The Côte d'Azur

Well we didn't really get the winter sun we were after, in fact it bucketed down for most of our stay! However, even in the wet and the cold this has got to be one of the most breathtaking parts of the world.

We spent our first day in Monaco, surrounded by obscene wealth, bad facelifts and enough fur coats to stock an entire woodland. It is unbelievable to think that those narrow little streets host one of the biggest Grand Prix's in the world. Everywhere you go there are pictures of Princess Grace, there are plagues to commemorate just about every spot she ever stood in!

The train from Nice goes though some of the most amazing coastline, we had planned to take a helicopter ride from Nice into Monte Carlo but unfortunately the weather was just too bad.

The views from the Palais du Prince are spectacular, you look out over the port on one side and the newer part of town on the other.

We met an Irish couple on the train there and back who had been in the same restaurant as us the night before who gave us lots of travel advise for when we go to Ireland.

We spent the rest of our trip wandering around the narrow streets of Nice's old town and the beautiful coastline.

We ate SO much food! We had some of the most amazing meals at this tiny little family run restaurant. I can usually read a French menu pretty well but I barely recognised anything. The owner was so nice, he explained the menu to us (his broken English, our appalling French) but we felt better when we saw he even had to do this for people from Northern France it was so regional! It's a completely different world to Paris that's for sure. There were only about 10 dishes to choose from (five for entree and five for mains) and if it didn't come into the market that day it was not available. We stuffed ourselves there a few times and I want to try to learn to make there aubergines at home.

The food and flower markets were incredible, I wish we could do our shopping somewhere like that everyday.

Monaco

Nice