On our trip we stayed in a camp (CMEF) that was
designed for school groups like mine. Each morning we were served breakfast,
then had French lessons for about 3 hours. Afterwards, we would have lunch and then
a short trip to a nearby city. Then we either ate dinner in the city or at the
CMEF and there would be a night activity like a party or karaoke. I can’t
really remember on which day we went where, and excluding the city trips, most
of the days were similar, so I’ll just arrange it by cities.
This was the outdoor ampi-theater at CMEF. It was designed by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbotde Villeneuve, who was the original author of beauty and the beast. CMEF also had a lot of sports facilities like basketball and volleyball courts and balls whenever we wanted to use them, so there was a lot to do when we had free time.
On the first day since we didn't have a set schedule, we walked around the small town we were staying in, and here was one of the places we walked down to.
Cap D’Ail
This was a
harbor that was about a 20-minute walk from CMEF. We arrived around midday from
Munich on our first day, so we walked down and had lunch at an outdoor
restaurant right on the harbor. After eating my friends and I went swimming.
The water was freezing at first, but after swimming around a bit, it was really
nice. After swimming we dried off and walked back up to CMEF.
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| This is where we had lunch, with the beach and harbour right in front of it. |
Monaco
Since CMEF
is really close to Monaco, we just walked there, and passed Cap D’Ail on the
way. This walk was about 45 minutes. It was really pretty and we went to the
palace, which was on a huge hill, which sucked to walk up. After the tour we
walked to the cathedral, and then we were given free time. Since our tickets
from the palace tour enabled us to go to the aquarium, my friends and I mostly
just stayed there.
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| This was the cathedral in Monaco that we went to. It was really pretty inside, however really dark even though it looks like there's a lot of windows. |
Nice
Nice is a huge city, so as soon
as we got there, our group set a meeting point and we were allowed to walk
around for 3 hours. Our French teacher from CMEF knew about the trips, so we
were given a list of things to take photos of, so it was fun to do the
scavenger hunt during the day. The beach was beautiful, but it was so windy and
cold, so my friends and I decided not to go swimming and instead explore the
town a bit more.
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| This was the view from "the castle" in nice, which is basically just a giant hill with a lot of stairs. It's still called the castle because there actually originally was a castle there, however most of it is ruins now and blocked off. You can tell the french are really creative with their names. But the view made the stairs worth it. (kind of) |
Grasse
Grasse is
actually a really cool town, even though it isn’t that well known outside of
France. In class before the trip, we watched the movie Perfume in French, and
read a couple passages from the book. In the story, the main character goes to
Grasse to learn more about capturing scents and transferring them to perfumes.
When we went to Grasse we went on a Perfume tour, where we learned about the
different places the character went in the book. It was also cool because
Grasse is actually a perfume town, and it was the anniversary of the rose, so
all over the town, rose water would be periodically sprayed over the streets.
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| For the rose celebration, there were rose decorations everywhere, like this fountain, which was covered in beautiful roses. They were all real too! |
