Amy and I had a wonderful week of galavanting all over the south of France. Saturday, we spent the morning on a bus to Nice, and then, once we got there, played around the beach and the town for a while. The weather wasn't perfect, being somewhat cloudy, but it was a very lovely temperature outside and the beach wasn't crowded so we could run and jump and take silly pictures without disturbing the sun-bathers who would have typically littered the beach on sunny days.
On Sunday, Easter Sunday that is, we visited Eze, which is a very tiny town that sits on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. The only thing of interest in the town is its perfumeries. Perfumes are created by a master of scent, called Le Nez (The Nose). A Nez spends years and years in schooling, teaching their noses how to identify every type of scent. There are only 40 in the world, and the majority of those are in France. However, because of the sensitivity of their noses, they can only work two hours a week, so it takes quite a while to create a new perfume. Once a perfume is created, the perfumerie then sells it to a designer like Armani or Versace, who names the scent and then retails it as their perfume. Amy and I were able to visit the same perfumerie that I had the chance to go to the last time I was in Eze. It is a very dangerous place because there are too many things to spend your money on. The Asian tourists, especially, seem to be overcome with the desire to buy everything in the store.
After, spending some time and money in Eze, we tried to find the bus to Monaco, but it turned out that we had just missed the it and the next one wasn't coming for another hour. We decided to wander around for a bit, and while we were wandering, we found a sign that said that Monaco was only 5 kilometres from Eze. Amy and I decided to be adventurous, and since we walk over 5 km on a daily basis, we thought we might as well try to walk to Monaco. After about a half hour of walking and picture taking, we passed another sign that read "Monaco: 5 km". Then a half hour later: "Monaco: 5 km". This is where we started getting a little worried.
Finally, after over an hour of walking, the sidewalk ended abruptly, and Amy and I were left standing on the side of a very busy highway, apparently still 5 km from Monaco and who knows how many kilometres from Eze.
We stood there for about five minutes, watching the rich people watch us as they passed by in their Porsches and BMW's and Lamborghini's, until, finally, a very nice taxi driver took pity on us and gave us a free ride into Monaco, which, if you were wondering, was definitely more than five km from where we had been stranded.
Once we had finally made it to the actual city, we had a lovely time taking pictures of all the very rich men with all of their very plastic girlfriends. Money paves the streets in Monaco. You can name the designers of each article of clothing that the women are wearing as they walk by: Prada, D & G, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, Chanel, Prada, Hermes, and so on and so forth. Another fun game to play is to count the number of Lamboghini's that pass by, which is quite fun given you can hear them coming from a half-kilometre away (which from the lesson we learned trying to walk to Monaco, means a half kilometre plus a half kilometre plus another half kilometre...).
Overall, we had a very fun weekend getting stranded, watching the rich people, and spending time on the beach. The Cote d'Azur of France is unlike any other place in the world, and once you get over the overwhelming sense of inadequacy that you feel being surrounded by that much wealth, you can generally have a good time. It is a very beautiful area, and it is no surprise that the rich and famous flock there for the holidays.
Lesson from the weekend: Never trust road signs in France.
I hope everyone is doing well!
Elise
