Walking distances

I used map my walk to see how far we walked on some of our longer walking days.

Day 1:  Arch de Triumphe to the Opera house/Galleries Lafayette.  2.15 miles.  Doesn't include all of the steps inside all of the stores we went into.  The Pasteur metro stop to our hotel was .25 miles.  My guess is that we walked 3-4 miles that first day off the plane.

Day 2:  We walked about 3.66 miles AFTER we left the Louvre (I'd estimate at least a mile was walked IN the Louvre) around the Latin Quarter and Notre Dame.  Then, we took the TGV up to Montmartre and walked another mile plus around there (not to mention all of the stairs!)

Day 3:  We walked at least 1.5 miles around the flea market.  That evening, we walked a mile from the Trocadero to the Eiffel Tower and back.

Day 4:  Our walk around Nice was about 4 miles (including after the tour ended and walking back to our hotel).

Day 5:  I didn't bother maping it as we walked in and out of stores and up and down the main street/old town/the beach.  Probably at least 3 miles.

Day 6:  I had a hard time mapping this.  I'm making a guess that our walk around Eze was about a half mile and the walk around Monaco was 1+ miles.

All in all, we did a decent amount of walking around France!  One of the best ways to see a new city.

Au revior France

Thursday was a sad day.  None of us wanted to leave.  The sun was shining in full force and we headed to the Nice airport.  I've flown a lot, and this was the best flying experience I've ever had.  From the helpful and happy people at the airport (including the people who gave me my 2nd pat-down on this trip) to the cheerful and incredibly French-looking flight attendants.  The airport is on the Mediterranean, and it sort-of feels and looks like you're going to go straight into the sea until the plane becomes airborne.  The flight was barely full, so the girls had 3 center sections to lay down and sleep.  We slept, watched movies, played cards, and read.  They even served us gelato!  That flight was 9.5 hours to NYC and went by really quickly and painlessly.

Once in NYC, we went through customs and immigration.  We found out our next flight was in terminal 26 and went there after a quick stop at the slowest Starbucks in the world.  After waiting for a few minutes, I heard a call for a Seattle flight that wasn't where we were.  I asked an agent and we were supposed to be at the "other 26" (Huh???).  We had to take a shuttle bus filled with a bunch of disgruntled Seattle-bound people who were as confused as us.  Turns out even the flight crew couldn't find their plane, so luckily WE weren't the reason the plane was delayed.  Since we all boarded late, the flight lost it's spot to take-off.  If you've ever been to JFK, you would probably know how busy it is and how long the back-up can be.  We waited on the tarmac for a while, but eventually ended up in the sky.  Sadly, this flight didn't have personal TV screens and we were mostly sitting in a straight line (in the center row, naturally).

This flight was 5.5 hours.  I did the math, and we woke up at 7am on Thursday (France time...which is 10pm Wednesday night Seattle time).  We arrived in Seattle at 7:15pm on Thursday (Seattle time...which is 4:15AM Friday morning, France time).  We flew for a total of 15 hours and traveled home for about 20 hours (not including morning get-ready/breakfast time and arrival after we got to Sea-Tac time).

We're all a bit sad to be home.  This trip was absolutely wonderful!  We enjoyed the food, the speaking French, the culture, the shopping, the beaches, the jokes, and the adventures.

This was my 6th trip with students to France and by far the smallest group.  It was truly a joy to travel with these girls.  Thanks for coming along girls.  This was one of the best Spring Break's I can remember.

Day 6 recap

Bonjour! This is Madison. We started off today by waking up waayy too early. Breakfast was delish! Especially the coco krispies. We then went on a bus ride, which almost everyone fell asleep on because it was around 3:00am in Seattle. Our first stop was at a perfume factory that was kinda lame. Except for the sparkly perfume that 4 out of 6 of us purchased! Next we walked up to the pretty little town of Eze. It was made of a bunch of rocks and there were too many steps that we mobbed up and down for a bit under an hour! We then migrated down to the bus and went to Monaco. In Monaco we had AMAZING sandwiches that we ate while sitting on the ground on a path. It was actually much more awesome than it sounds! The aquarium was next, sadly. It was a museum aquarium type thing. My favorite part was the outside of the building for two reasons! 1)The building was totally GORGEOUS (like every other building here!) and 2)There was no fish. Inside there were many fish, which I hated, but everyone else thought was pretty dang cool! We then met up the rest of the tour group and migrated back to the bus to go see a casino in Monte Carlo. Jess and Tori stayed on the bus and when we got back they were sleeping in the back of the bus. But the casino was very pretty! Except it was raining so we used umbrellas! The cars were awesome. It was the most amount of expensive cars I have seen in one place at one time. Pretty dang cool man. Migrating back to the bus was next! I didn't see much or learn anything awesome, because I was sleeping so I wouldn't know. When we got back to the hotel we got ready and then went shopping, AGAIN! Tori and Mrs. P bought some awesomely cute stuff and everyone that went (Tori, Mrs. P, Meredith, and I) bought a pack of 11 of some of the best candy on earth called Lion bars that they do not sell in America, sadly. We then mobbed the streets back to the hotel to get Jess and Zoe for dinner. We went to some restaurant in Old Town for dinner and the food was pretty good, but Tori did not like her seafood pizza which I thought was yummy! Mobbing the streets again to get back to the hotel and packing happened after dinner! This trip has been amazing and no one wants to go back to icky Seattle and leave beautiful France. We went over our favorite parts of the trip and our favorite meal we ate and here is what everyone said:
Meredith: Her favorite part of the trip was seeing the Eiffel tower sparkle and getting her boat bash dress and her favorite meal was a pizza she ate a couple nights ago!
Zoe: Her favorite meal was Gnocci. Her favorite part of the trip was being on the beach in Nice and shopping, shopping, and more shopping!
Poort: Goat cheese salad was her favorite meal even though she liked a lot of food she ate here and her favorite moment on this trip was sitting on the beach yesterday.
Jess: Her favorite meal was a Reine pizza and her favorite part of the trip was laying down on the beach by the Mediterranean.
Tori: Gelato was the favorite thing she ate because she was crazy and didn't like the amazing food here! Her favorite part of the vacation was all the attention she got from the French men.
Madison: My favorite part of this trip was either seeing the Eiffel tower sparkle or walking through the Louvre and my favorite meal that I ate was a mozzarella pizza I ate a couple nights ago.

Day 5 recap

Bon Soir! It is the one you have all been waiting for, Jessica.

We began our day by waking up at the earliest hours of the morning we could to eat delicious breakfast. I have discovered all I eat here for breakfast is ham and cheese. I enjoy being FrenchJ. After breakfast, we scurried upstairs as usual to finish getting ready (since we are never ready at the time we are supposed to be). Finally, we all threw ourselves together and went downstairs to start off our shopping trip for the day. I don’t think I will ever enjoy shopping as much as I have in beautiful Nice. We go indoors to look at the (sometimes) amazing French clothes that are priced in Euros to make us Americans think that it is a great deal so we purchase it. During the purchases of the day, I spent way too much (sorry Mom) including many “freak out happy moments” attached to special purchases. One purchase I “freaking out happy moment-ed” all over was one that did not belong to me. It actually belonged to Meredith. Yes, she bought her boat bash dress at BCBG and it is beyond gorgeous. She shined in it and I forced her to purchase it. Just wait for her to look gorgeous on boat bash dayJ. After our amazing purchases and my pinky toe beginning to bleed again, it was a sign that we needed to hit the beach. We all walked to the most beautiful beach in Nice and stuck our toes in the Mediterranean. I never wanted to leave. At first arrival we also ate the most delicious sandwich I have ever had, a Pan-baignet. The strange thing is that everything in the sandwich would individually be ingredients that I would hate, but together in this sandwich were delectable. The beach made perfect temperature, perfect sunlight, perfect water, and a perfect country. Realizing these facts at the time, Zoe decided to take advantage of this and whip out her amazing photography all over. She has now made me extremely excited with all of the new profile pictures I have for Facebook ;) yay. We also took many Tom pictures on the waterfront to send into the Toms website (we are getting on an advertisement. Be jealous.) After the group had to drag me from the gorgeous beach, we went into the cute town of Old Town. This was one of my favorite places of the whole trip. Every building was a different bright color of yellow orange or red and there were many cute restaurants where we ate the majority of our meals. We took advantage of one of these restaurants after the beach and ate one of the best meals I have ever had. I now have a favorite kind of pizza, Reine, which I ate 3 more times in Nice. Another memorable part of this square would be the famous gelato place in the middle. There were 100 flavors to choose from in which strange ones were included (tomato basil, avocado, beer, cactus, ect.). My favorite flavors turned out to be rose, lavender, and white chocolate, which make my mouth water at the thought of them. After eating our gelato by the fountain that the whole square surrounds, we began to walk back to our hotel and stop at the flower markets on the way. Of course, we made more purchases at this time before we even got close to home. Before going back to the hotel though, we went to the Negresco to happily walk through and look at all the fancy hotel items we could not have. Our experience was not as cheerful as we would have hoped in the fact that an authoritative man greeted us at the door and told us we were not allowed to walk through. We obviously looked like tourists and were not good enough for the hotel. It was an awesome way to end the night. We walked back to our hotel and proceeded to dream about our amazing purchases and beaches we had experienced that day.

Recap:

Zoe: Her favorite purchase was another amazing dress from BCBG (that I am also obsessed with).

Tori: brushed her hair 57575757 times and her best shopping purchase was her new TorTor NafNaf shirt she got in Gallery Lafayete.

Meredith: OBVIOUSLY her new boatbash dress was her major fav for the day (as it was mine as well).

MeJ: I purchased something amazingly sparkly and beautiful. Nuff said.

Madison: Her favorite purchase was a pink shirt she promised to get someone and finally found.

Madame Poort: She was very excited about her new fabric she purchased and her new Audrey Hepburn little black dress a la Breakfast at Tiffany’s she bought.

Eze and Monaco

St. Jean Cap Ferrat...one of the most expensive and exclusive places to live in the WORLD

The ladies with Cecile our amazing guide.

If you see the smoke, Paul Allen has a home near there.

The "nose" working her magic at the perfumerie

Girls in a tree in Eze

Tor-Tor's woodchuck face

Meredith and I in Eze

In Monaco in front of the cathedral (where Grace Kelly is buried).

We couldn't go in as they're renovating it.

The lone guard guarding the castle where Prince Albert II lives.

Overlooking the Monaco port

Eating sandwiches in Eze

Jacques Cousteau's aquarium

Jelly fish!

Clown fish!  This is where Nemo comes from

Silver fish

More clown fish

Sea horse

The yellow submarine is not from the Beatles, but from Jacques Cousteau

In Monte Carlo, this is the Casino.  Parked in front:  A Bentley and a Ferrari (or is it a lamborgini?)

Some super fancy Mercedes (if you're in to cars, you'd LOVE this place.  We saw ALL of the top ones:  Rolls Royce, Bentley, Porche, Mercedes, Lamborgini, Ferrari, Range Rover, BMW, etc...)

This car costs $350,000

The fountain

Cecile and I in Monte Carlo

Tuesday on the Mediterranean

TOMS on the beach

We ate our lunch of Pain baignets on the beach

Dipping their toes in the Mediterranean

We heart TOMS

We also heart gelato...and this place happens to have 100 flavors to choose from.  We've gone twice and each gotten 2 flavors each time...we don't repeat (but some of us have had the same flavor scoops).  We're trying to try as many flavors as possible.  We're making hard decisions here...

Price list.

"boule" means ball of ice cream.

Some of the more unusual flavors:  thyme, avocado, tomato basil, beer, rosemary.

We stayed out of this section.

The landmark of Nice.

I'll let Jessica explain our experience here when she does her entry tomorrow...

Nice has these 7 statues on top of huge poles.  They all face different directions to represent each of the 7 continents and the direction they are.  At night, they glow and change color.

Zoe's dinner:  gnocci a la carbonara

Jess and Madison had pizza with tuna fish on it

Meredith and I had mussels and a pizza with ham and mushrooms.

Day 4 recap

Salut! C'est Meredith!
Yesterday morning we woke up super duper early and got on a 6 hour train ride from Paris to Nice. We got in the train and Tori realized she left her beloved bedazzled belt and bright orange nail polish in the hotel room and flipped a lid! Luckily she is probs getting it sent home. We caught up on our sleep on the train so it went by pretty quickly. When we got to Nice we got picked up in a bus, by a nice lady named Cecil, and walked around and saw the sights of Nice with a group of interesting people. We walked through the shopping part of town, along the beach, up way to many stairs and saw the beautiful town of Nice from a very high place! After we walked down we indulged in delicious gelato! The place has millions of billions of flavors and it's a whole lot of excitement! Afterward, we ditched the group and strolled through a mini flea market that had lots of gorgeous sparkley things. Then, we mobbed to get food at an early bird special because we were all STARVING! We all had a full size pizza to ourselves and it was the bomb.com! After we finished the delicious meal we walked backed to the hotel and stopped at Monoprix (a.k.a. French Target! Yeah I know, it's pretty amazing!) After we were done purchasing all the fabulous finds, we all passed out at about 9. As it turns out that wasn't such a good idea because we all woke up at 3 not knowing what we were doing with our lives. So we ate some candy and prince cookie things and fell back to sleep.

Favorite part of yesterday:

Tori- her chocolat blanc and caramel gelato
Madison- her coco and framboise gelato
Zoe- her caramel and chocolate chip gelato
Jessica- her lavender and chocolat blanc gelato
Mrs. Poort- her cafe and salted caramel gelato
Me, myself & I- buying my fabulous sparkely and pearly earings at the flea market! YAY!

Xoxo,
Meredith