Nice is Nice

Because we had a long-weekend following our return from Morocco on a Thursday, most of the students decided to plan some kind of weekend trip. What we hadn't anticipated, unfortunately, was our insurmountable exhaustion and jet lag... oh well.

We landed in Geneva at 7pm on Thursday night. However, trains run less frequently at night and my train home comes once every hour. Long story short, I didn't reach my doorstep in Arzier until well after 10:30pm.

I met up with my host mom, who had stayed up waiting for me with dinner, and we caught up briefly on Morocco. But I couldn't stay for long - my friends and I had booked a 6am flight for Nice the next morning. There aren't even trains running that early! 

So, I had to shower, dump my dirty Moroccan clothes out, throw my few remaining clean clothes back in, and catch the last train down from the mountain at midnight. I stayed overnight with a friend who lives close to the train station, slept 2 hours, and woke up at 3am to catch the first train into Geneva at 4am. It was possibly the most miserable, grueling travel experience of my life.

That's ok though, because when we landed at 7am, we were in the SOUTH OF FRANCE! It was so beautiful - although a little chillier than anticipated since it's been such a rough winter. But we lounged on the beach, shopped, and ate lots amazing food: croissants, omelettes, crêpes, macarons, gelato, you name it. We hadn't realize just how much we had missed European food while in Morocco, so we may have gone on a bit of a binge.

We also took an impromptu day trip to Monaco - it turns out that the bus to Monaco is only 1 euro! It was so strange to visit such an absurdly wealthy area after being in Morocco though. Every store was a brand name: Cartier, Gucci, Valentino, Versace. Yacht clubs were on every block. Ferraris lined the streets (I kid you not). It was wild. I took a lot of pictures, but we didn't go in anywhere: just to go inside Monte Carlo, you have to pay 10 euros!

Monte Carlo

It was pretty hectic getting there, but such a nice and relaxing vacation once we finally arrived.

I think I've gotten the travel bug out of my system (at least for a little while), so don't expect any huge news the next week or so. Midterms are coming up as well, so wish me luck! Until next time, à tout!