Trapped on the rainy riviera...

Our sojourn on the French Riviera got off to a rocky start. The stormy weather from our last night in Cinque Terre stalked us all the way to Juan Les Pins (next to Nice and Antibes on the South Coast of France) although to be fair, it was pretty nice weather when we arrived and we immediately started with the 'I wanna live heres'. We headed off to our tre-chic hotel (yes hotel, high rollers!) - think 70's frenchy french hotel room where the lady spoke not a word of the English and the room was decorated in 18 different shades of pink and mauve - and dumped our gears. We went for a gander to check out the haps in Juan Les Pins, chose an outdoor kind of restaurant but embarrassingly settled on BURGERS for dinner ... but MY GOD what a burger. We had heard the French love meat and we love that they love meat because we were in enormous frenchy burger heaven....
So day one went well but on day two we woke up to rain - and not just pitter patters but torrential, outrageous, gushing rain! We felt so ripped off and mad at life but attempted to go out for another gander - we had to buy umbrellas but were soaked regardless so headed back to the room. It didn't take long before we had full blown cabin fever and there was only so much emailing/skyping etc we could do so we came up with ways to entertain ourselves. Entertainment game #1: rig up a camera using sellotape and some kind of clothes rack/rail and take high five shots of ourselves jumping on the bed. Testing....

Looking good. Is the camera on?....

Check! HIGH FIVE EXTREMO!

After that we were buggered so thought we had better risk death and head back out into the rain with our new sky blue and hot leopard pink brollys to get some supplies. Entertainment game #2: The street nearest our hotel was conveniently packed with delis, patisseries and meat shops (Megan's dream career - owning a meat shop) so laden with three days worth of supplies we headed back and ate it all in about five minutes.

Given that we had to go back to the patisserie every day that we were in Juan Les Pins I think it's fair to say Megan has a crush on macaroons (Megans note: HUGE bordering on obsession). That night we headed out for cocktails and dinner. We were ranted at by a crazy french lady with scary teeth and gumboots, had ANOTHER burger (oopsies) and our cocktails had uber decorations so we were happy...

... and finished it all off with crepes and gelato. mmmmm

We crawled home, took photos of how enormous our guts were (not kidding - haha) and passed out dreaming of a sunny tomorrow and BAM it was rainy again (so day trip to Nice) but the day after that was somewhat of a stunner. We hit the beach and paid mega bucks for a sun lounger but we were scared the water was poo water (because of all the super yacths moored out in the bay and it smealt like farts) so we never actually got in.

(Megans note again: notice Belz lost an arm in war/jumping high five shots)

After a day in the sun we thought we would head to Antibes to check out the village (filled with Brits, Aussies and NZers who work on the yachts) and get a feed and drinkies. We started out so fancy free and full of hope...

(Megans final note: this is ACTUALLY how we made our way to the bar)

But then drinkies were accomplished and food.... not so much :). We hit an Irish pub full of the previously mentioned non-french folk and and after many a vino the idea of dinner was a distant one. We made friends with some French dudes celebrating their friends b'day - hence the Moet sipping (read: drinking from the bottle) in the photos below. Randoms walk through the bars selling anything from watches and hats to roses so we scored some sweet flora as well.

After no food, a night on the vino vino and an early start to catch a ten hour train ride to Barcelona life was NOT peachy. Luckily we had the foresight to prepare for such an event and consumed another 18kg of pastries and cheese (we had bought the day before) on the train...mmmmm frenchy fatties.