Nice is nice!!

We left Lyon around 10:30am this morning and headed towards Nice. It was about a 4.5 hr drive on the tollway, and it cost us 36Euro in tolls. Ouch. That's one thing we didn't take into consideration for our trip... I had no clue tolls cost so much in Europe.

The Cannes Film Festival started today so Mark was very adement about stopping by there on our way to Nice. (Cannes and Nice are about 25kilometers apart.) Cannes is right on the Mediterranean and it looks kind of like what I'd picture Greece to look like - VERY hilly, with houses and apartments all over the place on the hills. We walked around downtown Cannes and there was a lot of activity since the film festival was starting. It was RIGHT on the water and we walked along this walkway along the water where there were probably 30-40 multi-million dollar yachts docked. I'd imagine that this is where most of the celebrities were staying. There were some really rich looking people sitting on some of the yachts, but mostly lots of "yacht workers" in their crisp khaki or navy shorts and polo shirts with their yacht emblems on them. Quite the site to see. Then we walked around this big building and saw the red carpet of event. One side of the street was closed and there were hundreds of paparazzi already lined up with their camera ready. Half of them had ladders too that they were standing on. We were there around 4pm and Mark wanted to stay to watch all the celebs get out of the cars, but I didn't want to. We wouldn't have had a good spot to see anyone, probably only would have gotten glimpses of them, and I guess I just don't care that much about just seeing famous people. If we had been much closer and could have talked to them or something, then maybe it would have been alright to stand there for hours watching them. But I wanted to get to Nice and eat dinner, so we walked around a little more and then headed towards Nice.

Nice is a lot like Cannes, although not as resort-ish. I think we're kind of to the point where we've had enough of France and we're ready to move on to Italy. Our hotel room here is nice though - probably the biggest one we've had so far, although the bathroom is tiny. It's probably not even 3ft in diameter, but has a sink, toilet and tiny shower in it. Definitely not bad for 50Euros ($77).

We're heading to Pisa tomorrow to see the leaning tower, and then heading to Florence for the night and we're spending 2 nights in Florence. We made reservations tonight for Rome and we'll head there after Florence for 3 nights.

Oh, the french radio stations are kind of funny. They seem to play a LOT of American music. I've heard the song "Low" by Flo Rida at least 10 times since I've been here and it's hilarious to hear the DJ's say the artists names with their french accents. We found a jazz station that played only American music because I guess it's hard to put french words to jazz songs. And all of the TV stations are in French, but they just dub over American shows like CSI and House and others. Just as I typed that Mark flipped the channel and Extreme Home Makeover was on, but they were translating it into French. Pretty funny. Most movies they play here too are American, but with French dubbing. That's getting kind of old. We understand quite a bit of what we're reading, but it's tiring not really being able to communicate well with anyone and not just being able to turn on the TV and watch and UNDERSTAND it. Oh well. We're ready to get to Italy - mainly for the food. And we're both missing our weina dogs a lot. I can't imagine what it'll be like when we have kids, if we miss our weina babies this much. We probably won't be going on month long vacations... that's for sure.