The French Riviera

Hi again!

I am now in Nice in Cote d'Azur in France and managed to spare some time for my blog. Here we go. Oh, before we go, a little note for those who read the previous entry: I told there that I was in a hurry and did not want to miss my third train in the same day. I missed it! With 5 minutes because I remembered the time of the train wrong. So if you think missing 3 trains in the same day is a record listen to this: I missed another one since the train I took from Genova to France border was 10 minutes late. So 4 missed trains in a row is my personal records and I m gonna call Guiness (not the beer company) to ask about it.\

As I mentioned earlier, these 3 days were just for relaxing and recharging for my upcoming Spain tour. So I did not do a lot of going around, but I still have good stuff to tell you

Nice
- Nice is a beatiful city located on the mediterranian coast of France as we francophones call Cote d'Azur. Very lovely and vivid city. It s really hot here. I cant believe Daniel did not die from heat in his 1 year employement here.
- I saw 5 or 6 French people. The rest are either imigrants or tourists
- Very expensive city
- The hostel I m staying is named after the famous writer St Exupery who wrote the novel Le Petit Prince. Very big abut still cozy hostel and I met a lot of great people again. Mehmet abi sana bu konularla ilgili raporu bilahare ozelden verecegim. Duygu insani dedigim icin de ayrica ozur dilerim, sen bir orman hayvanisin ve sana seviyorum.
- I absolutely did nothing in 3 days. I just went to a 1 or 2 different beaches everyday, lay down and swim in the med. I just went to a nearby village, to Monaco and that s it. I only took a short tour of the lovely old city center.
- A very important aspect of my trip that I forgot to tell you about is my farmer's tan. "Amele yanigi" in turkish. My skin has an embedded white tshirt, a white short and a pair of socks which represent the areas that were covered during my hours of walking. My arms and legs are black. So what I tried to do here was to get rid of my ugly farmer's tan and I guess I succeeded.
- Everyone is talking about how beautiful the sea and beaches over here and they even call them the best in the world. I got to see a substantial part of the coast and drove through a number of beaches and swam in a couple but I must say that it is overrated. Of course it s great to have clean beaches very close to the cities but if you go to Datca or Marmaris and drive for 15 minutes in any direction, you are gonna find much more beautiful places.
- There is a jazz festival going on here and there are concerts in the streets again. So i just sit down in the shade and listen to the bands for a couple of hours everyday. But the big thing is Return to Forever (arguably the best fusion band ever) is playing here 3 days from now on. Unfortunately the tickets are very expernsive and i m not gonna be in Nice at the time. So i m mossong the chance to see Chick Corea and Al DiMeola live. Shit...
- Another thing about the Americans. They call Nice like the english workd nice and read it like "niiiice". They also read Cannes as in english. Every single one of them.
- I think there are more Australians here then French people. At least half of the people I meet andf hang around with are Aussies. I really like their attitude by the way.
- In our hostel there is a 70 year old guy! Must be the oldest backpacker living, Backpacker Forever as we called a guy in Copenhagen with Ender. He hangs in the bar for a while and then disappears :)
- I am finally sleeping in a normal bed noew but the room itself is again crappy. The room is actually a depot right under the bar and it s so loud at nihts until they close the bar down. It doesnt matter for me cause I always stay up late but the smell and decoration of the room is really weird.

Monaco
- I did my only trip to Monaco in my first day here.
- This is a ridicilous place. I saw more than 20 ferraris in half an hour. Everyone is somehow trying to show off.
- People actually queue in front of the famous Monte Carlo casino to get in there for free and watch people gambling.\
- People sit down in front of famous hotels with the hope of seeing a celebrity
- My opinion is: they are really stupid.


Other shit:
- I heard Levent is leaving Sweden and going back to Turkey -actually he already did. Here we lose another member of the turk group in Gothenburg.
- Kudos to Memet Abi for the job.
- Memet abi subat taili opsiyonlari neler bana da soyle ufaktan ayar yapalim
- Ender sen napiyon gozum var mi bi seyler?
- Michele, I loved Italy so much. I m gonna wrote a post only about my thoughts on the country but I must tell: it is so beautiful that I m definetely going vback there again.
- Tomorrow I m on the road again to Barcelona. I plan to make a stop somewhere in France but I dont know where yet. I ll decide tomorrow morning in the train station.

Take care all, I ll be back soon.