Forced labour and Ritzy Monaco

Friday, September 8, 2006

After only a few hours of sleep i got up to make it to a meeting at the university for 11am. As I and another girl were walking to the bus stop a University of Nice mini-bus pulled up beside us and asked if we were EuroAquae students heading to the meeting because they were there to pick us up. We said yes and hopped in the bus. When we passed the university the girl i was with asked the man where he was going and he said that we were supposed to go to the Acropolis, the place where the conference had been held. We were a bit confused since we were told to go to the University but the man seemed to know what he was talking about. We ended up being driven into the truck docking area at the Acropolis. At this point i really had no clue what was going on but when i say one of the organizers of the program walk towards us i thought he would be able to explain what was going on. He ended up not being any help at all........i don't know if it was because his english was bad or because he was preoccupied with other things. Anyways we eventually figured out from some of the other students that were at the Acropolis that the man in the minibus was supposed to pick up some other students who had volunteered to help pack up some of the stuff from the conference. Well this girl and I hadn't volunteered (not that we could've anyway because for some STRANGE reason they only asked the boys because there was some lifting involved.....i guess they figured women are superior beings and should be spared the manual labour ;) ). We ended up helping pack up some of the stuff anyway and we got a lift back to the university just in time for the meeting. The meeting was kinda useless for me since most of it was aimed at the people staying in Nice but i got some good info.

After the meeting I took the bus to Monaco for the afternoon. I was with a group of Asian people but what was really neat was that everyone was from a different country and therefore had to speak English to communicate. There were people from Japan, Malaysia, Korea, China, Philippines and Thailand. The bus ride to Monaco was really beautiful following a road along the coast. There were many mansions and yachts all along the way. Once in Monaco we found some maps then went to the Monte Carlo Casino. We went into the lobby of the casino, which was nicely decorated, but didn't pay the 10 euros to go into the actual casino part. I really didn't think it was alnything to special but i guess it is one of those things you just have to do. After the casino we took the bus to the Oceanographic Museum & Aquarium located on a cliff right beside the water. There was alot of cool wildlife in the museum including a huge aquarium full of sharks. The view from the top of the building was amazing, you could see all of monaco and the sea surrounding it.

After the museum we forced ourselves (we were all a bit tired from the day before) to go look at the church where Grace Kelly (and other monaco royalty) was buried. We also saw the palace and sent some post cards from the second smallest country in the world...............yes monaco. Supposedly the Vatican is the smallest country.

We took the bus back at 8pm but didn't end up getting back to the residence until 10pm since the public transportation in Nice is almost non existant after 6pm.