Holding my "winnings" outside of the world's most famous casino, The Monte Carlo (I'm not sure why this pic is so small)

The Royal Palace of Monaco

View of Nice's harbor from the Parc de Chateau


Wowsa. It's going to be a little tough recounting all of my spring break adventures from the last three weeks in the blog. I will give it a try though. I got to see a lot of amazing things, so it's hard to process in retrospect. Taking almost every form of transportation possible (including a horse and buggy in Palermo), I saw A LOT of Italy and even some of France. And I got one heckova tan.

I'll try to do this chronologically...



Nice, France was quite tropical. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. They have a great park there up on a cliff called the Parc de Chateau, and the Matisse museum was really cool. Even though it was only a 5 hour train ride from Milan, it was interesting to see how different the French are from Italians. They seem to be much less simpathetic to those who speak English and not French.

Monaco, about a twenty minute train ride from Nice, was an incredible daytrip. It was almost too perfect, slightly eerie even. It's basically a more tropical, classier Los Vegas. Everything in this principality on this huge cliff was man-made. And they name everything after Princess Grace Kelly. I have never before seen so many signs of money in one place.

Venice: the Sequel was really fun as well. Even though there were still tons of tourists here this time, too (probably because of the Easter holiday). Hitting the hardcore tourist circuit, the list of seen sights included:

St. Mark's Cathedral
Island of Murano
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection (INCREDIBLE modern art museum where Mac friend Lily is an intern)
Chiesa Santa Maria Salute
Doge's Palace

I still love Venice, despite the crowds. It's history is fascinating and the town is like no other in the world. And if you find the right side streets, it's unexplainably charming.