France rocks!
When you get frisked by security in German airports, you stay frisked …
I flew through Munich to Nice (Southern France), then onto the Mercure Country Club.. its a very cool place in the hills near Nice, Cannes and Antibes. I was there for a training course, but it felt more like a holiday!
When I got there I realised I had forgotten to charge my camera battery, and hadn’t brought the charger. I think the photos weren’t meant to be. More on this later.
Monday started at a lazy 1:30 pm where we met everyone, and had some presentations. Then we all boarded a bus to go to a seafood restaurant on the beach in Antibes.. this was the first of what was many many seafood dinners! Wasn’t long before we were craving red meat! One of our crew from work, a crazy russion guy, drank way too much and started acting quite the public nuisance. He didn’t show up at all Tuesday. Very poor form. Wednesday evening, a few of us went too Cannes, where we wandered down the beach, had dinner somewhere, then found a pub to watch the footy (soccer).
Friday it was time to leave Sophia Antipolis and head to Nice town, where I had booked a hostel. I checked into a 6-bedder there, but nobody was in the dorm. So I went down for a swim at the beach, and walked around the town looking to buy a battery or a charger. In the end I found a place to charge my battery for me. Excellent! I went back to the dorm, and found a couple of kiwi lads in there. We promptly went down the shop to get some drinks to play ‘drink poker’ in the common area. There I met another aussie guy from Melbourne who was in our room, and a few others from around Europe. After heaps of drinks we all went out and hit the town.
Saturday, waking up with a slight hangover (more tired really), me and Dave (the aussie from melb) decided to go to Monaco. We went there, and had a pretty cool day! We walked heaps of the famous F1 Grand Prix track, and through the tunnel. We went swimming out and took water photos of us with the city / mountains in the background. Some ladies thought we were crazy taking our camera in the water. I guess they eventually figured it was water proof and we weren’t that stupid!
Saturday night was back to the hostel, and more drinks with the same crew and some others that had joined. Then we all headed down the beach, where there was a big party but you had to be wearing all-white to get in. That was the last known whereabouts of my brand new $500 camera with all the awesome Monaco photos on it 
Was it lost, or was it stolen, I guess we’ll never know. A facebook group, ‘I lost my camera with all my photos whilst traveling‘ has since popped up in support of people like me. You can find it here. Cheers Skippy!
Sunday I spent the day down the beach, in the police station attempting to file a police report, walking around Nice old town and up the cliff to get an awesome view of the city. It would have made a great shot
Then I hit the airport to head home. Once there, I found that our companies travel agent had cancelled my flight. I had earlier called him to ask if I could change to an earlier flight and was first told yes, then told no. Don’t remember asking him to cancel my flight and leave me stranded? So with no chance of getting on the plane ( the previous flight had been canceled so the waiting list was 50 person long ), i attempted to book another flight which I ended up getting on British Airways. Lucky, as I had to be back to London by the morning to get my flight to Leeds. Which I actually missed But thats another story and you’re probably bored by now.
I guess I’ll have to go back to France and get some more photos!