I don't currently have the pictures to articulate what we did for the first part of our trip, but I want to write what we did while it is still fresh in my mind.

17/05/09
We got up early in Marseille, France and headed out. We grabbed breakfast at McDonalds and walked to the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde. This was a huge church on top of a hill that overlooked the whole city of Marseille. There were many islands surrounding the huge city. The views were amazing. We then walked to Fort St. Nicholas which was from the French Revolution. Sadly the whole thing was not open because they were doing construction. We then stopped for a beer on the street and met some ladies from the United States who were on the same type of adventure that we were; going from town to town on the trains. We then went to Cathedrale La Major. We then went to another church. It was an extremely hot day so we decided to get on the bus and head to the beach called Plage Du Prophete. The beach was small but beautiful and surrounded by mountains. I didn't have my swimsuit on me so I stripped down to my underwear (which is normal apparently) and took a dip in the fresh water. We then took a nap. We then headed back on the bus. What I have learned from the south of France is that it is extremely expensive. We bought dinner at the grocery store because we did not want to spend money on a dinner. It was still expensive; I bought a can of ravioli for 1.50 Euros which was a subpar dinner. After getting back to the hostel Alex took a nap and I continued to walk around the city. I love hearing the sounds of the bustling city and not being able to understand anything anyone says. I walked to another huge church and then headed back to the hostel. I woke Alex up and we went and drank a beer purchased at the Supermarket with our feet in the Mediterranean Sea. We then walked around the city. We met some guys that spoke some English. These guys were definitely on drugs. Their names were Jamelski, Fayce, and Vladmir. Jamelski had lived in New York for some time and was in France to start a rap career. He wasn't really a good rapper but he was an interesting cracked out character. We hung out outside and had a beer with these guys and just chatted it up while we watched them rap battle eachother in French. It was quite cool. We then headed back to the hostel to call it an early night. We had another early day ahead of us. My overall thoughts on Marseille were that it is a beautiful city with really nice people. I have learned through my travels that the people can make or break the city that you visit. The atmosphere was also a little on the shady side.

18/05/09
Alex got up at 6:30 and I got up 10 mins before we needed to leave. We finally left the hostel at 7:45. We got on a 8:29 train and headed to Cannes. The thing I didn't know is that I needed to make a reservation with my Eurrail pass, which I did not do, so that ended up costing me a little bit of money. We arrived at Cannes and took the walking tour (which was basically a path highlighted on a map). Our first stop was, once again, a church on a hill where we saw a panorama of Cannes. Cannes is definitely a smaller city then Marseille, but you can tell that it is filled with money. Huge yachts are docked, red carpets are rolled out all over the place, and people are dressed to impress. They had a ton of shopping, but it was a little out of our price range, and I wasn't on this trip to do shopping anyways. We then walked along the waterfront where million dollar yachts were docked. They had bigger televisions on their boat then we have in our house. These boats were from all over the world and just looked made of money. We then walked down a beautiful beach and Alex grabbed some food. We then split up so Alex could shop and I stopped at the grocery store in hopes of finding cheap food. I picked up the cheapest bag of chips which turned out to be peanut butter flavored, and a thing of meat and cheese. Which also turned out to be expensive; impossible to make it a cheap trip when you NEED to eat. We got lucky and were in Cannes during the film festival so this little city was bustling with people all on their cell phones, and all looking like they had money. I have never seen prettier girls and more fashionable men. You see Ferraris and Lamborghinis driving down the street and it is no big deal. We then found a red carpet and tried to enter to see some movie premieres, but you need a ticket to enter and they are impossible to come by. We then found a beach that was right next to the film festival. The beaches there were relatively topless which made it an interesting walk. I brought a swimsuit this time so we changed and jumped in the water and once again took a short nap on the beach. After, I realized that I was completely sunburned from the day before and this day. It was once again around middle 90s outside so we were sweating. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and looked out of place. We then found that a pretty popular movie was going to get premiered so we waited for that to occur. We watched them roll out the red carpet and then an hour later escort cars started pulling up and famous people got out of the back. These people were dressed even better then the people we saw on the streets. We saw the kid from Slumdog Millionaire, Clint Eastwood, and Hillary Swank. I wasn't too impressed with seeing these people, but Alex loved it. We then got on the train and headed towards Nice. The ride was about an hour long to Nice. We found a Hostel that was in Alex's book and it was sort of like a frat house. It was beautiful on the outside and had tons of rooms. We shared a room with two random Canadians. We then went out for dinner at a restaurant where no one spoke English, so I just pointed at things and ended up having a dinner of Chicken in a wine sauce, and some vegetables which was really good. We then headed back to the hostel and went to bed to start our day off early.

19/05/09
We woke up around 9:30 and ate breakfast, which was included, at the hostel. We then took off to explore Nice. They had a really cool old square where you could go shop and of course I ended up waiting while Alex spent more money on a dress and a few rings. We then climbed a hill where we could get another panorama of the city. The city was pretty small, but not as small as Cannes. We walked to a waterfall and then headed down and walked through the city and decided to head to Antibe. Antibe is where a lot of the movie stars stay while they are spending time at the Cannes Film Festival. Antibe was an extremely small beachtown that once again had a ton of million dollar yachts. We grabbed some beers and went to the beach. We drank and took a dip in the water and enjoyed the beach. This beach was pretty small, but completely packed with people. I then met some Australian guys who were playing frisbee and I joined in playing with them. After, we talked and they were all in Antibe looking for work. Apparently there are thousands of huge yachts that need deckhands to wash the boat and take care of it for the millionaires that own them. Would not be a bad lifestyle to hang out on a huge boat in paradise all day. We then headed back to Nice on the train where I had a Doner Kebab. After we drank a little at our hostel and met some people from Finland who had just finished Film School. We then went to an Americanized bar called Wayne's and had a drink and talked to people. There were a bunch of people dressed up so we started talking to them. These adults were in Nice for a Coal Convention. We talked to them and made friends with all of them. We walked home to the birds chirping and went to bed. My opinion of Nice is that it is a pretty big town with a Suburban feeling. I never felt in danger once while I was there and I realized that I really didn't see any homeless people. I would love to visit Nice another time.