But seriously. I'm in love with the French Riviera. It was easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. All I wanted to do while I was there was finagle some sort of boating job or something and live there forever. I would work during the day, fish at night, catch my dinner and breakfast and be perfectly content just living right on the pebbly beaches for the rest of my life. Growing up in Delaware where going to the beach, vacationing at the beach, spending the majority of the summer in the sand, etc is pretty much the extent of the lifestyle, I naturally felt very comfortable and at home at the beach. But the joy and content that I felt in the south of France was on a whole new level. Indescribable, even.
The Mediterranean was absolutely breath-taking. The water was a beautiful deep, azure blue color (hmm, I wonder why that part of France is called the Azure Coast?), and as crystal clear as I've ever seen water. I've seen the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean a couple times in my life, and I would even go as far as to say the water was even prettier in France than there. It was much colder as well. That was perhaps my favorite part of all. It reminded me fondly of all my summers at the beach in Delaware, swimming in the cold, cold, cold Atlantic Ocean. The Caribbean is much to warm for my taste. I hate swimming in what feels like gross bath water. Blech.
I'm happy to report that the vacation was an absolute success. As I think I've mentioned before, I had always planned on taking a trip to the South soon as the weather got warm, even if I had to take a couple days and go by myself. No matter what, it was something I was going to do. I casually mentioned it to a couple people, Arianna included, just in case anyone else was interested in laying on the beach with me at the end of the semester. As time went on, I figured out when I wanted to go, Arianna was for sure in too, and we'd even done a fair amount of initial research. We figured we'd send out a mass email to all of our friends here to see if they wanted to tag along and surprisingly, about 95% of our friends wanted to go! It was fantastic! Never would I have imagined that so many people would be up for the trip, but I suppose that when other people plan your entire vacation for you and all you have to do is show up with money in your hand, who wouldn't jump on board?
Highlights of the trip include the food, the weather, our hostel (we stayed at the Villa St. Exupery in Nice), and the people. As apparent as it was that the citizens of the South hated the tourists as much as Parisians do, it's always nice to get away from the Parisian mentality and just drop back a gear and enjoy life.
