Back to France!

After spending a lovely week in Switzerland, I'm back in France - Nice actually!

Pedro & I spent the week in Lausanne with his cousins. We got to see quite a bit of Lausanne (arrived at the end of one of their festivals, which was really cool!), a bit of Geneva (little train tour), Gruyere (!! where we had awesome fondue) and Bern. Both of us loooved Bern because it was beautiful, very green and just generally nice. Smaller than we thought but great! We went to the Einstein museum there which was particularly cool (insert nerd jokes here). Pedro's cousin with whom we stayed, Bea, had her birthday in the middle of the week so we got to celebrate that with her – we had a picnic aperitif in a park in Lausanne followed by dinner with a huge group of (great and funny) people. So nice!

After our stay in Switzerland we headed WEST for Annecy… a small town that I had visited two summers ago and really loved! It was a little cloudy and rainy the days that we were there but we got to see a lot anyway. And! We went kayaking on the lake. I had really wanted to kayak so I was really excited that we actually did it (even though at some point I was a little scared).

After Annecy we ended up in Saint Cyr sur Mer, a small town on the coast of France but a beautfiful one! This was our first stay in the real heat of summer. Bug bites and sun galore …We stayed with a super nice family from the club where Pedro was playing a tournament for two nights and got to know them and their daughter, Emmanuelle, who plays tennis in North Carolina. We told her she had to come visit Blacksburg next semester so hopefully we’ll see her again!

One of the days in St Cyr we were able to go (back) to Cassis, another town that I loved on the coast. It was just as beautiful and we had a lot of fun wandering around the old town and the calanques…

After we left our family in St Cyr we made it to Nice, where we rented an apartment for 10 days in the old town (vieille ville). Old it is!! Everything was, as the name suggest, very old. Philippe, our roommate, was very welcoming and helped to make our stay pleasant! The apartment was on the corner of some bustling streets (bars, restaurants, markets) so there was always a lively atmosphere (read: noise). I would never be able to live there long term but it was a fun experience anyway! This time I felt like I got to know Nice well – beaches, a little tennis (where I met a really sweet grandmother and her grandson, Pierre, who was a big fan of Pedro), markets and walking around (okay, okay, and a little shopping). We also took day trips to Antibes and Cannes – very cool! Antibes was really beautiful and quaint…and they had an awesome Picasso museum!! I really loved that. Cannes was pretty busy and touristy but the beaches and architecture were pretty.


Well if that wasn’t enough, we headed to Italy after a last tournament and tour in Monaco (!). We met up with one of our friends who lives in Reggio Emilia, a smallish (but not that small) city near Bologna.

We stayed with Corrado one night and then with his girlfriend the four of us headed even furtherrrr east to meet up with two friends in Croatia! We actually met up in Slovenia first, in a small town called Isola (near the Croatian border) where Luka and Mia (Croatian friends) were staying in their grandparents’s apartment. We walked around the town one day and the next two went to Umag, a nice town with beaches and an ATP Tournament! It was really awesome to go to such a big tournament and see such good players. Very impressive to say the least.

Then: Croatia! We stayed one night in Karlovac, where Luka and Mia live, before heading to the beach house. We didn’t get to see too much but we were welcomed by Luka’s family with an amazing lunch/dinner of cibapcici and frozen wind (various grilled things and a fruit/cream cake!). We saw a little bit of downtown after going downtown one night and then the next morning we headed to Dalmatia. The drive to and from Dalmatia was beautiful! Winding in the mountains and in the country side, we saw a lot. The beach was crowded with similar other tourists but it was relaxing and enjoyable anyway!

Another great meal awaited us on return to Karlovac: lasagna from Luka’s grandma. Sooo good! We couldn’t believe that they eat like that so often :)

Overall I enjoyed Croatia and everything that we saw – it was very different from the rest of everything I had seen in France, Switzerland and Italy. I would definitely return to the beaches some day!


On our way back from Croatia we made an afternoon stop in…Venice!!! I was really excited to see the city since I’d heard such good things about it. It was super crowded so we had a harder time parking than we thought, but once we actually parked and got on a boat headed towards the islands it was smooth sailing! The boats are the taxis and trams so you see them everywhere ferrying people from stop to stop. It’s really quaint (but also a reason the water there is so polluted apparently. The architecture was of course amazing and we saw lots of beautiful things winding through all the streets and canals…

Once we (the four of us) got back to Reggio we RESTED! for a day, wiped out after so much driving and traveling. The next day Pedro and I took a day trip to Firenze!!!!!! I was so excited to see Firenze, a city so famous for its history and the monumental things it produced. We didn’t have as much time as we would have liked because our train was an hour late in the morning (sigh), but we still got to se the two of the most beautiful places –the cathedral and its duomo and the musee Uffici. Both buildings are artwork in themselves (especially the outside of the cathedral!!) but we also got to see an amazing view from the top of the duomo and wonderful art inside the museum. All in all a great day trip, but it left me wanting more ☺ I can’t complain, though, about speeding through the country side of Tuscany in our train and watching the sunset!

That night we had dinner at Corrado’s..his mom’s ragu! So good! Italy begins to rival France for food….

The next day the four of us set out againnnnn – for Siena! One of Letizia’s friends was from the city so we were able to meet up with him and walk around while he shared his knowledge with us.

And finally…Rome!! Hopefully you can all see my pictures on facebook because that will capture it more. Everything was just COOL – all the ruins and seeing so much history everywhere. For me, everything was impressive but the art – especially everything in the Vatican and st. Peters is truly unbelievable…all the gold?! Marble and beauty of everything combined. Being there in person is definitely unmatchable….

On our second to last day there we went to the Villa Borghese, an old residence to the Borghese family but now an art gallery. WOW!! I wasn’t expecting that much but the paintings were just as impressive as St. Peters. There were several sculptures by Bernini there that were so, so beautiful. It’s hard to describe but when you see something so detailed and fluid in person, knowing that it’s made from stone….ahh!! So cool.

And of course the food was pretty incredible ☺ Corrado’s mom gave us a few recommendations for places to see and restaurants – so we followed them! Needless to say, great idea. We ate twice at a restaurant in the old Jewish quarter, which is now known for its good food. Both times we had carciofi alla Judea, a lightly fried artichoke that is simply incredible! We also tried a bunch of different pastas, including carbonara (which does not have any cream sauce…only the yellows of eggs!) and cace pepe (lightly peppered spaghetti…again, simple but delicious!). We also happened to find the best coffee place in Rome so I enjoyed a nice caffe latte freddo there….awesome! All in all, another unbelievable city…

But of course on the way from Rome to Paris I ran into problems (the first real time all summer but still!)….I easily found the RER and hopped on in good time, only to have it stop 5 stations before the airport….What the heck France? Really, strikes all the time? Is that necessary?