Ile Sainte-Marguerite, France

As I mentioned earlier, we woke up early this morning and gathered up our swim gear, then headed to the pier to catch the ferry that would take us to St. Marguerite. The island is a little off the coast, and is a nice peaceful retreat from Cannes – no cars, no bikes, no houses or hotels, no overnight camping. Just a bunch of pine trees, walking trails and some rocky beaches. The island itself is about 3km long and less than 1km wide, to give an idea of the size. The 15-minute ferry ride leaves from the Cannes pier quite regularly and only cost us 7€ for the return trip. Once we got there, it felt like we were on Survivor, a little tropical oasis. We couldn’t have picked a better day to hit the island, the sun was shining and the skies were completely clear. We were ready to soak in the sun, after the last five days of go-go-go action.

We walked around the island for a bit, and then found a spot on some rocks to hang out. We did some swimming in the warm, rocky waters of the Mediterranean. There were also some French tourists in our vicinity that were pretty entertaining to watch. The three hours or so that we spent there seemed to fly by, but before we knew it we were back on the ferry to do some more exploring of Cannes.

Cannes, France

Seeing that our flight from Venice to London is roughly a week away, we made the decision to head to Rome next, and stopped by the train station when we were back in Cannes, to buy our tickets. The worst part of it was the departure time of 5:22am – wow! But it was worth it, getting to see Rome again, for the second time in six months was pretty exciting. On our walk back to the hostel, I stopped by a store to pick up a new suitcase. The wheels broke on the one I bought less than three weeks ago! Terrible!

Back at the hostel, we were told of a fireworks spectacle that was happening that night at the beach. Since we had to be up so early, and that we didn’t feel like spending a bunch of money for drinks in a club again, we were game. There was a big group of us from the hostel that walked down to the pier together to watch Switzerland dazzle us with their pyrotechnical talents. The show was AMAZING! By far the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen. It really put the Gzowski Park show to shame. Ha! The sky was lit up for over 40-minutes with images of hearts to four leaf clovers to planets. It really was incredible to see what they could show with fireworks.

Once the show ended, we walked to the beach-side casino and we each played some slot machines for a bit. We only spent 20€ each, and weren’t there long. I cashed out with 11,50€ left from my 20€ but Nick cashed out his original 20€ and another 8,50€. Not bad, that’s an extra drink in Rome! We walked back to the hotel, knowing we had five hours of possible sleep before the early wake up. Back at the hostel, each of us with a bed now, heard our Austrian roommates making quite a bit of noise around 2am. We ended up waking up and chatting with them for a while – always a strange feeling when you’re in the middle bunk and chatting with someone on a top bunk. Yes, the bunk beds were three stories. Ha! We spent most of the time talking about ‘polka’ music, but they were saying ‘porka’ – so it took us a while to understand what we were talking about. Nick passed out pretty quickly, as did Therese, so Birgit & I talked til about 3am, about everything from siblings to the price of internet and cell phone fees. The Austrian’s let me use their cell phone as an alarm clock, so that Nick & I would be able to get up and make the train on time – which was very helpful!