EUROSPLORIN'

Barcelona, Spain, Part 6: July 1, 2010

2011-06-12T22:05:00.000+01:00

Our last day in Barcelona we visited the Sagrada Familia. We had great expectations for this building so we left it for last. At our hostel on the first day we were told by a fellow traveling couple that they felt the admission fee (€11.50) wasn't worth it. But we don't know what crack they were smoking because this was an incredible experience! Easily one of the great things either one of us had ever seen in our lives. For those of your who are unfamiliar, Antoni Gaudi is the architect of this church, but it was never finished in his lifetime. Multiple architects have taken over since then with lots of euros spent to complete this massive undertaking. It is designed with three different facades, the Nativity facade, the Passion facade, and the Glory facade, the last of which is currently being constructed.

Here is the building as we're approaching it!

In these photos is the Nativity facade, which is the oldest one. Its architecture and sculptures are done in a very over-the-top and excessive style, which is in stark contrast to the other facade.

Here is the Passion facade, in a much more modern style. The columns are supposed to resemble tree trunks, a motif that is repeated inside the church.

You can see in these pictures the massive trunk-like columns and the incredible architecture. The ceiling looks like a canopy!

Really nice stained glass window!

For an extra €2.50 we went up one of the spires (totally worth your money).

Check out these little bundles of fruit! Each one is covered in mosaic tiles. Everything in this church (like the Casa Batllo) is thought out in so much detail and there is so much to see.

Spiral staircase down one of the spires.

You can see more clearly the sculptures on the Nativity facade here. Incredible workmanship!

We can't remember what this building is but it sure looks nice, right?!

Down a shopping street.

Check out these jeans! Who the hell would wear these?! (Our sincere apologies if you own a pair.) At first we thought the store just hung up three pairs on one hanger or something, but it's actually, really, truly just one pair of jeans. Really.

Nice archway into a plaza.

Delicious Turkish food!!!! How we missed it! This little lady is Gina, someone we met (along with her mom) at the camp grounds in Cinque Terre. We had a lot of fun talking and realised we might be in Barcelona at the same time. And we were! It was so great to see her again, and sort of surreal!

Mmmmm sangria!!!!!!!!!!

Cool graffiti! Someone decided to spruce up their locked-up store front gate!

We came back to the Magic Fountain in hopes for a light show... SUCCESS! It was coordinated with music, and was awesome!

And that concludes our time in Barcelona (finally we posted this last post!). All through our trip before coming here we had talked to people who had expressed how amazing it is. And it definitely exceeded our already-high expectations. The city has a great energy, a great vibe, very alive, and the architecture is absolutely incredible. It has a very intimate, artsy, cultural feel yet it is such a big city. It feels small and huge at the same time. There is an endless amount of things to see in this city. The waterfront is beautiful, the weather was amazing, and all in all it is one of the greatest places we've ever visited. We think everyone should try to come here before they kick the bucket!

Barcelona, Spain, Part 5: June 30, 2010

2011-04-10T22:06:00.000+01:00

Our fifth day in Barcelona was spent mostly on Montjuic, where a lot of the venues for the 1992 Olympic Summer Games are situated!

Cliff on the funicular on the way up to the mountain!

View of the funiculars from our carriage with the city in the back. To the left of the big pole you can see the Sagrada Familia, which you'll see in a later post :)

The gardens outside a fortress on Montjuic.

From here you can see some of the Olympic venues.

A view of the inside of the Olympic stadium. We didn't go on a tour or anything but we did manage to walk around one little section where we took these photos.

This is the some of the grounds in this Olympic area in front of the stadium and some of the other venues. We're not sure if the tower had anything to do with the Olympics, but now it's a radio tower.

The front entrance of the stadium. Even though the stadium itself is pretty modern in its design you can see the facade of the front still retains a lot of traditional elements.

Near the base of Montjuic, looking down the street which ends at Plaza Espanya. You can see in the middle the "Magic Fountain," where there is a light show on some nights set to music!

The National Museum of Art of Catalonia, which is at the base of Montjuic.

Central monument at Plaza Espanya.

Check out this ginormous chocolate croissant!!!!!!!!! Sadly we didn't get to eat it, just look at it :P

Down by the harbour: a cool modern statue! From one angle it's a funky face, from other ones it's just some abstract sculpture. FYI this side is just an abstract side :P

The boardwalk by the water...

Interesting house with really funny windows...

MMM! White chocolate truffle with raspberry filling!!

Some random really nice building!

Cliff sat on the bridge by one of the marinas. The bridge actually leads to a massive, sort of floating mall with a theatre and everything!

A shot of Stefan on the bridge with the city in the background.

The South end of La Rambla (where the waterfront is). This is a photo looking towards the water.

We went back to the Magic Fountain that evening in hopes of catching the water and light show, but alas... it was not to be. Try again tomorrow!

Barcelona, Spain, Part 4: June 29, 2010

2011-02-20T22:42:00.000Z

So on our third day, it was mostly a day of Gaudi architecture and other cool looking buildings. We went to two Gaudi buildings: Casa Mila, and Casa Batllo, which was the one we went into. Along the way, we saw many other beautiful buildings. We will keep the words to a minimum, as there isn't a lot to say, so just enjoy the fantastic architecture!

Kinda looks like a fantasy movie castle in the middle of the road!

Sometimes between all the really cool, freaky, detailed "traditional" buildings, a really modern one popped up! This one, which looks like it has silver vertical waves, are actually windows. If you walked past the building to the other side at the same angle this photo is taken, you'd see the windows peaking out from the flat side of the "wave". Very simple but cool idea that gives the building a very different look depending on what angle you are looking at it!

Here is Casa Mila, a very famous Gaudi building. When we got there we went to see how much it would cost to go inside the building... and almost shat our pants! It was €11!! What the hell! We were still able to go into the gift shop and from there you could see the inside a little bit...

Here is the view of the inside of Casa Mila from the gift shop window :P The gift shop entrance was off the main street but the shop itself extended all the way into this atrium.

All around Barcelona there were these amazing tiles on the sidewalks. These were designed by Gaudi (we had seen similar versions at Park Guell). These add so much character to the city!

And here is Casa Battlo, another hugely famous Gaudi building. It's also known as "The House of Bones," since the little balconies look like skulls. Guess how much it was to go inside? €11? Nope. €15?? Nope... it was freakin' €17.80!!! We were determined to go inside a Gaudi building though, so it was between paying almost €18 for Casa Battlo or €11 for Casa Mila. In the end we went with Casa Battlo because this building seemed much freakier and more unique. We figured if we were only going to see one, it may as well have been the cooler one! Although we couldn't afford to eat for the next two days... :P Hahaha

This is the building right next to Casa Battlo. We don't think this was a building of any particular significance but that's what we loved about Barcelona... even an "ordinary" building looked incredible and unique...

Inside Casa Battlo, this is the first thing you see, a spiral staircase made of wood with the side designed to represent a spine. As you can see the wood is all carved and looks very cool and wavy. A lot of this building and aspects of it were inspired by skeletons and marine life.

Mushroom fireplace! Smurfs must have been Catalan. Notice the awesome seats inside the mushroom... wicked shroom for two!

Inside one of the main rooms (with windows out to La Rambla) was this incredible moulded ceiling. Gaudi designed not only every detail of the house itself but also every piece of furnishing. This ceiling light was specifically designed to go with this ceiling, and as you can see the result looks super cool!

Same room (you can see the ceiling and the light). The stained glass circles in the wood carved door frames were each made of different colours and textures. They were also made so that the colours of the glass would look different depending on whether you were looking at them from one side of the door or the other. Gaudi designed this space with a extreme attention to light and how it behaves.

The atrium inside the house. As you can see there were many floors to this house, and at the top is a skylight. The tiles in this section gradually changed from a light blue at the bottom to a deep blue at the top. Gaudi thought that by doing this you would see a more uniform shade of blue since the top areas would receive more light from the skylight. We also found that it gave a very underwater feel to the place.

On one of the floors there is an exit to the back courtyard of the house. Notice how Gaudi chose to place two columns right next to each other, right in front of the doors. He apparently did this on purpose so as to defy the conventions of where columns would normally be placed.

Here's the back courtyard. Oh, and Cliff too :P

A view of the building from the back of the courtyard. The building's more tame here at the back, but it's still very nice... Oh and Stefan's there too :P

At the top floor of the house the colour scheme really changes and everything is very white and sculpted looking. Stefan thinks it all looks like it was made from Mentos or marshmallow... Hahaha. Reminds us of the Greek islands!!

Funny alcove underneath a staircase... It was giving birth to Stefan!

On the roof top. Make sure you click on this picture to enlarge the picture and check out those chimneys!! Each one is decorated with a mosaic.

Another part of the building giving birth to one of us...

This is the top of the building's facade. As you can see on the back side (not facing the street) it is one giant mosaic, and the front side are scales in many shades of purply blue. The ridge on the top looks like a spine, and this whole thing looks like a dragon's back to us... how amazing and cool is this?!

Here you can see more of the scaly roof and a turret (the tower-y thing)... which is also entirely covered in mosaic tiles. We hope the guy who put that together got paid reeeeally well!

A room at the top of the building. On that table is a guestbook you can sign. The arches in this room were used out in the corridors on the top floor as well, and they were a new type of arch designed by Gaudi. This room is supposed to look like a rib cage of a whale... we'd say he succeeded, wouldn't you?? :) We this there is something very "Ivory Tower" (from The Neverending Story) about this room too! Cliff finds it very tranquil but Stefan doesn't necessarily agree...

Inside another part of the building, where you can get a good look at the tiling. See how there are many pieces that are specially cut for the parts of the wall that curve.

Back out on the streets of Barcelona... here is another random cool building! The photos that follow are all of random buildings that we found very appealing.

Wouldn't it be fantastic to live here and have one of those balconies as one of your own?!

Placa Catalunya in the evening...

La Rambla at night.

And that brings us to the end of another fantastic day in Barcelona.

Barcelona, Spain, Part 3: June 28, 2010

2011-01-25T22:17:00.000Z

After Park Guell, we just aimlessly walked the city, taking in the sights, and whatever we stumbled upon! Because Barcelona is so fantastic, you can have an awesome day without having plans to do anything particularly special!

Just a random building that looks really cool!

A more futuristic version of awesome looking buildings in Barcelona!

A residential street where each building is distinctive, and looks like a wonderful place to live.

Another housing street, this time a walking-only one...how awesome would it be to live here!?

We'll take balcony number two, Bob!

One more of Gaudi's awesome creations, Casa Vicens. This building was hidden on a small street out of the way, among residential streets, and it took us a long, long time to find it. We asked a lot of locals in the area where it was, some had no idea, some had a vague idea and put us in the right (general) direction. We just had to find it in the maze of few blocks we figured it was in!

A street that runs to one of the harbours through the centre of the city is called La Rambla. It's one of the main streets in Barcelona and a major tourist attraction. It's a fantastic street, really really wide, and one reason it's so great is that it's about 75% pedestrian and 25% cars. There is only one lane for cars each way on the outsides of the pedestrian area. As you can see, there are trees along the street, and it's full of shops, restaurants and lots of buskers! Another great place in the city to just stroll along aimlessly!

This is the MACBA, the contemporary art gallery of Barcelona. We had plans to go there someday, but it happened to work out that day. However, once we got inside, we found out that almost the entire gallery was closed, there was one small room that was open to view, and you still had to pay to see it. Major renovations were going on, which kept us from seeing any art!

This is the courtyard in front of the gallery, looking the opposite direction of the photo above this one. What was really cool about this courtyard is that it was an integrated skateboard park. Those yellow things were moveable things that skaters could do tricks on and around. It looked like moveable functional art!

This is the entrance to the gallery, inside looking out. It's like walking through some Space Odyssey 2001!

We found this vegetarian restaurant, one of very few we found on the trip. It was a all you can eat buffet, and Stefan was very excited! After being tricked by the paella full of animal parts on the first day, veggie Spanish-ish food was fantastic! This was a stuffed grilled eggplant (rice and veggies), veggie paella, chickpea salad, grilled mushroom and onions, and one more thing at the end that we can't remember! It was tasty, however, in a few photos you will see how Stefan's happy veggie belly was highly disturbed!

This is the entrance to La Boquiera, a fantastic market just off La Rambla. It doesn't look like much here, but once you get inside, it opens up to food market heaven!

Great, hanging cured legs of some large animal!

Tons of candied fruits! Fruit and candy all in one! Healthy and fun!

There were tons of beautiful arrays of fruits and veggies, which on their own looked really yummy, but were always arranged perfectly too!

Oooohhhh, endless chocolates and nuts!!! Also healthy and fun! :P

A great stall of veggies and fruit!

All the dried peppers you could ever want!

There were lots of stalls that made fresh fruit juice mixes, so it took us a bit to decide which one had the flavours we wanted...one of us had coconut blackberry juice, and the other had a kiwi passionfruit...holy shit balls they were good, and only €1 each!

AHHH!!! BARF!!!! Here is where Stefan's veggie meal got upset and almost got puked up! What can you identify!? Pig, goat, ????

Another awesome random walk way. This one was in the centre of La Rambla.

The Barcelona Opera House, still very nice looking, but not as fantastic as many other buildings in the city!

A great shot of La Rambla: this is the end that is closer to the water, it's not as busy on this end 'cause there are less shops and restaurants.

At the end of La Rambla, close to the water, there is a large roundabout with some really great buildings around it. This is one of them!

This is another one!

...And another one!

Frig, they are everywhere! Another fantastic looking building!

The waterfront at the end of La Rambla. This section is fairly open, and there are not any boats docked in it. The wavy wharf is a large walk way that goes out to a mall built on a dock in the middle of the harbour! It's a great place to walk and sit and chill out! We did that a few times.

This is the other side of the wavy wharf. This side there is a marina, with lots of sailboats in it.

This buoy, or boy rather, is floating in the harbour...taking a whiz! Ends up, he's not holding his male parts, but has his hands behind his back! :P (Check out how his knees are bent!) But what's the star for!?

Sailboats!!!

Cool view from the wavy wharf looking over the waterfront and marina.

A nice shot of the obelisk in the centre of the roundabout at the end of La Rambla.

And so concludes our second full day in Barcelona! So much to see!!! AAAAAH!!!!

Barcelona, Spain, Part 2: Park Güell, June 28, 2010

2011-01-18T23:23:00.000Z

On our second full day in Barcelona we decided to visit Park Güell, a big park designed by Antoni Gaudi. It's part of the UNESCO heritage site named "Works of Antoni Gaudi". For those who don't know, Gaudi was a famous architect who lived in the late 1800's to the early 1900's. He is known for his wacky, weird, wonderful, fantastical designs. The entire park is wacky 'cause he designed the whole thing, but Barcelona is also full of his work, along with many other designer/architects that were inspired by him, or who knows, maybe tried to copy his successful work!

This was a playground we saw on the way to the park. Check out how it's on an island in the middle of a really big intersection! We noticed a few of these types of playgrounds in Barcelona. It was really strange to see a playground with no grass... it puts a whole new spin on playing in traffic!

One of the first things we saw on the way into the park! Freaky Gaudi structure behind all the trees!

Gaudi lived in this house for a bit...we didn't go in though, 'cause you had to pay!

Gaudi tiles! On a wall! Cooool!

Gaudi tiles! On the ground! Cooool! Actually you could find these tiles throughout downtown Barcelona! Instead of a stone or brick sidewalk, they would sometimes use these Gaudi tiles. Really neat!

Stefan in a Gaudi vine vortex!

Random sculpture! Freaky! It's like a cactus!

Under the stone structure from the second photo in this post. The columns are supposed to represent trees, but Stefan thinks this looks like the underside of a huge dinosaur! It's so grand and freaky that it makes being there feel like you're in a fantasy land.

Another cool structure in the park.

Overlooking a huge terrace overlooking the main entrance of the park. A lot of the park is behind us and to the sides, like a big stadium.

At the back of the terrace you could find seating for a restaurant.

Don't know what this is... but it's the view from a part of the park! Looks like a cool building on a hill though!

Here's a lookout platform at the top of the park. It gives you a 360 view of Barcelona. There's not a lot of space up there as you can see and people sort of shuffled their way about to get their time at the top. A bit of circus acrobatics to not fall off the platform and roll to your death :P

View from the platform--there's the Sagrada Familia, probably Gaudi's most famous work. We only lived about a 20-minute walk away from the cathedral; we think we were to the left of it in this photo!

A view of the hillside of the park. Those two buildings you see are at the front/main entrance.

The really kick-ass terrace railing! Everything in this park was designed by Gaudi, down to the tiniest details. They don't sell these tiles at Home Depot!

A view of the two buildings at the front entrance from the edge of the terrace. Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas must live there!

A view of the terrace while we were at the front of it.

Underneath the terrace... yeah, that giant dirt landscape that is the terrace is actually the top of another structure! Check out all the wicked tiling on the ceiling!

From the space in the photo above you can walk down stairs that lead to the front entrance. Here we are at the top of those stairs.

Looking up the stairs! You can see the edge of the terrace there in the background. Also, a colourful mini-Godzilla!

Inside one of the houses at the front entrance. The whole inside of this house was painted with really bright colours!

A view of the staircase at the front entrance from the second floor of one of the houses.

This park was pretty amazing. It may be the most unique park you may ever go to. There is lots of greenery but there is also lots of sand... very lush but desert-y at the same time. And of course, with Gaudi's really cool and interesting architecture makes Park Güell something that can't be missed in Barcelona! Go! Now!!!

Barcelona, Spain, Part 1: June 26-27, 2010

2011-01-09T20:14:00.000Z

Barcelona! To get to our next city, we took a bus from Marseille to Barcelona. It was a fairly long bus ride, about 8-9 hours. But it was nice to see roadways and go though the country side...a slightly different experience then another train. It was a really hot day, but what made this bus ride extra hot...a broken engine ventilation system that instead of blowing hot air outside the bus, was blowing in through a large vent at crotch height (important, cause it made peeing a burning experience!) above the toilet in the bathroom! It naturally made the entire bus heat up, because it was blowing so hard we could feel the hot breeze from our seats. What made it worse was that it came with the lovely light aroma of bus bathroom! We were very happy to arrive in Barcelona! But not just for that reason, all along the trip to this point we had met many people that had been there and gushed about how amazing and awesome Barcelona was! So we were excited to experience it and see if it lived up to all the talk!

We enjoyed Barcelona quite a bit, the 900 photos that we took in the seven days we were there are proof of that! Because of so many things to post, we are going to break Barcelona up into a few different posts instead of one giant one. Our first day, by fluke, happened to be Barcelona's annual, but only 2nd, gay pride!

We stayed in a hostel, sadly we could not find a couchsurfing host here. There was a grocery store across the street from the hostel, and well, one of the first things we did was buy food and some booze! Spanish is awesome, and Stefan thought "Coronita" was pretty cute!

The hostel we stayed in was quite great. It was 4 floors in a small mid rise apartment building. So everyone was staying in an apartment that had anywhere from 3-4 bedrooms. So it was like having roommates but with your own private room! There were two bathrooms, a small kitchen, FREE ENSUITE LAUNDRY (which was pretty exciting on a backpack trip!), a full living room with tv, and balcony! We met some really nice people that we shared the apartment with, mostly Canadians and Australians. Here Cliff is washing up after dinner!

Gay time! So this looks like a decent crowd hey? Well, when we got there, there were way less people, and what you see is almost all that was there! We were surprised how small gay pride was in Barcelona, and that it was only their 2nd one ever! Thankfully as it got closer to the parade time, more people showed up. Unlike Toronto, you don't have to show up hours before! One thing that was good and bad at the same time, was there were no barriers on the side of the street! So people would push the crowd closer and closer to the parade, which was fun cause you felt more connected to what was going on, but it also meant much more a chance of ending up under the wheel of a giant float or bus!

It's Spain, lots of gay guys, almost wearing nothing...need we say more?! :P Hahaha

A cool sculpture in a square very close to where the pride parade started. In case you can't figure out what it is, it's two staircases on top of each other!

So, during the parade, we say this in a store window...at first, we laughed...thinking it was a joke, maybe cause of the event...but no, apparently there is a market for these HUGE granny (but granddad) briefs! Really, you these would come up so high you could use these as underwear and a scarf at the same time!

At the start area of the parade, a marching band was warming up...there were great to watch, but the one in Avignon would have kicked their asses! What is awesome...how hot it is in Spain! So the parade starts at 6 in the evening, cause it's too damn hot in midday! Jealous!? *snicker* ;)

Gay bus!

Gay people! Hahaha, not all of them :P Just the crowd and a cool building!

The next bunch don't need any explanation...just a bunch of floats!

Pick one! (but not the red shorts one....he is taken!) Hahahaha

The crowd leaving after the parade was done. It basically followed it through the city, with the mass of people just walking and drinking in the streets...we followed for a bit, but then got hungry and went to eat!

On our way, aimlessly looking for a place to eat, we walked down this really cool street/alleyway kinda place. Would be great to live in one of those apartments!

Further down the same alleyway, with a random but cool palm tree in the middle!

How can you go to Spain and not have any paella?! So this was our first meal out (we had cooked in the hostel the first night) in Barcelona and in Spain. It's not easy to find a paella that doesn't contain any red meat or pork, so when we saw this paella on the menu we wondered what was in it. Our waiter was a crankyhead and didn't really care about our question...Stefan was avid about knowing if there was red meat or not in it. All he kept saying was "meat and seafood". When we asked what kind of meat, he said "I don't know, just meat." Some lady at the table next to ours said it's not red meat, just chicken. So we ordered it. And BOY was she wrong!! Damn her!! There was seafood, as you can see. Prawns and mussels, yum! But the meat... oh gosh the "meat"!!! Stefan couldn't touch any of it, so Cliff ate it all, but to this day he still has no idea what exactly he put in his mouth! He's pretty sure they were random parts of cow organs. Having said that, the paella was actually quite tasty! Stefan enjoyed the rice parts very much!

Stay tuned for more awesome Barcelona!

Aix-en-Provence & Marseille, France: June 24, 2010

2010-12-30T20:34:00.000Z

While we were staying in Marseille we took a day trip to Aix-en-Provence. We had actually wanted to stay there overnight but couldn't find any CouchSurfing hosts so we were relegated to a day trip. Which was unfortunate, because the town is beautiful and you could easily spend a few days there. In a way it was a very typical French town, with lots of beautiful architecture and great cafes and restaurants, but when you're in France a beautiful town like this may be cliche but is so essential to the French experience...

Big water fountain in a roundabout close to where we got off the bus.

Around the fountain were a few massive sculptures (probably brass), all of the human body. We assume you can figure out what these are!

...The back of a head!

Man with missing arms. And lower legs. He has his penis though! So he is good for something :P

A very cool fountain that has a bit of greenery or moss growing on the top of it.

A cool building that we suspect is a church, but we're not really sure.

Nothing special...except we are in FRANCE! Just a photo that gives a nice feeling of what the place is like!

A cool street in the town...we like the street but really like how this photo turned out!

In one of the big squares, where there was plenty of outside seating for restaurants and cafes, there was a large building with a cool clock tower on one side...and here you see the picture of it!

A sprawling bit of cobblestone road. As you can see there are lots of restaurants here with outside seating. What a beautiful place to eat! (which we did...but you will see later!)

Another cool street with nice buildings. Again, we like how this photo turned out...if you make it large enough, and put your face up to your computer screen, it will seem like you were there! Oh, and turn a heat lamp on, cause it was hot that day!

Another square...as many as we came across on this trip, they are always awesome places to sit, eat, and people-watch!

Okay, so on this trip we stuck to an eating regiment...only eat the traditional food of the country we are in. This is the second time we broke our little rule (the first time being burgers in Nice). Well, it wasn't so much a rule, cause we naturally wanted to eat the traditional food. When we walked up a nice pedestrian street in Aix-en-Provence, we saw a large line up outside this tiny Vietnamese place. It was take-out only, and we figured if people are lined up outside, it's gotta be good! We got in line, and the guy in front of us started chatting us up, and pointed to the beef noodle dish at the front of this picture, and said, "that is the best thing you will ever eat in your whole life!" Well, we didn't believe him...no, we can't say he ended up being right, 'cause we never got the beef dish! We were in line for a super long time (maybe 30-40 minutes), mainly because the asian man (who reminded Stefan of Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid") who was serving was moving in super slow motion! It was painful!

Remember the square we said we ate at but you would see later...well, here we are about to chow down into our yummy meal in that square! On the far left, we have a spicy tofu and onion dish, on the top was a chicken with noodles, bok choy and other veggies, and on the bottom was a shrimp, mango and basil salad. Ok, so it the whole meal sounds like a pretty normal one...but it was holy shit balls amazing! It was freaking tasty! We then understood why there was a line!

A view of the square we ate that meal in....we sat just past where the bike is in the photo

Stefan relaxing in the sun after that delicious meal!

A cool cobble stone alleyway.

Another cool square with fantastic buildings around! If you had to eat at one restaurant per square on this trip, you would be one fat pig by the end! Sounds ok to us!

We really like this building, imagine living in something like this! Yes please!

This was a nice, three sides of a square building with a quad in the middle. It seemed like something that should be in a prominent place and out in the open, but it was tucked away in an area with really narrow streets and wasn't populated by tourists at all.

Same church as in the beginning of this post...we came back around and took more photos and really liked how this one turned out. Crazy blue sky, and it's totally natural!

How many narrow streets in Europe look cool!? Too many, but we are gonna keep posting pictures of them anyway!

Ah, nice buildings and a roundabout...but see that sweet red Ferrari!? We rented it for the day, Stefan is driving, Cliff stood outside for a minute to take a picture! It cost a lot, but was worth it! Hahaha, you can't seriously believe we did that!? Okay, so we did get a picture of it, but the rest is bull! :P

The main street (the Cours Mirabeau) that leads into the old part of town was really cool. It had a huge stone walking part, and a narrow stone driving part. As you can see, it had lots of tress along it, and of course wonderful buildings and places to eat along side. What was really great about it was how the cars and pedestrians mixed. It never really felt like a street for vehicles, but somehow the cars being there didn't seem out of place. It was also filled with lots of people just relaxing and enjoying the day!

Here is the Deux Garçons, a famous brasserie on the Cours Mirabeau. Built in 1792, it was frequented by great artists such as Paul Cézanne, Émile Zola and Ernest Hemingway!

Back in Marseille, at the top of the massive staircase outside the train and bus station.

Stefan and his massive Hoe! He never had a Hoe so big! Hoegaarden that is :P His favourite beer ever! Found this litre of beer in Marseille, for only about €2.50...which is about 3.30 Canadian...yeah, super cheap for a premium beer! It was soooo tasty!

We both really liked Aix-en-Provence, and would have loved to stayed there longer. Another great place we recommend to make a stop at if you are ever over that way!

Marseille, France: June 22-25, 2010

2010-12-26T23:58:00.000Z

We made a point of visiting Marseille on our trip because we thought it would be really nice, but it turned out to be less impressive than we had expected. It fit in with Milan as a big city without a distinguishable character. Don't get us wrong--even though we weren't exactly blown away by the city we still had an enjoyable four days. If we weren't staying with our CouchSurfing host Sebastien, who was a great host and with whom we got along really well, Marseille would have been a skippable city.

A building we passed on the way from the train station to the port. Very cool!

A shot of some sailboats on the harbour.

Around the harbour were a few of these sculptures. Sort of like the moose sculptures in Canada! As you can see here each globe had something different on it.

Cliff during the morning when we were waiting to meet up with our CouchSurfing host. While we were both sitting there we had the pleasure of the company of an older street gentleman with a lot of character (i.e. beer in hand, not enough shower time, etc.) chitchatted us up about Canada, and went on a bit of a rant when we told him we liked Marseille...apparently he had some negative feelings for the city!

Above and below are three shots of Marseille's port.

Dinner time! It took us quite a long time to find a restaurant to eat at, but finally we found a decent-looking place with a menu that had something for the both of us. Cliff's meal: a salad with tomatoes and eggplant, topped with ham and fried cheese. Not bad!

Stefan's dinner...at first, it looked no better than penne pasta we make at home, and it tasted like that as well. Good, but you know how you always expect (or hope!) that food at a restaurant will be better than you can make?! Well, as I got further into it, it was one of those meals that gets better and better! By the end, it was pretty darn tasty! It was pretty simple, penne pasta, chicken, tomato, pesto, and some other yummy things!

Our host Sebastien took us to a market the next day to buy some groceries, and on our way there we walked through some very cool alleyways! The graffiti, which wasn't particularly interesting on its own, gave these otherwise grungy alleyways an artsy, comforting feel.

At the market we shopped for ingredients for ratatouille!

Musical accompaniment to your grocery shopping!

Cool cathedral close to the centre of town. It looks like it's at the end of a main road but the road actually forks around it.

A fountain with no water and a mermaid! She's gonna dry up!

Joining Padova and Nice, Marseille's tram transport, as you can see, is fairly new. We found this city's trams extra cool because they were so futuristic! It looks like something out of Wall-e or 2001: A Space Odyssey!

A not-very-pretty shopping street... :P This photo should give you an idea of what the downtown core looks like.

Some government building... If we had kept up on the blog better we'd probably be able to tell you what building this was!

This is a really nice looking building, although you can't see much of it! The fountain to the right, you can see just below and behind the tree was really cool...but you'll have to go to Marseille to get a better look at it! :P

We went to visit this church on a hilltop which gave you a very good panoramic view of Marseille. The church sis directly behind us in this photo.

Voilà!

Interesting architecture...kinda has a slight look of a castle! The black painted stones used in the tower give it a unique, almost pirate look to it.

Views from the top!

Inside the church. The red-and-white striping is pretty unusual and reminded us of the churches back in Monterosso!

A square with lots of outdoor seating for its restaurants.

Another photo of the harbour.

A nice big roundabout down by the waterfront.

Here you can see the church we visited earlier.

The first building we encountered when entering the old town.

Cool street shots in old town Marseille!

The Hospice de la Charité, which was an orphanage.

Inside the gates of the hospice, surround the building in the first photo, are these arcades.

Not the nicest looking alleyway but there is something about its character that we like a lot.

A very nice residential area at the top of the old town that seemed a bit out of place, given how the rest of the old town looked!

When in France, buy a baguette!

Our host Sebastien asked us what we wanted to make for dinner, and if there was something French we hadn't tried. We decided that ratatouille was the winner!

Ratatouille, with two slices of the baguette Cliff was holding! We totally forgot the onions! But it was still awesome! Amazing how simple a dish ratatouille is, but it's so tasty! Sebastien is a great cook! Of course, cooking this French dish in France with a Frenchman probably didn't hurt either! :)

The Marseille train station. Magnificent staircase!

An obelisk in some square in Marseille. We came across this round about on our way to the coast outside of the city. We never got to the cliff on the coast due to some transit confusion...

...but we did end up getting to this beach. But because we hadn't planned on going to the beach, we didn't have any swimwear with us. So we were relegated to people-watching. To the left outside this photo there was a topless woman playing catch with a friend...bouncy bouncy bouncy. Maybe not the most appetizing sight to two gays trying to eat lunch on a beach! It wasn't a nude beach but of course in France it's not uncommon to find nudity on any beach.

Just behind the beach there was a big park, with this random building in the middle of it! No idea what it was, but here is a photo of it :P It was a nice day in the city but for whatever reason over by the beach and this park it was soooooo hot!

Here's Sebastien preparing our second meal together...

Tomatoes stuffed with veggies and finely chopped chicken breast, and scallop potatoes (or gratin dauphinoise in French)! Bon appetit! Another amazingly tasty homemade meal courtesy of Sebastien! :)

Us and Sebastien! We even match! :P

Like we said, we didn't find Marseille particularly interesting, but we are so thankful we had the pleasure of meeting Sebastien through CouchSurfing. He made Marseille fun and really because we enjoyed hanging out with him. The city itself was okay, nothing to go back to or make a detour for, but our host made it worthwhile!

Avignon, France: June 20-21, 2010

2010-12-18T21:55:00.000Z

After our six days in Nice we were on our way to visit the small town of Avignon. It's not on the coast but we had heard so many great things about this place that we made a point of paying it a visit before we headed to Marseille. Avignon is a very old town that was walled. As you will see the walls still stand and do give it lots of character. Since we had heard many complimentary things about Avignon we had arrived with high expectations. But to our surprise, it actually sort of blew them away! We were also warned that this city could be very windy, and they weren't lying!

Here is a great photo from the outside part of the wall at evening time. Although the city is walled, it's only the old part that is walled, and much of the city, which is the modern part, is outside the wall. We didn't really leave the old part of the city, as it was beautiful and interesting enough to hold our attention for the 2 days we were there!

Here is a clock tower, maybe belongs to a church, who knows! directly to the left of this photo is where we stayed with another wonderful couchsurfing host!

Like all old towns and cities in Europe, Avignon is full of churches.

Our yummy adventures continued in France...we found this great pizza and pasta restaurant that we ended up eating there more than once! You can see the wood burning pizza oven and the wood it burns in the background!

When in France, you have to try a steak tartare (can you guess which one of us ate this?). Not many places in Canada make this dish, which is essentially a rare burger patty. However, it's made safely (hopefully!) by grinding very fresh meat, seasoned, and assembled into a thick hunk of meat. This tartare was a little bland in flavour, but Cliff thinks it may be that the flavour of the meat is supposed to sit front-and-centre. Or maybe it was a mediocre tartare. It's sometimes served with a raw egg on top, which is something Cliff would have preferred but alas it was not to be at this resto. The side salad and roast potatoes were absolutely delicious!

Stefan sang notes when he saw this on the menu...a veggie lasagne! This was impossible to find in Italy (except for pesto lasagne which isn't suppose to have meat in it), so he got pretty excited at the chance to have lasagne without having to eat dead cow! Stefan can't remember exactly what veggies were in it, only remembers how damn delicious it was...can taste it in my mouth right now! As you can see, it came with a healthy helping of parmesan cheese!

Just a cute little cobblestone street in old town Avignon!

One of the many squares in this city, most of which have outside seating from restaurants around the area.

A cool shot of the wall from the inside. One evening we just walked without a map, and ended up bumping into the end! It kinda felt like when Truman sailed into the sky wall in the Truman Show...shit, hope you have all seen that movie!

As we walked along our encasement, we found a mouse hole...for giant mice! Hahaha. So you can escape safely out of the old town through little openings like this...there are bigger ones for cars!

Another really nice square, well more of a rectangle here. More places to eat great food and enjoy the beautiful sights of the old town.

The main road leading into the old town. Like most main streets, there is lots of shopping, and things to eat along the way. It was a nice street, but didn't seem to be as old as the middle of town.

Ooooh...la la!

Interesting looking church.

So they have little steel stumps, equal to the guard rails in Canada along the side of some roads. But the ones in Avignon are nicer looking...especially the ones that someone took the time to make happy! He's so glad the sun is out, shining on his little face! :P

It's a whole gang of happy faced guard stumps!

Another church.

Another street...this was one of the main pedestrian shopping streets in the old town. However as you can see, it's not busy. That's because at this time of the day, the stores were closed. The French live to live, not to work!

A very cool, castle like looking clock tower.

A really great building. Something about this building oozes a lot of character to Stefan. He sees a gloomy day, a couple hundred years ago, people riding horses and carriages, people talking all French, burlesque girls hanging around outside, people eating croissants, wearing berets, painting in the corner, miming...you know, all that cliche French stuff! :P

Cool building? Maybe, if you think so! There is a little Cliff in there, can you spot him!?

So these next photos won't all have things written under them. That's because there are a lot from the same place. It's of the Papal Palace...it was the residence of the Pope at one point in history. Interesting, but we can't remember all the facts to give you a good history lesson on it...but Wikipedia is great! This photo is one of one part of a building as we are about to enter the Palace grounds. If you look in about the middle of the picture, you can see an opening between the two buildings. There is a archway which you go through to enter.

This is the little archway you go through! Everyone suck in!

At some point, the camera got accidentally turned on black and white...so you get these in colourblind view! This is a building next to the palace grounds, and the side with new windows...there are painted windows! Each one has different people in them. In colour, this looked awesome, 'cause it was very colourful! You will have to use your imagination!

The courtyard of the palace.

A cool building opposite the main building of the palace, with a very white person...one of those, "I'll move like Charlie Chaplin when you drop a buck in my hat" guy!

Front of the Papal Palace, with the church to the left.

A cool brass statue that was just being installed while we were there.

A view from the landing in front of the church that looked out over the courtyard.

Turn around...and you see a statue and the church.

We got colour! Yay! It's the church, seen from a hill and garden grounds to the left of it!

In the grounds of the palace, there is a small pond with ducks, and a cafe that sits over the water a little. Seems out of place, cause it's certainly not anywhere near as old as the rest of the palace!

Looking out over a part of the grounds, not sure if this is a tree farm or something!?

Another view from the grounds, up a little further...the grounds are on a wide hill. Here you are looking out over the river that runs through Avignon, and in the background there is another castle/palace of some sort.

The river, and the bridge, that doesn't go all the way across the river!

Yes, it really is that windy in Avignon! At the top of the hill that the grounds are on, the wind was insane!

A cool view of the rooftops of old town Avignon!

So, along with this tree being really large, and old, the wind being super strong, meant that it needs a crutch! We heard this creepy creaking like a tree was about to fall over on top of us, and this is what we saw!

The road that runs around the river side of the palace grounds. The grounds being on the left side.

Ah, back to the bridge, that won't get you anywhere but in the middle of the river!

Looking back at the walls of the palace.

More half bridge! It's kinda nice looking though. Is that a church in the middle there? We don't know, you had to pay to get on the bridge...and well, we had to penny pinch on some things! :P

Street

A very awesome looking theatre.

More painted windows with people in them! Sadly, the one in black and white had more colour to it.

A nice street close to the area where we stayed.

Ahhhh...don't you just want your car to get towed if it looks like this! It's the happiest, cutest tow sign ever!

Looking at a car entrance and exit from inside the walled town.

Now, this is pushing it for a sidewalk!

Ohhhh, spooky! It was a nice street, but we really like how this photo turned out.

Ditto.

Mmmmm....always hungry when there is awesome new foods to try! There was a tartine restaurant we walked by one day which had some incredibly gorgeous-looking pies on the counter. But it was the tartines we wanted to try, so we sat down for one before dinner. Tartines are Frances tostadas--toasted bread with various toppings. The one above was a three cheese tartine; it had blue cheese, goat cheese and Camembert. It was tasty, but very light given the price.

So, this is back to that restaurant you saw at the beginning. This time we got take out, which proved to be very difficult...in France, your pizzas don't get cut into slices, so eating one on the side of the road, with nothing to cut it with, while hoping it doesn't blow away cause the wind is about 70km/h is very hard! Oh, plus all the tasty honey that was running down your hands made it that much messier! Anyway, this was a super yummy wood oven pizza with eggplant, mozzarella, some other type of cheese we can't remember, and honey! It also came with a pack of hot sauce! YUM YUM!

It just so happened, the only night and two days we were in Avignon, they were having their annual music festival, which takes place all around the old city. Sometimes it was a big set up in a square, sometimes like this picture, it was a tiny set up on a corner. It was pretty great, as the music had a wide range, from tribal, native, rock, celtic, folk, and even french rap! Our favourite, was this awesome walking drum band which we followed for quiet a while!

Ah, here is the walking drum band that was awesome!

We think these guys were a cuban sounding band.

There is a band in this photo, but it's really about whats behind them. See that green wall, well that's exactly what it is! Its the entire side of a building that has grass, ferns, vines and small trees growing on it! Was a pretty awesome art installation, but at the same time a wicked green space creator and well, the fresh air it makes is also pretty great!

A rock band that was quite good, they had a crowd around for a couple hours.

As you leave the old town on the way to the train station, this is what you walk through. A park like place that leads to a really cool opening in the city wall.

This is us and our couchsurfing host Céline, who was really sweet!

Like we said at the start of this post, Avignon was even better than expected! We were very fortunate to have stumbled into staying there at the same time as their music festival, which made for a very memorable night. Later in the Summer is the Avignon theatre festival, which is what the city is really famous for, so there is still reason to pay Avignon a second visit! Like Rethymno in Greece, this was a very attractive small town that deserves a return visit. We hadn't expected to fall in love with either city as much as we did! We found that with cities like Avignon and Rethymno, while there aren't massive landmarks to sightsee, it was extremely pleasurable to have a simple walk about town, enjoying the cafes, cute streets, churches, architecture, and romantic French atmosphere! For anyone who happens to go to Southern France, Avignon is definitely a stop we would highly recommend.

Saint Jean-Cap Ferrat & Nice, France - June 19 2010

2010-11-17T22:06:00.001Z

Our last day in Nice, and our host Erick offered to take us around once more! This time he took out to Saint Jean-Cap Ferrat. This is a village on the coast, not too far from Nice. We drove a bit, then walked a good distance...which is great, cause walking is the best way to see a place! Once again, we got cute French Riviera small town! Before we left, we went around Nice for a couple of hours...

In Nice, there is a Russian Orthodox Cathedral called St. Nicolas. It is apparently the biggest Russian church outside of Russia! This photo kinda makes it look like a little toy town figure, but it's a fairly big building. Sadly though, for some reason the day we went to go see it, it was closed, and what you see here is all about what we got to see! It was still cool to look at though.

Tarte du Parfait! (a perfect tart!) hahaha, before we got to the Russian church, we passed a French (naturally cause we are in France!) bakery. Not being able to pass them without going inside, we ended up buying something. This tart still stands as the most perfect looking tarts, or baked anything for that matter, that we have ever seen! Really, it was amazing, the raspberries were all absolutely identical, and very neatly placed! With a sprinkle of icing sugar, delicious crust and amazing goo filling, this tart not only looked perfect, but tasted perfect too! So good, I think it only took about 35 seconds for each last crumb to be gobbled up!

We ate the tart between taking the church photo, and this one! On the ground of the church, from the walk way around the building, there were stairs to nowhere! Perhaps the real 'Stairway to Heaven'!?!? If so, heaven isn't that far, and we can all get there by going to Nice! Hahaha

We are just starting our walk around Saint Jean-Cap Ferrat. The walkway goes along the edge of a cliff along the water. Nice, relaxing walk :)

Cliff on the way with either Villefranche-sur-mer or Beaulieu-sur-mer in the background. Sorry, we can't remember!

About half way through the walk, we found a nice place by the water on the rocks to have lunch. We were close enough that Stefan here, got splashed by some water a few times!

A shot of the coast and part of the walk ahead of us! Somewhere in there is the walkway...it must be covered by the bush, but is right on the edge of the cliff!

Looking back from the other side of the corner of the coast where a skinny lighthouse is.

As usual, along the coast of the South of France, cool, big, and/or expensive houses dot the shores and cliffs. Our host, Erick, pointed this one out to us, as he said it's his favourite one! If you look closely, there are panels along the curved bars on each side of the house. We don't know if they moved or not, or maybe more panels could be installed to block out sunlight!

The inlet of Saint Jean-Cap Ferrat, which is a really small but cute village, not without any large and expensive yachts...as usual!

Erick, our couchsurfing host in front a cute French house!

The waterfront of the town, and a little bit of its marina.

Along the walkway on the town's waterfront, there is a bunch of sculptures of metalwork. This one, at first looks like a woman, but if you look closely, it kinda looks like she has a penis! Not that there is anything wrong with that, just found it a bit surprising in small town south of France!

Then the next one got a bit more normal...dolphins!

Busted cello, or double bass....well, since it's split in two, would that be a quad bass now!? hahaha

After the walk around the coast, we went back over the hill to where the car was. And along that way, we had to pass through a residential area that feels like something out of Hollywood...only better cause you are in the South of France, and not L.A! This is just a random huge house with a beautiful garden complete with swimming pool!

Back to Nice for dinner! We seemed to have a lot of good luck getting great food in Nice, so we pretty much ate dinner in Nice every day. We ate at this night at a place called "Pasta Basta", in the old town of Nice. It was the kinda place where you can pick your type of sauce, and then the type of pasta to sort of create your own semi custom plate of food! However, this photo is not of pasta... Cliff ordered a salade Niçoise. After all, it seemed a little sacrilegious to be in Nice and not have a salade Niçoise. All the salads in Nice seemed to be massive! This one (naturally) had tomato, egg, tuna, anchovies, onion, radish, and olives atop greens. It was delicious!

Stefan's meal...salmon ravioli with a cream sauce! Now, there was a bit more stuff in it then that, but it was minor...and we forget...it was months ago now. But anyway, it was one of those simple pastas that taste pretty darn good! Oh, and it was eaten sitting outside on the terrace of a French restaurant in the south of France...that might have made it taste better!

On the hill and peninsula that separates the beach front of Nice from the port of Nice, there are houses perched (as you have seen in other photos before this one). But this is at night, and looks really cool. The building might be a hotel, or condos. The round thing, who knows...a really nice water tank maybe!? You can see a really cool stairway on the hill too.

On the opposite side of the hill in the previous photo, there is some sort of memorial. We think it was a war memorial. It is lit up really nice at night, and while were there, there was some special day with a ceremony, and a giant flag was hung above the memorial. However, it looks like a bit of wind messed it up a bit!

The back of the opera house in Nice! Yes, this is the BACK! The back is pretty darn nice hey!? It faces the road and boardwalk along the beach coast. Looks damn great! You can see in the lit up windows, well, its windows of the change rooms, and yes, you can see people getting out of costume! It was kinda funny, not sure what show the opera was doing, but we saw silhouettes of what looked like french cabaret girls changing...kinda fit in and was cutely cliche cause we were in France!

Later on, more entertainment in an odd form...some guy with a van, and a plethora of instruments shoved into the back! He parks his van with the side door open facing the walkway on the waterfront of Nice, and plays as many instruments as possible, really loudly! Random, and fun!

Nothing special here! Oh wait, just a giant head with glowing horns, some sort of alien antenna, and electrified lips and eyebrows! Why is it there, who knows, but you can eat food in the restaurant below!

So we come to a close after a very busy six days in Nice and its surrounding towns. As it was Cliff's second time in Nice, he got to both revisit things he remembered (he was here back in 2002) and experience new things. Seeing as how that trip in 2002 was one of the most amazing trips ever, he was really excited to come back to this city. The city was a bit different than what he remembered, but it was a very fun time nonetheless. It was great to revisit places like Eze (Cliff had really wanted to show Stefan this cute village on the hilltop!). Stefan really liked Nice and the south a lot, just might be able to live there...it wouldn't be a bad thing! We didn't get to do it totally how we wanted, which was to stay a couple of nights in each village, but that takes a lot of bucks we didn't have! In any case, we got to see most of the places on our list, and they were all great! Getting to see places we never planned that still turned out to be really nice, was also great. Nice is a beautiful city with lots of green space, a great waterfront, and a very cute old town with plenty of yummy places to stuff your gut at! We would definitely say its worth a visit to Nice, and the south of France!

Sainte Agnès, La Turbie, & Nice, France - June 18 2010

2010-11-02T21:45:00.001Z

Our CouchSurfing host Erick took some time out of the next two days to spend with us. On the first of these two days he took us out around Nice in his car! We visited Sainte Agnès and La Turbie. These towns were not coastal but very close to the coast up on a hill. It was really awesome to have been able to make these trips with Erick because we would have otherwise not gone to them; they are pretty out of the way.

Taken from the car on our way to Sainte Agnès. It's overlooking some French town...

You can see Sainte Agnès perched on the left side of the hill!

Cute little cemetery on the top of the hill.

Cliff...

???

The burial grounds of some very tiny medieval community (now in ruins) at Sainte Agnès.

Looking Southward to the Mediterranean from the top of Sainte Agnès.

More ruins from the medieval community. These ruins were actually higher than the current village of Sainte Agnès itself. We're not sure but maybe these are the ruins of the old/original Sainte Agnès.

The gardens in the middle of the ruins. Obviously up-kept for us tourists!

More ruins!

Amazing views from the top of the hill, but not so much when this is your window!

Inside of some building.

Another great view of the coast from the hill top.

Interesting rock formation!

Looking up the valley through a chain of small mountains.

The side of the small mountain opposite Sainte Agnès. Notice the really cool zigzagging road that runs up the mountain!

More French Riviera...

Here you can see the current village of Sainte Agnès. Although we're looking down on the village it's still perched quite high up on the mountain.

The cable-and-pulley contraption used to bring stuff up to the medieval village.

The modern Sainte Agnès!

Cute French house!

More cute French house.

Dark French alleyway...

Cool French intersection!

Amazing French walls!

We love the narrowness of this street. How cute!

Us sitting at a pub on the side of Sainte Agnès.

Looking back up at the mountain housing Sainte Agnès as we drive away!

In the car with Erick... This is the road that runs along the mountainsides which connects the little towns in the area. And yes, this narrow little road is actually two-way!

We have no idea what you are looking at here, but it appears to be something old (the tall thing in the background) and something new (those cars are shiny!). This is La Turbie!

A cool view of the coastline from the top of the mountain that La Turbie is on. Just above the town is a cool lookout point.

Turn about 180° to the left, and you get this view! The city in this one is Monte Carlo! When you are at this lookout, you can actually see the entire Principality of Monaco!

More Monaco!

The west end of Monaco! You can see a football (aka soccer) stadium in about the centre of this photo. Either this stadium has a lot of seats, or Monaco doesn't have a lot of people. In any case, the entire population can apparently fit into this stadium.

Us in Monaco...errr...La Turbie! Really, we went to Sears Portrait Studio for this one, just so happened they had a backdrop of Monaco!

Stefan on the edge of the mountain where La Turbie is. The town in the photo, we are sure is a nice town, whatever its name is!

Back in Nice for dinner! The place we ate at has the burgundy canopy. We thought this street was really cute.

Our host, and tour guide for the day, Erick, took us to a restaurant called Chez Pipo that is famous for socca, which is a Niçois speciality.

This is socca! No, its not a dance, but something you eat! It's made of chickpea puree and water. Once the mixture is made up, it's spread on a giant pan, really, its giant...about 2.5 feet in diameter! The pan slowly rotates in a wood-burning oven. Socca comes out nice and hot, with a crispy outside, and a soft inside! It doesn't have a strong taste, but it does have a wonderful taste of chickpeas and yummy charcoal flavour.

For dessert we had a tourte de blettes. Blette is a type of green. The tourte can be served sweet or savoury. Obviously here we are having it sweet :)

So when we sat down outside the restaurant, it was hard not to notice the old VW Microbus Transporter, then, suddenly a band comes and hops in the back, lowers the side panels and starts rockin it out! It was so random, but totally great! Really, at a cute restaurant in the South of France, eating traditional food, and a band is playing for you in the back of a Classic VW parked in front of the place! How awesome is that!?

Cliff, Stefan, and our Couchsurfing host, Erick at the restaurant.

After dinner we went for another drive, this time on the top of the hill that overlooks Nice from the east side. This photo is of that hill! As you can see, there are some pretty damn nice houses up there....kinda like a little Beverly Hills thing going on.

The view from about halfway up the hill looking back on the coast of Nice during sunset!

Another view of the coast of Nice during sunset. The breakwater you see is protecting the main port of the city, and yeah, there are some huge yachts in there! Behind the breakwater is the majority of the coast of the city, and the long beach!

A view of the inland part of Nice.

Still moving up the hill that overlooks the city of Nice. More nice houses perched on the side of the hill, with some fantastic views!

Getting close to the top! We are on the far side of the mountain...Nice is behind us, in this photo we are looking at the town of Villefranche.

At the top of this hill, there is a cool ancient fort! Sure it was used for something, but we can't remember. Or maybe we never even knew! We were just enjoying the view! It looks great in the day, but really cool and sort of spooky lit up at night.

Turn around from the fort, and you get a nice view of Nice and the coast at night!

Sadly this photo didn't turn on the best, and you might be wondering why the hell did they put this photo on here!? Well, you see that large block in the middle? It's basically a giant cube over a giant head! So you can see the shoulders, neck and chin of a person, then the large block. It looks cool, but the really cool part: it's not just for looks -- this is actually an office building! People really work in that block head!

Biot & Nice, France - June 17 2010

2010-10-25T22:12:00.001+01:00

The next day, we headed down to the waterfront in Nice to grab some info (and the bus) headed to Biot, which is renown for its glasswork and pottery. We had planned to maybe visit both Biot and Antibes (since they are next to one another) but our whole day was taken up in Biot, which is a beautiful little town. It's a town perched atop a hill inland, so it's not technically a seaside town, but if we had to pick a very cute French town in the riviera in which to live, Biot would definitely be in the running!

Beautiful sunny day on the seaside road in Nice.

Here is the beach outside the train stop for Biot. In order to get to Biot, we turned around and we walked in the opposite direction from the beach and up the hill to the village.

The roundabout at the entrance to the road that takes you to Biot.

Even though we saw this sign we actually still had a bit of a hike ahead of us to get to the village of Biot.

Herbie! Yes, friggin hell, Herbie lives in Biot!!! Stefan just about peed his pants! We were enjoying the nice walk to the village when this little car drove passed us. You've never seen Stefan get the camera out of his pocket and start clicking so fast!

Herbie again! He was looking for Stefan! :P The excitement of the first drive by had not yet settled, and surprisingly he drove by again! Sadly both times were from behind so we never got to see the front, but this time Stefan kinda just dropped everything and ran after it! However, Herbie won that race, and Stefan never caught up! After this time we were ready for the 3rd time...things come in 3's right!? Well, it didn't happen...which may have been a good thing, cause Stefan was ready to throw himself on the road in front of #53 to get him to stop! Biot was a great cute town, but this made the day for him! (for those that don't know, Stefan is obsessed with VW Beetles, especially Herbie!)

After walking for what felt like longer than we should have been, we went into a side road to ask for directions. We came across this very cool wall with all these clay sculptures built into it. We had no idea what it was or why it was there, but it was very cool regardless.

Success! We see Biot! It's the town on top of the hill in the middle of the photo.

This was someone's outdoor workspace, it seemed like. They were making very cool mosaic sculptures!

Here's a better shot of Biot as we made our way to it!

We stopped into a glass studio and had the pleasure of watching some glassblowers hard at work!

Here is the inside of the glass shop. It was housed in some sort of old mill.

On our way up to Biot, this was what we walked by. It seemed like the town of Biot that was not the really old part on top of the hill.

Stairway to Biot!

At the top of the stairway in the previous photo was this really cute school building! Cute enough that Stefan might have enjoyed school if he went here! :P

The entranceway to old village of Biot.

Just inside the entrance we came across this map of the village. As you can see, this map was amazing! It's a ceramic mosaic! It definitely gave you the sense that the people of Biot are very proud of their glass-working traditions.

Further inside the entrance of the village, in the main square.

The outside sitting area for restaurants in the square. Although many restaurants were in the square, many shared one space to seat guests.

Another area of the village that had many shops and places to eat at.

One of the many beautiful walkways in the village. Very typical old french village, stone roads and houses.

Looking out through an opening between two small buildings in the old town. In the background you see another hill with what could be more of the modern Biot, or another town!

A cute little archway between two houses. The top of the arch sort of seems like it should be from a little castle!

A walkway in the village that is a little down the side of the hill. On the right you can see the roofs of the houses built a bit further down the hill. It's really nice how among all the stone, the residents still manage to create some greenery. It is a stark contrast, but it works really well and is enjoyable to be surrounded by.

A passageway that went through a building. Going through a tunnel like this really creates a feeling of being back in time. It made Stefan picture how the town would have been hundreds of years ago, with the sound and sights of horses, carriages, people in period clothes, people selling food and things on the streets, and young newsie boys saying "extra, extra, read all about it!"...but in French, of course! :P

This was even cooler in real life! We thought this photo turned out great! (minus the power lines...which snap you out the feeling of being back in time!) This house is in a little area of the old town that is tucked away from the more touristy area of the old town. In and around this area the old felt really great, cause it was still old and beautiful, but there were very few people around and it felt like a real old town where people actually live and have 'normal' lives. Not like some cute villages where it seems the whole thing is occupied by tourists and it only exist cause of them! If you look closely, you can see an older French lady sitting outside her house just chillin!

Just another neat walkway through the village, with an arch that seems to be almost pointless! But it looks cool!

A steep walkway between some houses...looks nice:)

This corner of the village looked and felt like it was in some fantasy movie. You know, one of those ones where Europe is over-romanticised and you think, "it can't be that cute and wonderful there!"? but it is, it sure is! How cute is this place!? Just beyond what you see is a dead end; the path goes to someone's front step. How awesome is that staircase to the house on the right!?

A small square in the not so touristy part of the village. Just to the left is the end of the hill the town sits on. All around this square were just cute little houses.

So, we could say this is "another cute walk way through the village..." but it's not, well it is cute, and you can walk there! However, if you notice the street signs...yes, those are for vehicles! People drive cars and motorcycles through this town! How they do it is pretty amazing! Not all 'walkways' are drivable, but somehow this one is!

So here is "another cute walkway"! Hahaha...and someone's nice blue railing to their front steps. Secretly, the blue reminds of you-know-where! (hint: they eat Greek food in this place!)

We went into the village church, which was cute, but nothing extra special, since there are many churches on the blog, we thought since the photo of this one turned out dull and blurry, we'd save you from it! But inside the church there was a diorama of the old village, with cute little period people!

The road we came in on to the old village. This is looking the opposite way, from the square, down the road towards the entrance/exit of the village.

We waited to eat dinner back in Nice. We had spotted this take-out-only hole-in-the-wall...really, it was a hole in the wall, big enough for a pizza oven and two workers! The menu was on the outside wall of the building, and there was nowhere to go in, you ordered from outside! They had really cheap pizza and calzone, so we dared to try it one night. It was €4.50 for each, and although it wasn't the best food ever, it was still really good, and amazing if you are on a backpacker's budget!

Cliff got a standard calzone, one with cheese, ham, and tomato sauce (in pizza form it is known as "La Reine"). He saved half for leftovers and they too were delicious. Though in the world of calzones this one was pretty average. He had an amazing calzone (complete with an easy-over egg) in Nice back in 2002, and another amazing calzone (with mushroom, artichoke heart, ham, wurstl) in Florence on this trip. Too bad we forgot to take a photo of it!

Stefan ate...Pizza!!! When we first got to the South of France, Stefan was so sick of pizza from our time in Italy. But thankfully he got over that, cause we had some damn good pizza in France! This, curry pizza!!! Yes, curry pizza! You may have heard Stefan say "I love curry so much, you could put curry on s*%t and I would eat it!"? Well, lucky for him, and all of you reading this, it's not s*%t, but pizza! Although the curry was just a curry powder sprinkled over top, and not what Stefan was hoping for which was a delicious curry sauce instead of tomato. But hey, it was still really yummy, and a interesting and different thing to top the zaa with!

After gobbling up our good and cheap food, we walked down to the beach in Nice. Yeah, the sun setting on the beach side of a beautiful French city in the French Riviera! A darn nice way to spend an evening! In the background is the hill and small peninsula that sort of divides the coast of Nice in two parts. Around the peninsula is more Nice, and the major port for yachts...yes, more friggin yachts!

So we walked along the beach towards what you see in the background. We carried our leftovers from dinner in pizza boxes with us, and as we were walking these two French teen girls started prancing up to us, talking all French...we knew what they were after, but pretended we didn't speak French...well, Stefan doesn't have to pretend much, cause his French isn't very good! Cliff had to pretend though! :P Anyway, it was pretty funny that they came up to us and after they knew we spoke English they actually said "We are very pretty girls, don't you want to give us pretty girls some pizza!?" hahaha, well, they weren't THAT pretty...but really, need we make the "ladies, you are definitely barking up the wrong trees here...you are sure as hell not getting any food off of us!" joke here!? Sadly, none of the cute French boys approached us like that! :P

Us, relaxing after being swarmed by beach girls! :P Awwww...who wants a beach sunset! Come on, off we go!

Looking east at the peninsula that divides the coast of Nice, there are some pretty nice building and houses up on that hill...but you have to have some serious good job, or head a mafia to live there!

Same photo, just some time later! We sat there for a while...why the hell not!? We had nowhere better to be!

One of the squares in the old town of Nice, this particular one is nothing but restaurants. It's a great lively place, and so much yummy looking food to eat! However, it's also very expensive, so we just walked through a bunch of times, drooling on people's food when they weren't looking!

Another cute square in old town Nice, more restaurants and a church. Old town Nice becomes very lively at night, and is a great place to just walk around and hang out and people watch. It has a great energy.

Yeah, another square! well, circle actually! This was part of the big strip that you could call a 'park' but had many different areas...some fountains, some green spaces, and some cobblestone spaces. It mostly divides the old town from the more modern town.

Place Massena. This is a great square just outside the old village part of Nice, but this square is still very old and beautiful looking. It's wonderful and open, and awesomely lit at night. You can see the old style light posts, but take a closer look...you can see lights that are actually people! Well, ok, so not real people, but lights that look like people! Each one slowly changed colours.

Cannes, France - June 16 2010

2010-10-25T20:26:00.001+01:00

We arrived in Cannes in a limo, and when we arrived we were swarmed by the paparazzi (naturally). We stepped out onto the red carpet in our Versace suits (bespoke, of course). No wait...that was just the mat on the city bus, the throngs of tourists that surrounded us, and the high-end designer label stores :P

Where we got off the bus seemed like any other French city...nothing surprising or remarkable. But once we made our way through the city to the seaside and the boardwalk we were greeted by what we had expected: a feel of Hollywood glamour fit for a movie star! The seaside strip was very nice but felt a bit artificial. On the west end of the city is the old town, and even though it was still overrun by tourists it felt more authentic and true to the spirit of what we would expect from a French city.

A nice building somewhere in Cannes... :P

Cannes is another city filled with lots of money, and that means a lot of fancy, fancy yachts. We took a tour of the marina, and it wasn't quite as jawdropping as Monte Carlo. But the millions of dollars on the water there was still enough to blow our minds. The boat in this picture was just one of many boats this size. We even found a boat that was registered in Halifax!

We bought this!!! Well, you know that we really didn't, but it's important and healthy to have dreams.

Walking along the breakwater that divides the marina and the beach.

The beach and one end of the city!

The main entrance to the building used for the Cannes film festival. Cliff had been to Cannes before, so he had already seen this structure, but Stefan's intial reaction was one of disappointment--he felt that it didn't evoke the level of glamour that the rest of the strip had, and it didn't look as impressive as you would expect from a building used for the film festival. He thought that the building looked like ugly 1960's/70's architecture...

Stefan in Cannes!

Another beachside shot...

The boardwalk... beach is to the right and the street with all the high-end shops to the left.

Along the boardwalk every now and again there would be cool sculptures. This was our favourite! Hellraiser, anyone?

One of the buildings along the street that runs along the boardwalk. This was one of many hotels on the strip that we are sure are as expensive as they look...

On the road along the water, complete with palm trees!

One of the city streets...

In the old town, on the hunt for good and cheap food.

Further in the old town. This area looked really beautiful, but we sadly didn't have time to explore it because we had to catch the last bus back to Nice! There's always next time...

Hang in there!

2010-09-20T13:55:00.000+01:00

Hey everyone!

As you may have noticed we haven't updated this blog in a long time. Seeing as how we are already way behind on posts, we are very sorry to keep you waiting.

The fact is that we are having a bit of a time getting everything sorted out right now in London. Who would've thought getting Internet would be so difficult?! So we have no Internet at home, which is why we haven't done any blogging. As soon as we are up and running again (supposed September 27), we will be blogging away once again! We will have to blog about the remainder of the French Riviera, Spain, the Bordeaux region, Paris, and finally, London! We're super excited to share all our adventures and photos with you. So please, hang in there!

Thanks!

Cliff & Stefan

Eze, Monte Carlo, and dinner in Nice, France - June 15 2010

2010-08-29T22:06:00.001+01:00

Initially we wanted to travel the South of France by staying in each city or town as we went from East to West. But just before we got there we realized that we weren't able to CouchSurf every single town and without CouchSurfing it would have been way out of our budget to stay in every little town. So we decided to stay in Nice for a longer time and do day trips to various towns nearby.

First up: Eze! Eze is a small town which comprises two parts: the modern part, called Eze-sur-mer, which is at the bottom of the hill near the water, and Eze Village, which is the medieval village perched on the top of the hill. Although we saw some of Eze-sur-mer, which was a nice little town, we didn't really focus on it since we were more interested in the medieval village.

Here is a photo taken from the bottom of the hill on the edge of Eze-sur-mer. The village part is around the back of this hill. There were two options to get to the village: either wait for the bus or hike. Since we didn't really do much research or planning before coming, we found out we had about a 50-minute wait for the bus. We also didn't know what kind of hike was in store for us, but since we definitely didn't feel like waiting almost an hour for the bus, we decided to go by foot!

A view turning back at the very beginning of the hike. As you can see the houses sit on the side of the hill, and to get to them by car is a tricky drive. At the bottom right-hand corner you can see one driveway that zigzags leading up to a house. "Hairpin turn" is a serious understatement and anything bigger than a Smart Car would probably have a lot of trouble!

A view of the side of the hill as we're hiking up.

This is what the path was like for most of the hike. Sometimes it got a bit less path-like and more rocky. It wasn't Mount Everest or anything but it was a nice hike that wasn't too easy or relaxing.

Some other little town on the hill across from the hill where Eze sits.

At the end of the hike, it ironically puts you out at the dead end of a road where a luxury (5 star we think) hotel is. The hotel is right on side of the hill at the foot of the village and we are sure they have an amazing view. However, the doormen, or gatemen rather, wouldn't let us hikers in for a peek. But going up to the village, you walk just above the hotel and its parking lot...These two half-a-million-dollar-each cars caught Stefan's eye. In case you are a car buff, on the left, that IS a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster, and a Maybach...Stefan had some drool dripping off his face! And we wonder why they don't just let random hikers into the parking lot! :P

Here's a cool illustrated map of the medieval village of Eze!

A little bar farther up the path from the cars, you get to see part of the hotel's garden. The garden seemed to be in different steps going down the side of the hill...and looked like a million-dollar spot to be!

The first glimpse you get of the buildings on the edge of the village.

This is a very good example of the type of roads that characterize the village of Eze. Obviously since Eze is a medieval village the roads aren't made for cars. We found it interesting that the place still felt very "lived in" even though they are missing something like cars which to us is a very normal part of everyday life. Aside from shops and some very small hotels, locals did in fact live in the houses here!

Three more photos around the town. As you can see it feels a little claustrophobic! But it felt very cute and brought us back a few centuries!

The steeple of the church that sits on the edge of the village. We didn't research it but judging from how it looks we assume the church is newer than the rest of the village :P

You may think we put this photo up to show you the mountains but really it's just because Cliff's so funny looking in it!

Okay, so now here's a picture to show you the mountains. As you can see there is a very cool roadway bridge that links two mountains!

A view from a more modern village that sits halfway up the mountain. This is a separate town that sits on the opposite side of the hill to Eze-sur-mer.

From Eze, we made our way (by bus!) to Monte Carlo, Monaco. Monaco is the second-smallest independent state in the world after Vatican City. It was very interesting to be travelling from Eze, which was such a small, modest, old town to a place like Monte Carlo, where so much money is on display! Our ideas of Monte Carlo was that it would be the South of France's Hollywood, and it turned out we were pretty bang-on. It's a very beautiful and well-kept city, where everything looks luxe!

To whet your appetite for the luxury, here is a very expensive and well-kept tree! This must be where money comes from.

Looking down towards the Monte Carlo casino. On either side of this strip of fountains are manicured lawns and two roads. It runs about half a kilometre down to the front of the casino.

Getting closer!

Looking back up the hill...

Can you smell the money?!

Not to be outdone by the hotel in Eze, the valet parking outside the casino was full of luxury cars. In this shot, a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce, and a Bentley.

And in this photo, a Benz, a Maserati, and a Bugatti. Before you walk through the doors you've already brushed by a mere few million dollars! It was free to go into the lobby of the casino and the very (very!) tiny slot machine room opposite the cloakroom, but as we expected--and the cars outside proved--this was no low-budget, Joe Blow casino. It's obviously a place where big money is spent and in order to get into a room other than the slot machine room you have to pay an entrance fee. You can even buy "Season passes"! It's like Canada's Wonderland, but for stinking rich people.

A very cool-looking building to the side of the casino!

A picture of a small section of one of the few harbours in Monte Carlo. They're packed with massive yachts! The big one up towards the top left is apparently the biggest private yacht in the Mediterranean. It's also apparently owned by a wealthy Saudi Arabian. We can't remember if it was a prince or a business tycoon. In any case, he needs to share his wealth!

The back of the casino. It looks out over the edge of the city and onto the harbour so those overly rich people can keep an eye on their floating palaces (ie. yachts)!

The inner harbour and the hills behind Monte Carlo. There are two or three harbours that make up the city. The buildings on the hilltop on the left is where the palace is located.

Just another beautiful building...

Usually it's houses for sale in the window. First, we passed by a yacht sales office. But then we walked pass this place! It sold freakin' private jets!! Just in case you're walking home from the grocery store and you decide you need to slap down 20 million on a jet! (Actually you'd probably have hired monkeys doing your groceries for you. And they would be coming home in a limo.)

It might have been only the third time it rained since we started our whole trip! This was just a nice little arcade with some shops where we were caught in the rain.

This is a view of the city from the palace area.

Here is the entrance to the palace of Monaco. It sits on a peninsula between the two harbours of Monaco. The palace is situated in an exclusive area of land; however it doesn't command the entire peninsula. The neighbourhood surrounding it is very beautiful and fits in well with the feeling and architecture of the palace.

Here are some buildings that make up part of the neighbourhood. They're situated across the square in front of the palace.

This is the other harbour. Again, full of tiny boats. These ones may only be a hundred-foot yachts.

A view of Monte Carlo from the palace square.

For dinner we went back to Nice. We didn't have the balls nor the wallet to even attempt to find a place to eat in Monte Carlo (the prince of Monaco was too busy to have us over for dinner)! We walk around the old town in Nice to hunt for a good but reasonably priced restaurant. We walked through this really cut and out-of-the-way narrow street filled with restaurants during our hunt and noted one particular restaurant. We continued our resto-seach but eventually decided to head back to this particular restaurant. Since we didn't know the old town very well (and it's a bit of a labyrinth!) we had a little bit of trouble finding it again! We were a bit freaked out when we couldn't find it but eventually we did (hooray!).

Here is the street where the restaurant sits. It's the one on the left. It was called Le Maquis. If you ever go to Nice, HUNT IT DOWN, AND EAT IT. Yes, we meant eat it. The whole restaurant. It's that damn good!

Cliff's dinner: an "assiette niçoise," or Nicoise platter. It comprises of local specialties, such as petits farcis (stuffed veggies), pissaladière (a pizza variant with onions, olives and garlic as toppings), grilled peppers, mozzarella and mesclun. Oh yeah, and lots of olives!

Stefan's dinner, a pizza fermière. So, in Italy we had a lot, A LOT of pizza, many not so great ones, but a few spectacular ones. However, sorry Italy, you got outdone by a pizza from France! This many not look like much, but holy shit balls...this pizza was not only massive (can you find the plate!? It's on one, its just too small to hold the pizza pie!), but it was mouth busting fantastic! The French don't cut their pizza's in the triangle shapes we know when you get a pizza, they just use a for and knife to cut away at it randomly. As the pizza was about 1/3 larger then the plate, which made cutting pizza that is hanging over the edge of the plate a bit tricky...but I managed, oh I managed...not a crumb was escaping! Naturally, it was made in a proper wood burning pizza oven, and the crust was thin crust...a must for a fantastic pizza. One thing that may seem silly, was the crust shape! It was like a piece of edible abstract art! It wasn't really too round, it was kinda like a blobular shape! There was something very authentic about it. Anyway, it added to its taste, really:P But on this awesome thin crust was chicken, onion, eggplant, cheese and creme fraiche. Ok, listen, maybe nothing too wacky, but oh crap, I am tasting it now as I type this...It was the best pizza of the trip...perhaps of my life!

Nice, France - June 13-14 2010

2010-08-17T22:54:00.002+01:00

After Italy, our next stop was the South of France. The first place we visited was Nice! After a very busy Italy, we were looking forward to a more laid-back South of France. Here we come, fine wine and escargot!!

On the train trip, we changed trains from an Italian train to a French train. We really liked the Italian trains because they were cheap and frequent. Granted since they were cheap the trains weren't exactly the swankiest. When we switched trains at Monte Carlo to go to Nice, we were amazed at how nice and snazzy the trains were! Later we discovered that it wasn't a sweet deal where the trains were cheap and still new and classy...French train travel is expensive!

Here is a view from the train on the way to Nice! This is some little town between Monte Carlo and Nice.

Our first French meal! The cuisine in the South of France (especially Nice) is very influenced by Italian cooking, hence...pizzas and pastas everywhere! This was Cliff's pizza, one with lots toppings: ham, cheese, green pepper, red pepper, mushroom, chorizo, and a fried egg. It was SO good!! It was definitely comparable to the best pizzas we had in Italy.

Stefan was a little, well, actually, very sick of pizza by the time we left Italy...so even though pizza was all over the menus in the south of France, he was not going to be eating pizza for the first French meal! He ended up with a nice big salad! It wasn't a mind-blowing salad, but very good, and worthy of a spot here! It was greens, mushrooms, red peppers, cheese (of some kind!), olives (yack! Cliff got to eat those), tomatoes, croutons, and grilled chicken, with a vinaigrette.

One of the main streets in downtown Nice. Notice the tram tracks and how they have beautifully manicured grass in between them! It was so nicely done that it looked like the tram was driving through a golf course! It's a very simple but easy way to get more green into the city and we think a lot more cities should be doing this!

The main square in Nice, Place Massena. This is the main fountain there.

Another shot of Place Massena.

Here is a random street off of Place Massena (you can see it in the middle). Notice the random horse and carriage!

Check out this random merry-go-round plopped right in the middle of a parkette in downtown Nice! We found that in France it wasn't uncommon to find merry-go-rounds in unexpected places. It seemed a little odd but it was very cute, and help liven up the city.

A street in the old town.

A shot of the waterfront, looking westward. There's a very wide pedestrian walkway (which is not exactly pretty and could use some major TLC), and to the left of the walkway is the beach. The beach in Nice is a stone beach...so no sand!

Here is the edge of the city that's right on the waterfront. The beachfront is a few kilometres long and it's all done up nicely with bars, hotels, and cafes.

Looking the other way, you can see just how far the beachfront reaches.

Also, on the beachfront, volleyball courts! Oh, and Stefan. :P

The end of the beachfront. Around the corner from these buildings is the old port. At the end there you can see a little lookout point. On the hill there was something fancy...we can't remember now! Maybe some castle or something (can you tell we never went up the hill?).

Here is the view westward of the beachfront from the lookout point we noted in the previous photo.

Okay, so after having traveled almost two months, we finally broke down and ate non-local cuisine!! We were pretty good the whole trip with eating only food from the country we were visiting. However, in Nice, there was an English bar/pub called Wayne's and their burger menus were too enticing to resist!

Cliff got a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg. Trust him when he says it looks a lot tastier in the picture than it was in real life. It wasn't bad per se, just...there. Not to mention it was €8!! With no fries! What a rip!

Stefan still wanted a break from Italian food, and was so excited to see a veggie burger on the menu! Now, like most of you, when we see "veggie burger" on a menu we expect a vegetarian burger patty with your regular burger toppings. However, sadly, when it came...it was basically a friggin' omelette between two buns! Not being a fan of egg, this egg and vegetable mish-mash was definitely not what Stefan was craving. But it still looked really good and tasted alright.

Another thing in Nice that carried over from Italy: gelato! There is a shop there called Fennochio which carries 96 different flavours of gelato! Crazy! We didn't happen to get a picture of the whole shebang, but here are some very unusual flavours: thyme, rosemary, tomato and basil, black olive, tourte de blette (which is a local specialty--a type of vegetable tart), and avocado. We didn't try any of these...we opted for the more traditional chocolatey flavours!

Here's a very cute church that was in the middle of a square in the old town (a shopping/eating area). The design is very cool!

Here's the back of the opera house in Nice. We didn't expect Nice to have such a nice-looking opera house, much less an opera house at all! One night we were walking by after a performance and you could totally see the girls changing through the windows on the second floor! Scandalous!!

In the big main street going down the centre of town there's a fairly long park with fountains and flowers, and featured this very cool sculpture. What is it? Don't ask us.

Here is a photo of a tram in Nice. As you can see it's very snazzy. A lot of the cities we visited on this trip had very new trams (they seemed like they were all made by the same company). However, one thing that was very different about the trams in Nice was their automated stop announcement soundbites. Whoever was in charge of those was definitely high on something! They were either male or female voices, and sometimes they would sound like robots, sometimes like they were under water, or in outer space, and sometimes there would even be xylophone interludes! No joke!! It was all the stranger that it seemed like we were the only people on the trams that seemed to find it so ridiculous. It was funny to see how all the locals didn't react to the hilarity at all! Granted, after a few days there we sort of got used to it...but it was still funny!

A look at Place Massena and the tracks that run through it. Follow this road to find lots and lots of shopping!

Here's a photo of a large, open area with greenery and fountains behind it. This is a continuation of the park that goes down the main road through the centre of the city. It's really great to see such a wide open space in a modern-day city, and that it's obviously been kept from olden times and hasn't been taken over by greedy corporations and urbanization!

This is another section of that same park, more of a garden/floral area.

Looking through a cool archway into the old town. The metallic gold ceiling was pretty cool, and the three different types of stones that make up the wall were pretty interesting too!

To conclude this post, here is a... Canada Grey apple?! What the?! Has anyone heard of this apple? We had never heard of them until we saw them here in Nice. Obviously we had to buy some. Sad to say, they weren't that good. Let's hope the French don't equate this apple with the quality of our country :P

Monterosso Revisited, Cinque Terre, Italy - June 12 2010

2010-08-15T21:20:00.001+01:00

While we were staying in Deiva Marina we met this girl Gina and her mom Pat from California, with whom we spent some time in the evening drinking wine and talking until late. They told us about some very cool churches and a cemetery in Monterosso that we hadn't seen (and were too odd to not go see!) when we were there, so with one day left in this area (and in Italy!) we decided to revisit Monterosso al Mare and explore the town more throroughly.

Here is the entrance to the first of the three churches Gina and Pat had told us about! They called it the "Alice in Wonderland" church...we thought it looked more like something out of "Beetlejuice"!

Here is the inside of the church. The columns look like the sandsnake from the movie!!

Here's the second church, which also had stripes on the outside (weird, no?).

The interior. This church was sort of comically creepy, because if you look closely the church is decorated with lots of really morbid things (like skeletons!). But it's done in such a way that it's not really spooky, just kind of funny...

Say hello to Mr. Skeleton! He's lounging around chilling out with his wreath and sceptre. Maybe it's something we'll all have on us in the afterlife :P

A very cute street in Monterosso.

We were on the lookout for a cemetery (that Gina told us about), but had a bit of trouble finding it. We saw this hike up a hill in Monterosso and just started to go on it, and lo and behold, it led to the cemetery!

Looking down the hill during our hike...cool forest! Looks like a place where giant mushrooms grow and very short people live in trees!

Here is the cemetery Gina and Pat told us about. The cemetery was divided into two sections; this section is where coffins are housed in little cubicles. This was just one of many, many rows of coffins!

A view from the cemetery corner...

In the other section of the cemetery, there were lots of giant mausoleums, which housed entire families.

And of course, to go with the dead people...a church! This one was really tiny, the size of a living room! It was jammed into the cemetery...you can see all the plots built up right against it. We couldn't go inside because the door was gated but we stuck our heads through the gate and it was kind of creepy because it was obviously a place that was used only by the dead passing through on their way to their cement beds!

A view of the town from the hilltop.

We came down the hill via a different path and this was what it looked like looking back up at the cemetery.

At a certain point down the hill, some housing starts. This was someone's garden terrace overlooking the town and the ocean. You can see the rail tracks too! How awesome would it be to lay in that hammock with a drink on a sunny day and have this view?!

Random street view!

One last church...the pirate church! See the little pirate ship hanging in the middle (it's where the top of arch is in the photo)? All around the church there were boats hanging like this...some strings had up to five boats hanging together!

A view of the town and the little clock tower.

Yet again, stuffing ourselves with another gelato! This time, pineapple.

Dinner time! Stefan had another lasagna al pesto. It was still yummy but it was definitely nowhere near as good as the one we had the day before in Vernazza.

Cliff tried a quiche-like pastry, where the main ingredient is rice. Not bad!

Stefan wanted to pig out so on top of the lasagna he had this ridiculously delicious focaccia with caramelized onions! It really was just focaccia bread with caramelized onions on top but it was unexplainably fantastic!! He scarfed it down like Cookie Monster!!

So ends our time in Italy. Although we weren't left amazed by Italy, we left the country on a high note. We both loved Cinque Terre: the weather was amazing, the towns were all beautiful, and our streak of bad luck with Italian food ended definitively here with some amazing food and meals we will never forget!

Corneglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore, Vernazza revisited & Deiva Marina, Cinque Terre, Italy - June 11 2010

2010-08-13T19:32:00.001+01:00

After having visited the first two towns of Cinque Terre, we set out to see the remaining three the following day. These three towns are quite close to one another and the walks between them are fairly easy and short.

First up: Corneglia, a small town perched high up on a hill along the coast.

This was the least nice of the five towns but it was neat how it was perched up on the hill.

Snack break! Stefan had this at a cafe along the edge of the town which you can see in the previous photos: a grilled veggie and cheese focaccia sandwich. A very simple but delicious sandwich.

And a pastry with apricot filling for dessert!

A wider view of the majority of Corneglia. On the other side of the town is a cliff which drops down to the ocean!

A walkway through the town. You can see the edge of the town which overlooks the cliff that we mentioned in the previous photo.

This shot was taken from the platform at the end of the walkway in the previous photo. We're looking Northwestward in this photo toward the direction of Vernazza and Monterosso.

When we got to the train station at Corneglia we found ourselves at the foot of the hillside on which Corneglia is perched. So instead of paying for the bus which drives you to the town, we decided to walk up the roadway. When we got to Corneglia we were greeted by this sign. Stairs?! What stairs?! Just to our left we saw this:

Oops. So after we were done in Corneglia we took these stairs down to the train station.

A view of the coast on our way to the next town, Manarola. There were lots of these giant cactus plants along the way!

Here you can see the train station for Corneglia as well as the town itself, situated along the top of the hill!

Wow! What an amazing map! Super professional, and (we are sure) weather-proof! This was a map pinned to a post on the way from Corneglia to give hikers two options to get to Manarola. We had a good chuckle over it; it was a representation of getting directions in Italy...we very often found that even people who spoke perfect english were extremely vague when giving directions which led to walking everywhere but where you wanted to go! But even though these directions seem super sketchy, they were great...simple and clear!

Just around the bend before Manarola: an awesome sunbathing/swimming area!

And we're almost there! A view of Manarola.

The centre street in Manarola.

Mmm, focaccia!!! Lots to choose from.

Cliff got this "Monte e Mare" focaccia, which had proscuitto as well as anchovies on it.

What!? Why are we posting a picture of a peach, you ask!? Well, it really is just a peach, but not just any peach...it's a Cinque Terre peach! These peaches are crazy good! Stefan pretty much lived on a diet of peaches here! We assume they must be from the area; often when you bought them they still had twigs and leaves attached to them...so they looked local and hand-picked! They were insanely sweet and juicy!!!

The train station of Manarola, as seen on our way out of the town and onto the last of the five towns, Riomaggiore.

This walk was actually named the Walk of Love. Here you can see a whole shitload of locks locked to this cute little bench and the railing behind it!

As you can see the walk from Manarola to Riomaggiore was almost laughable compared to the hike we endured the day before from Monterosso to Vernazza: the walkway is flat! FLAT!! And PAVED!!

Although the walk was nice and relaxing it was a little disappointing because it wasn't terribly adventurous.

Here we are in Riomaggiore, in its little mini piazza in front of the train station, which is in the building on the left in the photo.

We had to walk from the station into the more populated part of the town. On our way we saw many lemon trees in people's yards. Stefan tried desperately to snag a lemon from a tree, but was unsuccessful :( However, he did snag one in Greece (because, you know, Greece is AWESOME!).

Here's a shot of the town, nestled a bit in the hills.

Random street! With a cute church, no less. We liked it because it looked very non-churchy...and it's white and pink! With a yellow steeple!

The harbour of Riomaggiore...cute! The actual harbour was quite small so a lot of the boats (as you can see) were kept on the main street that led down to the harbour. Just past the boats on the dock we sat and ate some yummy yummy peaches :)

A row of houses along the road leading down to the harbour.

Two views of the harbour.

For dinner, we had come across nothing that looked promising on our trek through the three towns. So we decided to head back to our favourite of the five towns, Vernazza, for dinner. We ordered a pizza and a pesto lasagna from this little pizzeria in the town. The pizza had mozzarella, gorgonzola, and chicken, and it was deee-freakin-licious!!

When we got to Cinque Terre we saw a lot of menus with lasagna al pesto, which we learned was a local specialty. So of course we had to try one! It was a lasagna with cheese, pesto, olive oils, green beans and thin slices of potato. After having such bad luck with food in Italy, and with lasagna being such a common food there, it was refreshing (and a relief) to find a twist on this classic dish that also happened to be delicious!

For dessert, gelato!! In Italy there were of course tonnes of different gelato flavours, but this was one that we had not seen before. It was called Passione Profonda: yoghurt, white chocolate, and passionfruit. Delicioso! As long as Italians keep making new flavours, we'll have no problem trying them!

And to end our third day in the Cinque Terre area, we visited the beach of the town where we stayed, Deiva Marina. We decided that it was probably a good idea to take a walk around the town where we were staying! So we took some pictures. It was a nice little town but paled in comparison to the five towns of Cinque Terre.