We did lots of things of things in Monaco, including the Palais, and the cathedral where Princess Grace is buried, the Oceanographique Museum, and of course, Monte Carlo. Monaco is only 1 square kilometer, so it's not exactly like hours of sights to see. But what there is to see is quite opulent.
Monaco used to be one of the poorest countries in Europe, but then they built the Casino de Monte Carlo, and now they're one of the richest. They have a 0% crime rate because poor people can't afford to live there, and apparently everything is covered by surveillance cameras.
It was ungodly cold in Monaco, easily perhaps below freezing (which is why I look awkward in a lot of the pictures, I'm wearing like 3 coats) with crazy crazy windchill. This is a glorious picture of Jenn and Karnig making their way through the streets of Monaco.
Monaco and the whole Cannes thing in general both have just major first world problems like crazy. Life in the south of France is hard, guys. It's really cold in the richest country ever, populated only by extremely wealthy people and celebrities, with a 0% crime rate. We went to the aquarium, and I'm not going to post all of the pictures of fish I took (you have Facebook for that!!) but it was pretty exciting. There is this giant octopus statue in the lobby that has its tentacles wrapping around the pillars, and it's really intense. I would describe it as very Watchmen-esque.
There's something intensely serene about aquariums, and everyone likes them...even people like me who are afraid of those giant whale statues that hang from the ceilings. We toured the cathedral, which had relics and things. After Westminster Abbey it was a little underwhelming, but it was still small and beautiful, as most of Monaco is. It and the aquarium are made of the same stone. Now, the "top floor" of the Oceanographic Museum is called the Panorama, and we didn't understand realize what that meant. It is in fact the roof, and it's all made of white marble, and you can see essentially all of Monaco from it. The wind was blowing so hard it was almost like you could lean back on it and support yourself, and it was so cold and crazy and surprising and amazingly beautiful and white I felt like I was on an iceberg. It was just absolutely exhilarating, and I was totally ecstatic about it. Just grinning the entire time.
(One of the most fabulously successful photobomb efforts ever.)
After that we went to the Monte Carlo, however actually going into the gambling parts of it cost 10 euros, so most of walked around the lobby and reveled in that, taking pictures and going to the very glamorous bathrooms--which were free. (First world problems, gambling in Monaco is too expensive.) The Monte Carlo is very exciting, and I remember from our trip to visit Trisha just driving around the driveway at night, you feel like a celebrity, very exclusive and very classy.
Molly, Jenn, Karnig, and I walked around and ended up in a very very fancy mall, all designer stores and crystal chandeliers and beautiful twisted iron railings. We tried on designer perfumes at Sephora and other classy shit and then made our way back to the buses and headed off to Eze!
It's so interesting to go back to all these places after visiting them freshman year. So far there haven't been a lot of repeat locations, as it were, but that whole day was places I'd been before. It's different being here in this way. The first time I came here was the first time I had ever been to Europe, or even really out of the country properly. It was all new and very glamorous and exciting, and staying with my friend and her family gave a sort of groundedness to the experience that was really cool, like I was going into this world and experiencing it in a relaxed, fun, visiting way, not like this, which is really like LOL I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING all. the. time. It's hard to live that way, but it really is an adventure of sorts. Like I've been saying, I'm constantly in a state of processing things. You don't realize how crazy it all is until you realize you can fall asleep for 5 hours in the middle of the day and it isn't jet lag...your brain is just like, oh, sorry, too much. Need to process. Shutting down. Weird little things hit me at weird times, like coming back from the shower last night down the stairs and being like, Whoah. There's so many things made of great expanses of marble here. I'm not even making that up, like that thought actually occurred to me. Back to what we did yesterday, we climbed up all of the stairs to Eze, where
they actually have defibrillators (guess who had to look up the spelling for that) on the way up in case you can't handle all the stairs. It's a tiny medieval village on top of a hill, and it's really gorgeous and picturesque with a cactus garden and beautiful statues of mythical women. A lot of the kids from the Midwest were taking pictures with the cactuses all excited, and it was pretty amusing.
The drive from Eze back to Cannes was pretty glorious. This guy Steven, from Chapman, turns out to be a shockingly amazing singer, and my roommate Molly apparently suggested in passing he sing "She Will be Loved" by Maroon 5 to her on the bus, so he did, and our chaperone/AIFS person Aude gave him the bus loudspeaker microphone, so he serenaded us for like an hour, which was beautiful. He sang Beyond the Sea and Bohemian Rhapsody and several other things. Aude was just beside herself with joy and was like, "Sing La Vie en Rose!!" and it was just fabulous. We made it back in time for a classically terrible dinner from the cafeteria and then settled down and rested for a while before getting ready to go out.
Going out was the biggest clusterfuck ever, and I won't even go into how long it took to get ready/figure out who was coming and where we were going and then having to wait for everybody and their mom and then eventually leaving in like 3 taxis and it was a disaster of epic proportions, but basically Jenn, Karnig, Abriel, myself, and a girl named Emilie broke off from the group and after much screwing around finally made it to our original intended destination: the hottest club in Cannes -- Bâoli.
Now, Bâoli is where all the stars go during the festival, David Guetta DJ's there a lot, and for Cannes, it's a big deal, and very exclusive. They were turning away groups of girls when we got there, which was disconcerting, but I guess we were well-dressed and confident enough looking to get in. They don't charge a cover, at least not that early in the evening, and it was bumpin. At least for Cannes. It would have been a better overall experience if we weren't still pissed off from our frustrations earlier in the evening, very sober, and tired, but that being said it was still really cool, and we're determined to go back in a better mood and hopefully when it's less obscenely crowded. Or at least crowded with people who can dance better. We left relatively early, safely back to the College, and alas! Here we are.
Today in French I zoned out for a little while because our professor was deeply conversing with someone else (he was just chock full of folksy racism today and obnoxious questions about our love lives--in honor of San Valentin, of course, and it was beautiful). The French don't believe in political correctness and will basically talk to you about anything...the same sense of what's appropriate or not doesn't apply, so, for instance, he'll ask some kid, "What color were her eyes?" and the kid's like, "Uhhhh", and then our professor pretends to be looking at boobs with his eyes all popped out like a cartoon character and goes, "I'm sure she had really bigeyes." (All in French, of course) and we all just die of laughter. So that's what I deal with every morning...
I was thinking in class, whilst blissfully zoned out, about how one of the most prominent things I've noticed about Europe is how full of contradictions it is. In France, everything is made of marble, it is at once grand and compact and aged and modern. The air smells of smoke and grime and yet of the sea, and the language speaks of poetry while the men speak in whistles and hisses and catcalls and stare at you dirtily on the street. Everything gross from the ground looking up yet breathtakingly beautiful from up high...
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