If you’re in a foreign country, especially if there is a beach and stunning view involved, you just have to get up at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise. Or you can stay out all night until the sun rises, but I learned the night before traveling to Menton that I’m the kind of girl that needs her sleep.
Our first two nights in Menton were pretty wild. We actually spent the first night at a bar/club in Monaco not Menton. The trip can be made pretty quickly by bus or train. The “Mentonese” students had actually homework to do (poor kids) so us Parisians (we wish we really were) that were visiting headed over to Monaco to experience the fun nightlife. I hear Monaco does it pretty crazy but given we are poor college kids we picked a bar without a cover charge. STILL.. everyone looked great, the bar was super nice and the drinks were ridiculously expensive. There were even strippers.. mhmm “dancers” that came out in various “outfits” and danced on the bar. We are so mature we took pictures from afar that looked like our hands were on their butts haha. It was Renata’s 22nd birthday at midnight and we celebrated it with a nice little bang!
The next night was round two of the birthday festivities.. but this time the beach was involved! Sciences Po used our trip money to rent out a bar on the beach. Great use of money if you ask me! We had the entire thing to ourselves and best part? It was an OPEN BAR! Warning: do not invite Americans to an open bar. Oh and more importantly, do not tell us you are running out of alcohol at an open bar. We will flock around the bartender and grab what we can get while the drinks are still flowing. Well us silly girls didn’t realize they had more alcohol coming (silly us). As we crammed up against the bars the Frenchies asked us what we were doing, had we even left the bar to socialize once? Well to answer your questions, we were doing tequila shots of course, and nope we had not left the bar once. They were intrigued so we gave them a nice little lesson on shots. It was legend.. wait for it, wait for it…. DARY! They love “How I Met Your Mother.”
So two rough nights and a few bruises later we decided to take it easy on our third night. Everyone brought food and drinks to the dorms where we had a big potluck dinner. Afterwards we frolicked between the dorm and the beach across the street and explained to the French-speakers what the song “I Just Had Sex” is really saying… haha we couldn’t figure out the French word for “parody.” We headed back for bed around 1 a.m. (yeah, that was early) so we could wake up and watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean.
We woke up at 6 (yes, we did it) and wandered to the village cemetery which is situated high atop the main hill. I have to say the sunrise was a bit underwhelming (it was cloudy from the previous days rain and the sun was more behind the mountain than over the sea) but beautiful none the less. It was so worth it and as soon as it was done we wandered home to crawl right back into bed.
Bonne journee! xoxo.
-T