Team Tierney Goes Global: Monaco/Nice

Hello,

I woke up today at 7:00 sharp, and ran up shortly after to the breakfast buffet, where I had an omelet that rivaled those of Market Central. Sitting at the table, I got to see some of the French Rivera, but more about that later. Back at my room, I sat on the balcony as we pulled into Monaco’s port, passing by countless heli-pad equipped megayachts.

At 9:00 we left the ship and set foot in Monaco, greeted by a modern cruise terminal, and began walking around the harbor to the AVIS rental office, about a half mile away. Once we got the car, we promptly left Monaco, heading down the Cote d’Azur toward the city of Nice.

The drive along the coast took about 40 minutes through what may be the most glitzy area in all of Europe. You were equally likely to see a recent model Ferrari as you would a Ford in America. Crazy. It took a while to find a public parking lot within Nice, but once we did, we ditched the car, and began toward the port (these towns were largely dependent on the fishing industry before the rich “invaded” and therefore are centered around their ports.) At the port, we walked around for two or three hours, then headed back towards the car.

The people of Nice were very friendly, at least in my experience, helping me find my way around and appreciating my efforts in French. I still understand it well, but I stink when it comes time for me to carry on my half of a conversation, which is incredibly frustrating. I’d really like to continue to practice since if you don’t use it, you lose it.

We went into what looked from the street like a typical convenience store, but it opened up into a full-scale grocery store. Ryan, I’m sorry to tell you that they don’t have Boo Berry in France. We each got something to drink here for the road and made our way back to the garage.

On the drive back, we stopped at an overlook above Villefranche, another Rivera seaside town. I took some pretty neat pictures from above, which I’ll upload to Facebook along with the other pictures I take in the next week or so.

(As a side note: The way to see any of these individual places is certainly not by car, but rather on foot or by moped.)

Back in Monaco, we dropped the rental car off and looked for a place to eat. Similar to the Spanish, the city shuts down in the afternoon, so finding an open restaurant was quite difficult. We ended up at a Italian place and were served by a very pretentious waiter who didn’t speak English (not a problem, I just had to order for my family) but when it came time to pay the check, he was too immersed in rearranging the seats to give it to us. I eventually just left, leaving my dad and sister at the restaurant, as I didn’t come halfway around the world to let some crappy waiter take away from my already limited time (it was also good to get out by myself for a while).

I walked up probably about 60% of the mountain Monaco is built into, stopping frequently to take pictures of whatever seemed cool. I then winded my way down to the Hotel de Paris, famously featured in many a James Bond movie. Here I met up with Emily and Dad and with about 1500 other tourists, just fawned over the cars that were parked in front. Simply put, if the sticker price was more than $250,000 there was at least one there. At the gift shop, I bought a Monaco bumper sticker for my laptop for 3€.

At this point, it was time to walk back to the ship and to eat dinner, which was a pork chop and duck tonight. On a scale of 10, I’d grade it a 6.3; better than what I could make, but still having room for improvement. After dinner, I changed and went up to the gym, which was packed, so I only ran for a half hour. My dad and sister went to the Welcome Aboard show tonight, but since it was advertised as being centered on “audience participation”, I decided to stay behind and went to the casino instead. On the 4^th pull of the slot machine, I won $80 on a dollar bet. I took 10 dollars of my winnings, lost it quickly, and went back the room by way of the photo gallery, which had a hilarious picture of a VERY happy Matt Hardman up close with a “Spanish Lady” (read: probably a Costa Rican Women in a Flamenco costume.) I’ll probably spend the money for it eventually, haha.

That leads us here, where I’m writing from the comfort of my bed. It is 12:45 right now, I’m tired, and I’m leaving for Florence tomorrow morning.

Goodnight/Have Fun at Musikfest,

Matt