June 21/22 continued

Alright, a little commentary on the night train here. First of all, we jump on this train and walk down the hallway single-file because that's the only way you could do it. I went into one of our rooms on this car that was supposed to be only our group. There are four beds in each room, which is probably six feet cubed, if that. Strange thing is, there is a random Italian woman, aged about 65, sitting on one of the top beds. Lindsay, Avera, and I just came on in the room anyway. We ended up without enough beds for everyone, and we were already very uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same room with a stranger. Peter, our leader from the Paris American Academy, spoke to the woman in Italian. She was very annoyed that he asked her to switch to another room. The conductor came and also talked to her, and finally she moved. Then Dr. Ellis, our trip leader from Meredith, came in our room. We were really glad to have only people we knew in our room. As for the sleeping, I'm not sure how much I really slept. The bed was tiny and I was on the top. Anyone who saw my lofted dorm bed with baby rail last year would know that this was not a good situation for me. We each had a tiny pillow and sheet - folded in half - to sleep with. I tried to sleep as much as I could, and I ended up feeling alright when I got off the train before 6am in Genova Brignole. Most people slept on the bus to Monaco, but that's not really my thing, so I read and enjoyed the view. It was a little frustrating because we kept going through tunnels. I would read a line in my book, then it was dark for 10 seconds, then I read a paragraph, dark, a line, dark, etc.

I had read that some of the design elements in the palace at Monaco were copying Versailles. The palace was pretty, but definitely not as grand or ornate as I'm expecting Versailles to be. There was a lot of old furniture, according to our handheld guide tape thing, but I had trouble believing that it was as old as it told us. Everything looked new and in excellent condition, like fake antiques. There were a lot of portraits, too. One of them was particularly memorable. It was a painting of Princess Grace, Prince Rainier III (?), Prince Albert II, Princess Caroline, and Princess Stephanie. It was painted in 1981, and they looked extremely out of place next to the paintings from the 1800's, if even that recent.

We took a short bus ride from the palace to Montecarlo, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. We didn't do much there except eat at the only restaurant in sight, which was very expensive, and sit in the park. I really don't know how the other girls don't go crazy at times like that. I sat and read my book and was content, but without something to read I would be so bored.

Once the group met up again, we took a train to Nice and checked into our hotel. Lindsay and I shared a room that was much newer, cleaner, nicer, etc. than everywhere else we've stayed on this trip. One weird thing about it was that the shower had a window into the bedroom. There were mini blinds, though, which were up when we got there. Our room also had a particularly hard couch. I was just tired enough to fall asleep on it. Only after taking a shower - it had been 2 days since my last shower due to the night train experience.