A quick pit stop and then onto San Sebastian, Spain!

After our time in Villefranche was up, we started looping back around the country to our final destination - San Sebastian, Spain. 

However it's like an 8 hour drive so we decided to split it up!

We stopped for lunch in Aix-en-Provence (we ate lunch at the most delicious burger place! I think Europe has just recently discovered the magic of hamburgers because almost every single city we went to had a gourmet burger restaurant that was like the highest rated restaurant in the city! But anyways...)

we might have also accidentally stolen the shop owners keys.... but we have full intentions to mail them back to them! #JPsfault

Then that night we pulled into Carcassonne and stayed at the cutest bed and breakfast in the world! It was run by a husband and wife who had retired from Paris where he used to be a pastry chef! 

Needless to say, it was an amazing little place and there was also a real life castle in the town so that was pretty incredible to explore too!

(except getting to the correct town with our bed and breakfast was not the easiest thing we've ever done... turns out there are lots of tiny french towns and google maps likes to think that walking paths are actual roads so... we got into a tight situation more than once, literally haha) 

After a fantastic nights sleep we got up and continued to San Sebastian!

Which is seriously the hidden gem of Europe. You should probably google pictures of it right now because my pictures are not going to do it justice. 

It's like Newport beach meets Barcelona meets Paris. And then cooler than that. 

There are white sandy beaches, waves that you can surf, cobble stone streets with hundred year old buildings, it's considered to have the best food in Europe and it's nestled between 2 mountains so the views are like whoa!

Seriously we were blown away with how incredible of a place it was and are already planning how we're going to get back there!

Carcassonnne:

^^^ JP just going in for a hug and kiss goodbye hahah

^^^ the cutest B&B!

San Sebastian!

^^^ JP was sooo happy about this meal haha you won't meet anyone who likes meat more than him!

^^^ I wish this did the view justice! 

But this brings us to the end of our European road trip! It was honestly the trip of a lifetime and we feel super lucky that we were able to go and that our BFF's were able to go with us! 

Gorges du Verdon aka Grand Canyon of France!

(There's absolutely no way the pictures can do it justice, but I'll try anyway!)

About halfway through our trip we spent a day at Gorges du Verdon, an absolutely gorgeous river canyon who's water is bright turquoise due to the limestone that the canyon walls are made of. 

You can rent boats, go hiking, drive to lookout points, and rock climb all through the canyon and it is awesome. 

We were pretty lucky that we made it to the canyon and ended up having such a great time given the fact that:

>>  driving through Nice is a lot harder than we realized, 

>> there *might* have been spiders falling from the ceiling while we ate lunch in smallest town at the top of a mountain, 

>> and lets just say winding mountain roads aren't great if you're prone to car sickness (like 2/4 of us are...)

So I mean, if we can have a fantastic day even despite all that, you know this place must be pretty magical ;)

And then we stumbled upon the Grand Prix in Monaco...

At this point in the trip we were all looking at each other like "What's the catch?!"

We'd had perfect weather, seen the Cannes film festival accidentally, and now we were in Monaco for the Grand Prix (unplanned!).

Talk about some amazing luck!

Monaco is the neatest country. Oh my goodness. 

(also I'll just embarrass myself here and throw out there that I definitely thought Monaco was a city in France before this trip... Turns out Monte Carlo is the city and Monaco is the country soo... I'm not really earning any geography points at this point in my life haha)

It's nestled between 2 mountains and is packed full of million/billionaires so everywhere you look there are Ferrari's and Maserati's and Rolls Royces (at one point JP turned to us and said "I think I've seen 10 Rolls Royces in my life and 9 of them were tonight." haha!)

Due to some bad-turned-out-to-be-good luck (we weren't planning on going to Monaco until the day of the race but jumped on the wrong train coming home from Cannes and whizzed right past our train station stop in Villefranche and ended up in Monaco at 10:30 PM the night before the race haha) we found ourselves (with about half of Europe) on the streets on Monaco and the entire city had become a massive party. 

We got to walk on the race track, see row upon row of super yachts bigger than my house and private parties and body guards everywhere with DJ's playing music and dance parties galore. 

It was nuts! I just kept thinking "is this how people actually live?!"

It was so entertaining and so much fun to be a part of. We ended up hanging out in Monaco until about midnight when we finally caught the train back to Villefranche and collapsed into our beds. 

The next morning was the actual Grand Prix race so we jumped on the train again (it was so easy - Monaco was a 10 minute train ride away from Villefranche!) and got to hear the race and see a little bit of it by peering through cracks and over bushes (tickets were 400 euros each and the city officials had put up barricades around places where you could catch a glimpse of the race for free so we had to get creative!)

The atmosphere was incredible and we settled ourselves down at this fantastic french bistro that had a widescreen TV so we would eat and watch the race while still hearing the cars zoom past and bystanders cheering in real life!

Villefranche-sur-Mer

Let me tell you a little bit about the little town we made our home base (that I mentioned in my last post).

Villefranche-sur-Mer

aka

"French City by the Sea"

(the literal translation and also the perfect description)

It is DARLING. You drive through Nice (people seem to really like Nice and we all agreed it was a bit overrated and also kind of old and dirty...) and then right on the other side in the next little harbor/cove is the beautiful city of Villefranche!

AH everyone should go there because it's amazing. Cobblestone streets, beautiful homes, flowers everywhere, and the most gorgeous harbor!

We rented an airbnb apartment  with a balcony that overlooks the harbor, went on beautiful walks, ate at the cutest little restaurants, and basically couldn't believe this was reality.

I could probably live there except that everything closes at like 7 PM and the city is on a hill so you get a massive workout every time you go out (actually that'd probably be a good thing...)

Cannes Film Festival

So we may or may not have stumbled onto the Cannes Film Festival...

HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN?!

Well I'll tell you: we left Cassis 

(but not until we'd become BFF's with these fabulous restaurant owners who make the world's best crepes, and also stayed in what we thought was a cute little french cottage -- turns out old French cottages are full of surprises like electricity not working and spiders in the shower, so it was equal parts hilarious and horrifying)

and travelled the next French town that was to be our home base for the next 4 nights -- Villefranche-sur-mer, which is possibly (99% certain) my absolute favorite place in the whole world. It's gorgeous and quaint and so so french - AH I was dying. 

We chose to stay there because we had heard it was amazing (it is) and also because it was right in the middle of a whole bunch of places we wanted to visit, including Cannes!

And we happened to be there during the last weekend of the film festival, which pretty much made my life. 

It was so much fun, and so different from the Sundance film festival (for example, women were required to wear heels on the red carpet and even the paparazzi had to be in tuxedo's... it was a classy affair to say the least). 

We walked around the city and shopped and soaked in the atmosphere and then right as we were heading back to the train station WHAM! We ran right into Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard on the red carpet! They're both in Macbeth and it was premiering. It was weirdly the most perfect timing ever (also Eric -- as in Eric&Kimmi, our BFF's that we were travelling with -- is a celebrity magnet, seriously it's uncanny how many celebs he has randomly run into).

So that was pretty much the best ending we could have imagined for our day in Cannes :)

 ^^^ Kimmi & Eric!

^^^ Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard

Next Stop: Cassis by the Sea

When planning our trip, we nailed down like 60% of it, then left the rest to be flexible so we could drive as much as we wanted, stop when we felt like it, and make decisions on the fly. 

Barcelona was amazing, but since it was a bit chilly and a little rainy when we were there, after our 3 days there were up we decided to chase the sun and drove to Cassis in the south of France. 
It's the most darling little seaside town, complete with a harbor, boardwalk, hidden beaches, and massive sheer cliffs. 

We spent one day wandering its streets and popping in and out of the little shops along the water, then the next day we embarked on a "little hike" to the aforementioned hidden beaches. 

Turns out we didn't exactly know what we were getting ourselves into haha --  it was a massive 2+ hour hike in (it didn't help that we accidentally took a wrong turn and took the most scenic -- longest -- route either haha) and we were definitely in sandals when everyone else was in hiking boots and even had those fancy hiking sticks. 

But honestly, the views we got, whoa. 
We were hiking along the ridge of a sheer cliff that dropped hundreds of feet into the turquoise blue water of the Mediterranean sea. It was almost unbelievable. The pictures don't do it justice but we tried to capture it anyways haha. 

Oh and then I got shhh'd on the hidden beach by a French woman, because apparently [imagine your best french accent] 
"We are at a beach! Not a party!" 
(my voice carries! It's not entirely my fault)