We selected a French restaurant and I was finally able to try some escargot (snails) and frog legs as appetizers, salmon as the main course, and dessert of course. The escargot came with a special snail holding thongs and a spear looking utensil to hook the meat out. It was kind of difficult to eat at first but once you get the first one the rest are easy. I’ve had frog legs before as a child in China, but I felt obligated to try them while in France.

Another cafe next to opera I was able to try some rabbit in mustard sauce. I had never had it and I saw rabbit in the supermarket in Nice. Ever since then I had been interested. This meat was probably the most tender meat I’ve had. It melted apart.

Hello friends. Sad news but my Dell XPS m1330 has died after in its first 7months of use. I am guessing that the graphics card has overheated since I get vertical lines during boot and during initial post, before bios even pops up. I still have a 1 year warranty so hopefully I can get this resolved in Europe. The problem is I dont have a permanent location and won’t be speaking the native language. Wish me luck, but otherwise this site maybe be dead for a while too.

This is Wei signing off for now =(

All of the gargoyles are different and unique. The same can be said to all the statues that are craved into this building. I was truly impressed by the detail of this place. Although I am still shocked at how small the building is compared to what I had imagined in my mind from Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame movie.

We took the tower tour which had over 400 steps going up one of the towers. From the top there is a pretty good view of the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur. The ledges were very tight with all the tourists and there are even passages that were difficult to squeeze through with a backpack. At the very top there is a bell tower where I guess where legend says the hunchback once lived.

After the view we descended and took a free tour of the insides of the church. It was pretty interesting that there are all these signs outside saying no flash photography, yet people were snapping pictures left and right with their flash on. The inside is massive and huge compared what I had expected from the view of the exterior. It is much more of a tourist area than a church now.

Here are some panoramic shots from the top of the two towers.

Besides the famous Treaty of Versailles, I really don’t know much about it. Versailles is a 30-40minute RER ride from Paris. It costs about 2€, but in our case if you forget to buy a ticket prior to getting on the train, hope that a nice cute girl is running the gates on the other end and lets you and your group of 5 friends pass for free. Mark has just arrived to France and will be traveling with me for about 2 months. He was nice enough to bring me Canon 70-300mm zoom lens. So hopefully I will be able to have some good close up pictures from here on out. I was also able to meet up with the Canadians from Nice, minus Sacha who wussed out and went back to Canada.

There is a fee to get into the palace of Versailles, but the gardens are free. I was told ahead of time that the palace was not worth it. We did just that and went straight to the gardens. It was massive and the land was wide open. There was so much space and the gardens were beautifully designed. The only down side was that the fountains were not on when we went.

There is a long stretch of water towards end of the garden. This lake has row boats for rental and we were able to rent two boats with 3 people in each. The row boats were fun, but it showed just how bad our form was as we were zig zagging across the water. Its much more about technique than strength. We played bumper boats and even ran into a hissing swan. He was not happy with us and hissed at us repeatedly.

Paris almost feels like home now. I have a grocery store, clothing store, haircut place and sporting goods store. I know how to get around by foot and rollerblade. It is a much more familiar experience than before. And now I even have local friends here. I met up with Cristina and Carolina on Saturday and we all went to the Hideout. I hadn’t really been to any clubs or bars in Pars, so it was a pretty exciting time. This club is actually underground and almost feels like you’re walking down into catacombs.

I went out with Caroline and Cristina’s friends one night for sushi. We all met up at the Châtelet metro and when everyone arrived to took another metro ride over to the sushi location. This sushi restaurant has a 20€ all you can eat sushi. I told by our waiter that all the Japanese sushi, and Korean food restaurants were actually all owned by Chinese people. We were able to converse back in forth in Mandarin.

On Friday, Giang and I decided to do Roller Pari again. This time we both survived without falling. However I was able to witness 4 people falling. I skated towards the front of the pack this time and that group likes to play games throughout the entire course. For example first everyone will slow down and then a series of yells and screams will mean to skate as fast as you can to the next corner. It was usually during these bursts of speed that people’s skates collided and bodies when down on the pavement. It was very entertaining.

Ever since we had met the group of Americans staying in Nice we always met up with them at the fountain at 10:30pm. More like 11ish with our trek to the city center. That night we were unable to make it there in time. We ended up drinking in the town center and eventually ran into Drew. Hung out for a little while and then said our goodbyes as it was their last night in Nice.

My last day in Nice was yet another beach day. The Canadians who were suppose to have left that morning ended up staying another night because of the French train strike. We ended up hanging out for another day with Cristina and Caroline, both from Paris. They were also leaving mid day so we all decided to hit up the last outdoor restaurant that Sacha and I got the sirloin at. This time we made sure that the waitress understood salmon and it paid off.

After seeing Cristina and Carolina off, we all hit the beach and relaxed. The waves were pretty strong that day and we all ended up getting tossed around in the rocks. I ended up with a couple of scrapes on my shoulder but all in all it was still a great time.

The village of Eze is located between Nice and Monaco and is again a 1€ bus ride over. It is a steep climb through a small village to get to the top. At the very top of Eze is an exotic garden which has some of the best views of southern France’s coastline. The gardens require a entrance fee, but the views of the coastline below makes it well worth it.

I walked back to where the girls were standing and we decided that we should grab a quick bite to eat so that we could get a good spot near the red carpet. All the hotels are near the beach are fully booked and they all display large movie premiere posters. The big premieres all started around 7ish. Standing in line for a sandwich, I noticed a girl that looked a lot like Naomi, one of the American girls I met the night before. It was one of those I think I know you moments and then I noticed she was staring over as well. It turned out to be Naomi and she had been separated from her tour group. So she tagged along with us.

After getting a sandwich we started to head back to the red carpet area. Julie and Steph led the way as they knew the good spot to stand. The sidewalk traffic went up and there were tons of people walking around. Naomi and I were chit catting and suddenly we lost Julie and Steph in the crowd. After waiting around for a while we were still unable to find them. I wasn’t really interested in the Hollywood’s invasion to southern France, so Naomi and I headed to the village part of Cannes up the the hill.

There is a church that is up at the top of the hill which overlooks the entire coastline where the film festival takes place. On the way down there is an iron mask. Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask is said to be a mixture of fact and fiction. It is local folklore that this mask was his inspiration for that story. Near the bottom of hill by the bus stations there is a large mural that depicts all the the films that debuted at previous Cannes Film Festivals.

Naomi met back up with group later that night and I met some Korean girls that were waiting to see Jackie Chan. I joined in since there was nothing else to do. Jackie Chan did come out. He blew kisses and waved to the cheering crowds. It turned out that the Korean girls were staying in Nice at a different hostel, so we headed to the train station together. It turns out that they were all teachers in Korea and had just gotten done with college. So this trip was their vacation before becoming inducted to the real world.

The second time I returned to Cannes was with some Canadians I met at my hostel. Sacha, Tim, Jasen and Chad had been traveling Europe for a little over 2 months and now just happened to be in Nice. Dan drove us over again in the early afternoon. After departing ways with Dan, we ended up chilling at the beach most of the time. The beaches of Cannes are probably the nicest we’ve been to in Southern France. It is actually sandy and the waters are just as blue as Nice. On the last Cannes outing, Sacha and I were swimming and ran into a lot of jelly fish. They were purple and the largest one was about the size of a basketball. We were actually able to capture one of the smaller ones on a towel.

On our trek back to the train station we stopped by the red carpet to see if we could spot some stars. That night it happened to be a lot of them out. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Sharon Stone, and Tim Robbins. Brad and Angelina even waved at us. It started to rain so we headed back to the train station and grabbed a free trip back.

The walk from the hostel to the beach is about 15minutes and goes through the town center. There are large glowing human statues and fountains in the town center. The lights continually change colors. This location quickly became a marker for me to figure out where I was when I was lost. With its central location, we ended up making this spot where we would meet up with people because none of us had a cell phone.

Drinking along the beach seems to be the thing to do around here. That’s what we did the first few nights. A group of people from the hostel would always head out there around 10-11pm after stocking up at the next door liquor store. We were able to run into a group of American college kids, a group of singing dancing Irish girls and a creepy old guy that followed us around trying to bum cigarettes and talk to the girls in our group. We also witnessed several fights along the beach as well. All in all it was a good time.

There are clubs and bars all around Nice. I wanted to stay away from the touristy ones at first. The first bar we went to was an outdoorsy one. It was near the beach in the market area. Drinks were about 5€. It was a nice chill time sitting outside enjoying the weather. The second night I met up with some people from another hostel and we ended up going to a club called Bodeguita. The music was live and the band was pretty good. They played hits from all over the world. The drinks there were pretty expensive at 10€ a pop. However the atmosphere and the good music more than made up for it. Sadly we had to leave early because one of the girls got really sick.

The next couple of places I went to several times. One was called Flashback which attracted the girls with free glass of champaign. It was convenient in that it was next to the town center and easy to find and figure out where you were. The prices weren’t too bad, but it was hit or miss there. The other venue was near the market close to where I went the first night. It was smaller dance club and completely operated by the owner. I say completely because he not only served behind the bar, but also DJ’ed and was running the gig.