11.5.08 to 12.5.08

11.5.08
It's early departure today. We were heading back to France to Côte d'Azur aka the French Riviera. This morning we had to mop the floor of our cabin because there's only 2 site reps on the camps.

The first stop was to a Catalan village. The town is a little stopover with souvenir shops and a small restaurant and restrooms. Souvenirs were pretty quirky but with quite high price tag too.

Next stop, we arrived at Arles of Provence. It is most famous for its Roman amphitheatre. The Roman empire spanned so far last time that everywhere the romans conquer, they surely would build their bath house, their amphitheatres.

Van Gogh has also spent two years painting there. His most famous work in Arles would be the Starry Night. Everywhere, the souvenir shop is selling Van Gogh's reproduction pieces.

Sampler above were just the souvenirs in Arles. Interestingly, Amway seems to be holding an event in Arles too.

Then we checked out the old Cathédrale Saint-Trophime d'Arles. Again, it looked a little medieval to me. Now that I googled about the cathedral it is said to have a very important example of romanesque architecture. I was real impressed with old rug that depicts the story of Christ and the sculptures on the Cathedral.

Below is our cabin in Antibe. Antibe is a town on French Riviera. It is located between Cannes and Nice. From memory, our priority was to have our laundry done at the camp site. It was €4,50 a load and €1 per 15 mins to dry. Toilet was unisex and the showers were hot.

Dinner tonight were sausage with salad and potato salad.

12.5.08

Next morning, we visited a perfumery called Fragonard in the Village of Es. We were shown history of the perfume making and get free samples etc. We were told there's only several 'nose' working in the perfume industry. Their job is only to smell fragrance.

Then we were dropped in the city of Nice to freely explore for the day. We checked out the beach. There were several people sunbasking and the waters are pretty cold to my standard.

We then checked out the square, the markets, alleyways. Came upon this specialist shop that only makes umbrella.. imagine choosing everything to your custom specification. It will be a rolls royce of umbrellas and I for sure won't bear to use it in the rain or shine :P

Pretty sweet things in one of the shops in the alleyway.

Another collage of some sculptures in Nice.

Later that night, we headed to the Republic of Monaco for our night at the Monte Carlo casino.The casino is not a big casino in terms of size (if we were to compare with the Vegas Casino). It's more like an art gallery and there is a paid entrance of €10. Next to the Monte Carlo casino, there're a few other casino which charges no entrance fee but they aren't the same thing. hehehe.

It was rainy that night so we didn't explore much at all in the city.