It's a Small World After All!

Utrecht train station was hopping early in the AM from Amsterdam Ajax partiers coming in from the celebration in the city. They came up the escalators, some throwing up, some still cheering, others looking exhausted, which we later learned was because a crane fell and cut out the power line to the train system earlier and no trains could leave Amsterdam. Must have been a cold, long night for some of them.

We got on the train safely and said goodbye to Aunt Gijske and Uncle Joe, which was kind of difficult because their hospitality to us has been incredible and they really showed us a great first part of our vacation. They know a great deal about Europe and are so proud of it and we were forunate to be around them for as long as we did.

Now, you know that saying it's a small world? Well...it truly is. We started conversing with this one train worker who sat near us, Judy, she talked about living in Holland, her job, her farm and stuff. Getting deeper into the conversation, she told us she was born in Tacoma, TX, moved to PITTSBURGH, went to Knock (spelling?) high school, a little north of pittsburgh, south of butler, and knew where Erie was! Now, I'm from NY, and I didn't even know where Erie was when I was 17, let alone have this Dutch woman on a train to Amsterdam tell me she knows it snows a lot there. Crazy. Judy was very fond of her dog, and told us her Jack Russel went from being Jack to Jacqueline because of bad puberty behavior and attacking other dogs for no reason. Could you imagine if our parents did that to us? AH! So it turns out Judy still keeps her American citizenship because it would cost her something like 2000 Euros to obtain a Holland citizenship plus signatures and more per signature. So she went from TX to PA, back to TX where she met her love, then moved to Holland with him and has been there since 1989. We asked if she was ever going to move back to the states and she said no, she was going to move to the South of Spain soon. The south of Spain and the south of France, we learned are equivalent to our Florida and Arizona...the most popular places to retire. Although I'd take the Mediterranean any day over our oceans. Judy left me with something though, she said, "sometimes your heart pumps more and deprives your brain of oxygen. It's usually one or the other, they just don't work together." All of this referring to her move to Holland. This reminded me of what someone also told me once. ;) That person knows. But it is kind of sad, she told us to travel as much as we can while we're young and just enjoy it, don't settle. I'm sure many people reading this are nodding their heads right now. Good advice.

The train ride down to Nice was GORGEOUS. Once we got down to the coast, the view was incredible. The Mediterranean is just, wow. I can't write words, you just have to see pictures and pretend you were here to. It is just spectacular. So we checked into our hostel, which is only a street down from the train station, and we have our own bathroom, which is nice. The girl who checked us in is from Astonia and has been here for 5 years, she gave us a quick run down of the area, hours of eating, a map, etc. Our window just looks out to the street, not too great of a view, but we're only about a 10 minute walk from the pebbled beach, which not to jump too far ahead is filled with beach glass! Great colors too.

We threw our stuff down, showered and hit the town. We were starving..so what does a NYer do when they're hungry? Get some pizza!!! There are actually quite a bit of pizza shops here, an I'm not talking NY style, this is like gourmet pizza with the BEST BREAD EVER. We are about 30 minutes from the Italian border, so you figure the pizza has to be good, and it was. I know a few posts ago, I said Turiello's in Nyack, NY has the best pizza, ummm yeah, I might have to change my point of view. Will - wish you were here to help us judge. We shared a bottle of wine, of course, no problem finishing that one before dessert - Tiramisu, amazing. After snapping a few photos, we decided just to stroll down the promenade and explore. The sun didn't set for a while and a lot of people were out and about. After realizing we needed to buy a few things, we stumbled upon this store called and I kid you not, "EPICERIE". I'm sure this is pronouned way different in French, but Lauren and I looked at each other and went, "Epic Erie?" We went in, got two gigantic bottles of water and two bottles of wine, and some Kinder candy, which some of you may have had in Canada. Just really good chocolate.

We came back to our hostel, popped some bottles, did some wall sit (seriously), and did some facebook and Gannon updating. Found out Dr. Keith Taylor is our new president! Congratulations! That is fabulous! He will make a fantastic president. So in his honor we decided to go back out and celebrate...then we realized it was only a Monday night and ended up just walking around more. After about an hour we found this bar/restaurant/cocktail place that had a good amount of people sitting outside, so we sat down, ordered cocktails and the owner brought us little goat cheese pies. Now can someone please tell me this isn't Julie heaven? This cocktail was amazing - Citron, grenadine, pineapple juice, and some other stuff that made it taste like there wasn't any alcohol, and the goat cheese? C'mon, everyone knows I'm cheese crazy by now. We also spotted a crepe shop, which we ate at today - I have to say it, Nutella crepes! Natalie I know you are dying with envy right now...I'll leave that story to Lauren though.

On our way back, we were approached by two Italian gentleman. Now I'm not talking hot, tan, gorgeous young Italian men, I'm talking creeper, you're definately too old for me Italian. I told them my name was Marie and Lauren said she didn't have a name. So Kelsey and Caitlyn listen up and don't take offense to this. We decided if ugly men approach us our names are Caitlyn and Kelsey. After about 30 seconds we ditched them. This also occured in a very public place, so not to worry, we weren't alone.

We crashed right as we got back...sneak preview of Tuesday, which Lauren will type later: Breathtaking view of the marina, all of Nice, and the French Alps from the Chateau - I almost cried it was so unbelieveably gorgeous.

Au revoir from the South of France!
Julie and Lauren

P.S. We are really trying to find a place with a PC to upload pictures for today, honestly you HAVE to check these pictures out of our view. Like I said, I almost cried...so stay tuned!

P.P.S. Thank you all for the comments! We enjoy reading them as much as you enjoy reading the blog, so keep em' coming!