at a time. As for what is happening right now, I'm back in the UK, trying to catch up on blogging, catching up on school work and my friend Mary Ellen and her mother are here visiting so I'm hanging out with them.
I'll keep chipping away at the blogging and I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and much love from London.
Going way back, the week that I left for my trip went way too quickly. I had my last week of classes, only half of which I made it to. Monday I spent, as previously mentioned, in a panic. I had no idea what city I was flying back from, which was making it particularly difficult to plan my trip. After hours of trying and failing to make Croatia happen I gave up and decided to fly back from Naples and booked myself a hostel for my first night in Nice. To celebrate my accomplishments in delayed decision making I went to some LSE Student Union bar night with Valerie and Jardena, which was completely empty. Apparently bar nights the last Monday of the semester are not a big draw, so we ended up at another East End bar until it closed, which led to me sleeping into my class the next morning, which led to me giving up on Tuesday entirely. Didn't really get out of bed until just about sunset and accomplished literally nothing at all that day. Wednesday was just prepping for my trip, since I flew out of Gatwick at 7 am Thursday morning. Despite all my previous experience with having to literally run to catch the train, I once again left a bit on the late side and had to beg for directions to the train station from some construction workers. The good news is that I finally, once and for all, can find the London Bridge train station without running into and then out of the London Bridge Tube Station!
Now for the fun stuff - TRAVELING!
I flew into Nice early in the morning and began my day by unnecessarily spending over 3 euros on a bottle of water to make change I didn't end up needing for the bus into town and prompting forgetting to actually take the bottle with me when I walked away after paying for it. I caught the bus into town and found my hostel, which was only a few blocks away from the train station, where the bus dropped me off. The hostel looked distinctly closed, but despite the lights which were turned off (turns out there was a timer switch I didn't know to look for) and the locked door, I was able to check in, change and head out to explore the town. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I was apparently the only one who noticed this, because while I was dressed in a tank top, skirt and flip flops, everyone else was dressed in coats, gloves, scarves, hats and ugg boots. A few blocks down the main street towards the beach was the Nice Christmas Market. I really, really admired the city's determination to have a white Christmas despite their location on the Mediterranean
The Christmas market was adorable, just a few rows of little wooden stalls, selling various candies, sweets, mulled wine, crafts, Christmas related ornaments, gifts etc.
I tore myself away and kept going towards the beach, stopping to admire the fountain statue wearing a crown of ponies, I don't know who this dude is, but I like him
I climbed up to the top of the park, stopping to admire the panorama view
the view of the mountains in the distance
an extremely enthusiastic waterfall
and the harbor full of yachts
I spent a good hour or so clambering all over that hilltop, the site of ancient fortifications, an ancient church, recent playgrounds and fun little paths that snake all over. I also stumbled across (purposefully but ultimately by accident when I couldn't find it on purpose) the Jewish Cemetery.
After spending hours in the Parc I finally made my way back down to do some more wandering, this time through the old town of Nice, which is incredibly charming, and tried to visit the Cathedral but realized I was underdressed. This was also the first time I realized one downside of being on vacation during the low-season. Everything is under renovation. The cathedral was completely covered in scaffolding
And these giants light sculpture/ornaments all over town that you could sit inside as the lights danced across them
After my first night in Nice I figured I had taken care of seeing the actual city and wanted to explore the Riviera a bit more. The original plan was to spend the morning in Antibes to visit the Picasso museum there and then train from Antibes to Monaco for the afternoon. My plan was derailed when I showed up to the train station and found out that the only train to Antibes left at 6am or noon and given I had missed the 6 am train I would have to choose between Antibes and Monaco. I chose Monaco, mainly because it counts as visiting another country. There was also a train strike (I found out later) so the trains were emphatically not running on time. I eventually made it to Monaco, the train first passing through some extremely cute little French villages perched on the mountains above the sea. Once I got there I spent the day, like the one before in Nice, wandering. And just like the day before I started at the Christmas market.
"Dressed as a Franciscan monk, François was greeted at the gates of Monaco's castle, only then to seize the castle with his cousin Rainier I, Lord of Cagnes, and a group of men behind him." His attempt was only good for the next four years but obviously persistence paid off eventually.
and admiring exactly how well defended Monaco is by its ridiculously steep and tall cliffs
And it is also home to the Cathedral where Grace Kelly got married, which at the time I visited was full of dioramas? I think maybe somehow related to Christmas.... but it was ...confusing
On the advice of my guidebook I took the time while up on the headland to visit the Musee Oceanographique and Aquarium. I set myself up for failure to enjoy this museum by convincing myself that Musee "oceanographique" was actually just French for "aquarium" and ignoring that it was the Museum of Oceanography AND Aquarium. So I spent the first part of my visit unsure why they had chosen to exhibit the history of exploring the oceans
On reflection, it became clear that it was totally appropriate for these exhibits to be the focus in a museum of Oceanography. That didn't really go far enough to explain why there was also an exhibit that focused on the recent royal wedding though (other than perhaps, a lack of museums in Monaco?)
Having finished up on the headland I took a different route back down to the harbor/yacht club, past an amphitheater on the hill
The next morning I woke up at 3 am and blearily made my way through Nice to the bus meeting place. Given the lack of an obvious nightlife in Nice I expected to be pretty much the only person on the streets, but was surprised to find I wasn't entirely alone, which made the whole "walking through the dark city in the middle of the night" experience less creepy. The bus ride to Venice from Nice was 10 hours. The first four or so hours were some of the most miserable of my life. I was in the back of the bus sitting by a group of French kids who spent the next hour and a half talking in normal voices. The only ones on the bus. From 4 am to 5:30 am. TALKING AND TALKING AND TALKING until the Australian girl behind us asked them to please shut up. We stopped once at the border while they had drug sniffing dogs check the bus, while we waited outside in the cold, and stopped for breakfast at a town in the mountains where it was 0 degrees Celsius and the toilets were squat-toilets. I was also not super impressed with the bus itself, the seat didn't recline, there wasn't a bathroom, and I know this isn't their fault, but once the bus emptied at Milan and there were only three of us left on the bus, one of the guys moved into the row behind me and started to snore.
The bus dropped me off in Tronchetto in the afternoon. In some sort of industrial carpark, not obviously near anywhere or anything identifiable as the city of Venice. I knew I needed the Santa Lucia train station, but the driver didn't speak any English. When I asked him where we are, he just said "no hablo" and when I tried again "But, I need to know where I AM!" he was equally reticent. Until I asked in Spanish "Donde Santa Lucia" and all of a sudden he was a literally fount of knowledge. In Spanish. He told me that I just needed to take the monorail/train thing we were parked at the base of and it would drop me off right there! Thank goodness for 10th grade Spanish or I would probably still be looking for a way into the city.
The directions to the hostel seemed confusing without any context, things like "cross the small bridge and then past the Wind shop and then there is a plaza and to the right is the hostel but you have to cross a little bridge that goes right to the Green door," but I was able to find the place without any real trouble. I spent that afternoon taking my Uncle Tony's advice and doing my best to "get lost" in the city. This was harder than I thought it would be, though I did my best to just walk in the opposite direction of the crowds and I immersed myself as much as I could in the city.
I found a gas station for boats(!)
The next morning I spent walking around Venice with a couple of those Americans, who had been studying in Paris. We said goodbye when they had to go catch their plane and I spent the next 7 hours walking. Walking and walking and walking and walking and walking all over Venice.
I started with the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. It was a lot more austere on the inside than I would have expected.
That afternoon I got a delicious lunch at the kosher restaurant, Gam Gam, and sat outside by the canal. A fine idea, and great for people watching. Bad because apparently the restaurant is on a location of the canal that requires every passing boat to sound their horn. But still, delicious food!
The restaurant was also right near the Venice Ghetto. The original Jewish ghetto, and the one that lent its name to all the others that came after it. I got accidentally lost looking for it, finally found it and took a tour of the ghetto run by the Jewish museum there. There were no pictures allowed in the synagogues but it was still really cool to see them. They were in the attics of ghetto buildings, separate synagogues for each service, Italian, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, etc. There were five total. The first was designed as a Venice theatre in miniature. The second also had a woman's gallery around the top, but had a series of metal screens that were "obviously closed when the services were being held." The second synagogue was also decorated with pictures (without any representations of people in them) of biblical scenes, because the painters were Venetian, not Jewish and thought that the paintings would be appropriate. This was a theme in all of the synagogues I visited actually. The last synagogue we visited was one that is still in use by the Venice Jewish community. It is used in the summer, while the other large synagogue is in use in the winter. This synagogue was built by the wealthy Jewish immigrants, using only the most expensive materials available at the time. It is beautiful, but the women's gallery is about two stories up, overlooking the room. My favorite part of the synagogue was that there was a deliberate mistake made in the pattern on the floor, for purposes of humility, because man, not being divine, always makes mistakes? Something like that.
The buildings in the ghetto are insane, the height of the floors are extremely low because they had to fit so many people in such a small area
Once the ghetto tour ended I walked to the Piazza San Marco, it is super famous, dominated by St. Mark's Basilica. The Basilica is free to enter, but once you get in there and want to do anything other than walk around on the floor you have to pay. Want to go upstairs? 6 euro. Want to see the Treasury? 3 euro. Want to walk around to the back of the altar? 2 euro. I would rather you charge me 2 euro to enter and then let me do whatever I want, but once I enter a place for free you aren't going to pry a cent from me.
And pictures of the piazza
I finished my picture-taking extravaganza and moved on to the Dali Universe exhibition. It was across this ridiculous little bridge with views like this
The Dali Universe had been on display in London, and I tried to visit it with Anna when she came to London, but it had moved to Venice... now that I was finally in the same city I finally succeeded in seeing it. It was incredible. I LOVE Dali.
On the way back to the hostel I got accidentally lost again. The sun had set and I'm not making this up, I'm pretty sure I got lost in the exact same piazza I had been lost in the night before. Once I found my way home I spent the night at the hostel, playing drinking games and hanging out, nothing too exciting.
That's it! I reached Sunday, and I'm not blogging more than one week at a time. As for what is happening right now, I'm back in the UK, trying to catch up on blogging, catching up on school work and my friend Mary Ellen and her mother are here visiting so I'm hanging out with them.
I'll keep chipping away at the blogging and I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and much love from London.
