I made it.

   Paris, Paris, Paris... what can I say. I had so many hopes and expectations. Romance, wine, flowers, bicycles, stripes and berets. Needless to say, the expectations were set too high so there was no option but to be slightly disappointed. I maybe saw one person wearing stripes. I didn't see a single beret. There were some flowers but mostly just grass and gravel and the only romantic thing I saw were the love locks on the bridge near the Louvre. At least wine is in abundance no matter where you go in France.

   However, despite feeling slightly let down there was one thing that made up for all of that and fully exceeded my hopes. The Eiffel Tower. My goodness, it is SO much bigger then I had ever imagined. I was absolutely in awe. It is such an icon and there I was standing before it. It was such a wonderful moment for me. I had this overwhelming sense of all the things I have accomplished in the last two years. Of all the work I put in to get here and the emotional hurdles that I endured. All of the 9am- 12am days with little to no sleep weren't in vain. I was in PARIS and I was standing in front of one of the most well known buildings in the world. It was incredible.

 The Louvre court yard.

 The Eiffel Tower looks so small in this photo compared to what its like in real life!

 A rarely seen view of the tower.

 I really wanted to go but the lowest price ticket was 100 euro... not exactly within my budget!

The love locks on the bridge.

  I also made it to Versailles while I was in Paris. I highly suggest devoting at least 10 hours (if not two full days) to Versailles if you ever go. I spent about 4 or 5 hours in just the fountain gardens. There is also the palace, the other gardens, the lake and Marie Antoinette's dwellings to visit that could easily take twice as long. Unfortunately, it was my last full day so I wasn't able to make it back.

 A small portion of the MASSIVE property.

 My favourite fountain.

Some of the lovely topiaries.

Nice - Eze Village day trip.

   While I was in nice I made a day trip with some of the gals from the hostel. We took the bus up to Eze Village on one of the near by mountain (hill?) tops. Its a tiny little village and it offered even more amazing views of the area surrounding Nice. Just the bus ride alone made this trip worth it! However, to add to the fun, instead of taking the bus back down to Nice we walked down the back side of the mountain to the beach. It was such a nice walk and it was nice to feel a part of nature after so much time in cities the last little while. It took about an hour to walk the down but it was a highlight of the day!

The winding, hilly streets of Eze Village.

 Beautiful things everywhere!

 Our happy little picnic at the top!

 On the trail down.

View from the trail... stunning!

Nice

Ok... so I promised I would be caught up soon. However, I came across a few shoddy internet connections in combination with a generally really busy schedule. I swear my life is so much busier now that I don't have any jobs... but way more fun! Therefore, I have fallen even further behind. SO I am going to try to whiz through the next through posts while I have a good connection so I can get caught up. And then maybe after that I will get caught up on loading my photos to Flickr too! Ok, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves... one thing at a time!

   Nice was such a beautiful city. I met some great gals and had some wonderful picnics. It was an over all wonderful time. I saw the sights, wandered the market and the park, checked out the Modern art museum. I  realized I truly have a love/hate relationship with modern art. I like to break it down into the allowing four parts: The beautiful, the technical, the mental, and the bullshit. The first three are great and provoke different emotions within one. The last is just as it seems. Bull shit. A giant statue of a horse painted a bright color is not modern art. Its over sized home decor. Picasso is modern art. Just saying.

   Anyways, enough of my rant. Here are some of my photos from Nice.

 Cote d'Azur.

 The fruit and flower market - We had a wonderful picnic with goodies from here!

 The views around Nice were absolutely inspiring.

This is good modern art. I was completely captivated trying to figure out how this whole thing worked. It was all interconnected and made out of random scraps of garbage and everyday bits and pieces. Yes, its off kilter. So much thought and manual work went into this!