NICE

Mary Anne and I woke up early after our day at sea and were excited to get to shore. After experiencing the beautiful sights of France from the ship, we found it weird that the ship wasn't by the land. It was parked in the middle of the water and we took tender boats to shore.

Our tour was going to take us around to the scenic French Riviera with a stop at Cannes and St. Paul-de-Vence. Right when we drove off on our tour bus we hit the horrible traffic in the country. Our tour would be cut short due to the traffic. It was also raining off and on but not bad enough to be a problem.

the palm tree laced promenade

First we stopped at the famous Galimard Perfume in Eze Village where we found out how perfume was made. At first, I didn't really care for this stop but it was pretty fascinating. It takes a lot of work, and many hundreds of pounds of raw product to get those smells in those little bottles. In fact, there are even "noses" or perfumers, that are artists and technicians. Noses can recognize about 3000 smells and there are only like four dozen in the world. I am guessing they get paaaaid! They can't even drink or smoke or do anything to compromise their unique instrument.

Here is a Nose's lab. Those litte bottles contain the scents



We were then off to Cannes. We explored the city as the people prepared for the Film Festival that was beginning the next day. I know some of you might think, ah too bad they weren't there while the Film Festival was going on. I thought the same thing but was told there was no way we could even get into the city during the Festival.

Here is where the red carpet was going to be...






Unfortunately, we weren't able to explore too much because the traffic took up too much time. But during our lunch, the restaurant did serve us French Fries! They were pretty good too.

We were then off to St. Paul-de-Vence, an idyllic meieval hill village. The views were amazing...







No, this isn't the original


The view from inside the village looking out







For those EC alumni, here is "Lucky" a horse made of horseshoes. None of the horseshoes were taken from our football helmets.





The village had many unusual rafts and jewelry from the street vendors. The views from the hill were just as fabulous. Even the narrow streets were picturesque. The stone building appear timeless. Sadly, its hard to enjoy the medieval beauty because the streets were FULL of tourists. Still, I will never forget the experience of being in that fortified village where battles once raged and royalty once lived.

Pooped after a long day, Mary Anne and I passed on the nice dinner, instead going to the sushi buffet yet again! After a night time work out, we again had to sleep early because the next day we were FINALLY going to be in ITALY!

Italy has been a dream of ours. In fact, I think in our wedding website survey, Italy had the most votes to be our Honeymoon destination. So as this was our first real honeymoon, our dreams were about to come true!