Casinos, Yachts, and Princess Grace - Can You Guess Where We Are?

We took the train from Villefranche to Monaco for the day. Monaco was not my favorite stop on our trip, but I’m glad we went once. It was very commercialized and expensive. However, it was very pretty. We first walked from the train station down to the harbor to look at all of the fancy boats.

Here is TMT with some of the big boats.


Monaco is built on a mountain, so we headed up the hill to see the casino. This is a park right across from the casino. TMT took this picture, and he’s pretty proud of it!

This is the Monte-Carlo casino. It has a very strict dress code, which we definitely did not meet, so this is all we saw of it!

Il Terrazzino – With this restaurant recommendation, the Amateur Gourmet completely redeemed himself. He rates this as the best meal he’s ever eaten, and while I might not go that far, it was excellent. This was really the main reason for our little day trip to Monaco. We got a fixed price menu with the pasta of the day. There was a slight misunderstanding here – when the Amateur Gourmet ate here, he got multiple items with each course. That’s what we thought we were getting. However, what we ordered ended up only including one item per course. So, I was a little disappointed, but the food was still great!

We started with an appetizer of bruschetta. This was probably the best bruschetta I’ve ever eaten. The tomatoes were wonderful – even better than Arkansas tomatoes – and the olive oil and bread were excellent too.

Our next course was this antipasti platter. It also was excellent; I would like to learn to make vegetables like they did at Il Terrazzino. I can’t even name most of what’s on this plate, but I know there was cabbage and carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and fresh ricotta cheese, along with a slice of frittata.

This penne with tomato cream sauce was also very good. Although it was pretty basic, I loved it because I could identify it! This is where the biggest disappointment (and most embarrassing moment of the meal) came into play. They serve you from a large family-style platter. As he was putting pasta on my plate, I told him to stop at the point you see above because “I wanted to save room for all of the other choices” I knew were coming. However, this ended up being it for the main course. I’m sure the waiter was thinking “What is this crazy American girl talking about?” We didn’t figure it out until they came to clear our plates and didn’t bring any more pasta choices!

To get over our disappointment about the lack of pasta choices, we ordered a cheese plate, including a blue cheese, a cheese called cavallo, and Parmesan. Our favorite was the cavallo, which is the one at the top of the plate.

Here we are sitting at our table at the restaurant. Isn’t it colorful?! After lunch, we headed back to Villefranche to collect our luggage and then go back to the train station to catch our train to Milan, via Nice.

Here is TMT on the train ride that ended up being the worst train ride on our entire trip! The Nice train station had no food, except for some suspicious-looking sandwiches. Due to the lack of refrigeration, I opted to skip the sandwich, thinking I’d get something on the train. When we got on the train, we were squished in – every seat was full. The electricity in our train car kept going out, so we rode for large portions of the trip with no lights and no air conditioning. Eventually, the train man came back through and told us that we needed to move to another train car. We were supposed to do this in the dark. Let’s just say that it was quite an ordeal to gather up our luggage from the rack in the middle of the car, and all of the stuff we’d scattered all over our seating area, and then move through several train cars in the dark! Also, the train somehow got delayed by over an hour. We never thought we’d be so glad to arrive in Milan for our five hours of sleep!

A Day at the Beach

We took this picture on our hotel balcony right after we arrived in Villefranche. Looking a little tired!

In Villefranche, we stayed at the Hotel Welcome. Although it wasn't fancy, it was the nicest hotel in Villefranche. It was clean and right on the waterfront, so it worked for us. Here is the view from our balcony.

We spent the day at a private beach, Plage Passable. In Villefranche, there is a public beach and then there is Plage Passable. Plage Passable is sort of a beach club; they have chairs and umbrellas you can rent for only $40 per person and a restaurant. It is located across the bay from Hotel Welcome, so they send a boat to pick you up at the hotel's dock. We got some great pictures during our boat rides to and from the beach.

Here is the view from our beach chairs. I definitely enjoyed the chairs and umbrella. I slept for pretty much the entire day, and I can't tell you how good it felt!

Around lunchtime, it started sprinkling, so we headed up to the restaurant for some pizza.

The first of many Caprese salads. This is one of my favorites, and I never thought I would get tired of it. However, it showed up on so many menus in Italy that I finally started skipping it.
Me with our Pizza Margharita.

We love Villefranche, and we would go back in a heartbeat!

For dinner, we decided to eat at Le Cosmo. We spent ten minutes walking the waterfront and checking out all of the menus posted in front of restaurants, and we definitely felt like we made a good choice.

To start, we ordered a marinated vegetable salad to split. This is not exactly what I was expecting, but doesn't it look incredible? I really want to figure out how to recreate this, because it might be the best vegetables I've ever eaten!

TMT's lasagna - he was so excited to find regular Italian food at last!

My cheese ravioli - I was also super excited to find regular Italian food.

Le Cosmo was fantastic. I would highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Villefranche.

Paris - Take Two

On our second day in Paris, we decided to take it a bit more slowly. We started with breakfast at Laduree on the Champs Elyees, where we had an assortment of pastries - plain croissants, filled croissants (chocolate and fruit), sugared brioche, and a cinnamon currant bun - butter and jam, and yummy coffee. Laduree is a very dignified patisserie, and I didn't think anyone there would appreciate me whipping out the camera to take pictures of my food, so you'll just have to use your imaginations to picture my lovely breakfast. I also bought a box of Parisian macarons to eat on our train ride later that day. The boxes at Laduree are so pretty that I saved it and brought it home with me. I'm trying to think of some way to use it in my house - maybe I'll frame it and hang it somewhere. I just love Parisian macarons - they are like two meringue cookies put together with filling in the middle. I bought chocolate and raspberry. The chocolate were definitely better!

After leaving Laduree, we walked down the Champs Elysees for a little while. It was relatively peaceful at that time of day, and I was able to get this picture of TMT with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. He was excited to have some evidence that we did more than eat in Paris.

After breakfast, we headed off to do some major shopping. I was dying to go to Longchamp. My mom and sister brought me back a bag from Longchamp when they went to Paris last summer, and I wanted to see about getting another bag in a larger size. I felt that my navigation skills, which had been severely challenged the day before, were vindicated because we found Longchamp on our first try. I did some shopping and had my first experience with VAT refund. This is a fantastic deal! I kept telling TMT what great deals I was getting because I would get a 20% refund on whatever I bought. The only catch was that I had to spend a certain amount of money, which was fairly substantial, in each store, which wasn't too hard for me! After Longchamp, we visited a string of stores recommended in my Chic Shopping Paris book. I don't know what the lady who wrote the book was smoking, but every store she included was ridiculously expensive. I was prepared to spend some money on this trip, in fact I only asked for money for my birthday so that I could shop in Europe, but this was just beyond what I had imagined. I had fun poking through a store that carries only antique silver and a store that sells vintage jewelry, but I could not justify purchases at these stores. I did make a return trip to a store, 78, that I had spotted the day before when we walked through the Ile St. Louis. I had purchased a dress and some gifts from 78, and I spotted a very cute and stylish leather jacket there. I decided to wait on purchasing it and return before we left Paris if I was still thinking about the jacket. Well, you know it - when our second day in Paris rolled around, I was still thinking about that jacket. I love it, and I have already gotten a ton of wear out of it! After this major purchase, I was ready for some lunch. I spotted a restaurant that the Amateur Goumet had recommended, and we decided to give him a chance to redeem himself after our fiasco at Chez Omar the night before.

This is Le Petit Plateau. It doens't look like much, but we got the best deal there! For 11 euros each, we got a lunch special of quiche, salad, cheese plate, and wine or Coke. Maybe I was just hungry, but I thought it was excellent. Here are some photos of our food.

Notice the bread basket on the table. We sat at a little sidewalk table, and while we were eating, this homeless lady just came right up to the table and took our bread. She just laughed and laughed as she was doing it, and we just let her have it. She left us a few pieces, but those of you who know TMT know that he did not touch any of the bread that she left!

While we were eating lunch, we saw a real-life fashion shoot. I, of course being a celeb junkie, just pulled out the camera and started taking pictures of the super-cute male model. I have no idea who he was, but the fact that he was participating in a photo shoot for what I imagine, based on the clothes, was a major fashion designer was enough for me. These pictures aren't great, but the photographer and stylists kept getting in the way!

TMT and I enjoying our lunch.

After lunch, we hit a few more stores. Sabre had lots of reasonably priced, cute dishes and silverware, but I didn't really need anything they had. We did go to the retail store for the oldest candle manufacturer in Europe. They had the most beautiful display of taper candles. I know that sounds weird, but I could have looked at all of colors for hours. Of course, I'm the kid who was thrilled to death with the box of 64 crayons! We brought back a fancy candle for Grandma.

That evening, we caught a train for Nice, on the French Riviera. We were actually staying in Villefranche Sur Mer, but the closest train went to Nice. On the train, we ate a picnic dinner of baguette sandwiches, chips, Cokes, and of course, our Laduree macarons. After riding backwards on this train trip, TMT decided that he wasn't such a fan of train travel!