Euro Tour - Monaco

We started the District 2240 Euro Tour of 2011 on Saturday, May 21st. We all got to Bratislava by ourselves. There, we met up with everyone in the train station. By the time everyone got packed into the train, it was between 4 and 5 pm. We started on our way.


We drove for 17 hours, with stops every 3 hours. You know how hard it is to sleep in a car? Well, this was a bus. With half of the air conditioning blocked by our bags. No free seats. 49 people crammed in there. Oh, lord. It was a crazy ride. I think I ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep, between talking, watching movies, and not being comfortable enough to sleep. And, teenagers are noisy. So, that was fun...not.

We arrived in Monaco in the morning. We had stopped at a rest stop to change clothes and get ready for the day, but that was it. So we all looked (and felt) like we had been on a bus for 17 hours. (If you are my friend on Facebook, you will note my lack of pictures of me and my friends from that day.) First we waited while everyone took about a bajillion pictures. Then we went to this tiny oceanographic museum. It was kinda cool. I found the Nemo and Dory fish, so I call it success(:

After that, we went to see a church. It was kinda cool. We saw the tombs of Princess Grace Kelly and her husband. Sadly, no pictures in the church.

Then we got free time. I went with a group of "Czech" girls. (For this trip, we had the "Slovak" and "Czech" kids all together, and this is how we refer to each other. It's not an insult in any way, just to clarify.) We had lunch, and ice cream, and bought some souvenirs. We met up with Rotary after. We got to see the casino in Monte Carlo. Actually, we couldn't go into the gaming rooms, gamble, or take pictures, so it was a slight letdown. But the main entrance was so gorgeous. Then more free time, during which we did more of the same.

After that, we all got back on the bus and drove about 2 hours to our hostel in France. Let me just say, yes, the stereotypes are true. We went to a restaurant for dinner, and they totally understood our English, but refused to speak it. I know, I know, I took French. But when I tried to remember stuff, I automatically thought in Slovak. I remembered enough to decode the menu, which was good. And the food was good, very French. Our hostel was nice, but I was rooming with 2 girls, from Mexico and Columbia. So I went to bed, and woke up, to hearing high-speed, high-pitched Spanish on Skype. Oh well, better than the bus. The next day we got up and drove to our next stop.