France

The Ultimate Guide For Exploring Nice

Author ByRyan Lee

Ah… Nice!  The most central location for the French Riviera.  Nice is probably the best place to serve as your base when visiting French Riviera.  In fact, it was where we stayed most days when we were visiting Monaco, Eze, Menton, Cannes, and almost went to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferret if it weren’t time constraints.

Today, I will write a blog about the two hotels we stayed at, and the random things we did around Nice.  If you want to find more information about where to eat in Nice, you should check out my Bakeries to Fine Dining Restaurants in Nice blog post as I cover a few bakeries, and from a simple café to a one star Michelin fancy restaurant.

For everything about French Riviera, here are the couple of blog posts you should read about as well after this – my first time at Cote D’Azur, one day itinerary at Menton and Monaco, one day itinerary for Èze and Cannes, visiting a vineyard at Chateau de Cremat, seeing lesser known touristy spots like Saint Maxime, Verdon Gorge, Plateau de Valensole, and Gréoux-les-bains, and a weekend at Saint Tropez.

Let’s start.

Continue reading The Ultimate Guide For Exploring Nice

France

The Fantastic Bakeries to the Fine Dining Restaurants in Nice, France

Author ByRyan Lee

Since there is so much stuff I want to write about for Nice, I’m going to be splitting the Nice blog posts into two parts – basically one for the places I ate, which will be this blog post, and everything else, including the hotels, in the next post.  We ate a diverse range of different restaurants, from bakeries and pastries, to taverns, to one star Michelin starred restaurants.

Here are all the blog posts I’ve written so far about the French Riviera:

My first time at Cote D’azur

A One Day Itinerary to Menton and Monaco

One Day Itinerary for Èze and Cannes

Chateau de Cremat – the Bellet wine vineyard near Nice

Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge, and Gréoux-les-bains

What We Recommend for you to do in Saint Tropez

The Ultimate Guide For Exploring Nice

Continue reading The Fantastic Bakeries to the Fine Dining Restaurants in Nice, France

France

What We Did That We Recommend For You To Do in Saint Tropez

Author ByRyan Lee

So!  You decided to read about this Saint Tropez blog to get the best tips to meet a celebrity here?  Or better yet, which places are the best to eat at and to party?  Well, while we did not spot any celebrities for our 1.5 days at Saint Tropez this time, I did spot Arnold Schwarzenegger last time which you can read about in my Cote D’azur blog post I wrote about six years ago.  You can read about my past experience in Saint Tropez last time around there as well.

This time, we also managed to go to many awesome places to eat and party, despite our short time in Saint Tropez.  I’ll also be talking about prices, where we stayed, getting around, getting to Saint Tropez and more.

You can read about other parts of the French Riviera I’ve been to, such as Eze and Cannes, Menton and Monaco, Chateau de Cremat for the Bellet vineyards, and less touristy regions of Cote D’azur such as Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-bains.  You can see the places I ate in Nice and also the places I walked around and stayed at in Nice as well.  Wanna check out my travel video shorts?  Check out our Youtube.

Let’s begin by sharing a story where we almost couldn’t rent a car to go to Saint Tropez. Continue reading What We Did That We Recommend For You To Do in Saint Tropez

France

Hidden Gems of the French Riviera – Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains

Author ByRyan Lee

When you search French Riviera, you will often see the search results filled with Nice, Eze, Monaco, Cannes, Antibes, and Saint Tropez.  Actually, why bother searching when I could tell you about my first time going to Cote D’Azur?  Or I wrote again in my blog (2nd time going) about going to Eze and Cannes and Menton and Monaco. So you can check all of them out.  You can see my video clips at https://www.youtube.com/@travelwithabutterfly.  Or if you’re like me, a tourist who wants to visit the off beaten paths and go to less touristy places, you can check out Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains.  It’s so less touristy that most of the people in the region, including the staff in the hotel, that they actually don’t speak English at all.  You can also read about Saint Tropez or places to eat in Nice or things to do in Nice.

We stopped by Sainte Maxime from Saint Tropez because we had to drop off our friend.  He had to go back to Nice to catch his flight the next day.  At first, he didn’t really want to go to Saint Tropez because of the inconvenience of going to St. Tropez and back to Nice and worried he might miss his flight.  But since we were driving to Plateau de Valensole for the lavender fields, we would pass by Sainte Maxime there, which would be easier for him to catch an Uber, take it to Saint-Raphaël, and take a train back to Nice in the evening.  I think the uber from Saint Maxime to Saint-Raphaël costed about €50. Had he taken from Saint Tropez directly to Nice, it would probably costed him €300!!

Continue reading Hidden Gems of the French Riviera – Sainte Maxime, Plateau de Valensole, Verdon Gorge and Gréoux-les-Bains

France

One Day Itinerary for Èze AND Cannes

Author ByRyan Lee

This is my second time going to Èze and Cannes.  To read about my first time experience, you can read about my Cote D’azur blog, the time where I get to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in person as well.  If you want to read about my recent blog post about one day itinerary for Menton and Monaco, click here.  For raw video clips, go to youtube.com/@travelwithabutterfly.

In my opinion, both places don’t actually have much to see as a tourist.  When you visit Eze, you’re mainly going to see the botanical garden.  When you go to Cannes, it’s mainly just shopping, clubbing, and good dining, but not many tourist attractions per se.

 

Èze

Originally, Eze wasn’t part of my itinerary in this trip, and for good reason.  I felt that going to Eze, there wasn’t much to do, as I mentioned, but during an Uber ride from Cremat Castle back to Nice, the uber driver we had suggested as a first time tourist that Eze was beautiful and we should definitely visit, so fine I’ll go again to Eze. Continue reading One Day Itinerary for Èze AND Cannes

France

A One Day Itinerary to Menton AND Monaco

Author ByRyan Lee

This is my first time going to Menton, but my second time going to Monaco (and the rest of my south of France trip).  If you want to read about my experience the first time, you can read about my Cote D’azur blog which I actually saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in person.  For raw video clips on this trip, visit my Youtube shorts.

Menton is often treated as a “second priority” when it comes to the south of France.  When you research about places to go in the French Riviera, it’s always Nice, Saint Tropez, Cannes, Eze, Antibes, and Monaco.  But to be quite honest, despite my limited time in Menton, I actually thoroughly enjoyed my time there and I definitely don’t think Menton should be disregarded, and perhaps should take higher precedence than other places in the French Riviera.

I actually had made reservations for a three star Michelin restaurant called Mirazur, as recommended by Alexander The Guest in his youtube video.  The reservation wasn’t very difficult, as I just went online to make the reservation for lunch.  The only problem was, I decided to cancel it, not because of the price, but because of realising how long the meal would take.  At best, it would probably take at least 2.5 hours, but it could potentially go up to four hours, and given the limited amount of time we had at Menton before we had to reunite with our friends in Monaco, we decided to spend our time elsewhere touring around Menton.  But I’m putting it out there in case you have a whole day and do plan to dine at a fantastic restaurant with magnificent views; you can let me know how it goes! Continue reading A One Day Itinerary to Menton AND Monaco

Denmark

Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part Two)

Author ByRyan Lee

This is a continuation of my 4 days Copenhagen trip, featuring Days Three and Four.  If you haven’t done so already, you can read about Part one for Days one and two right here.  Some of my thoughts and opinions on Copenhagen were expressed in the previous post, so I highly encourage you to read that post before reading this.  Moving on directly – and again I will post extra photos at the bottom to make the flow of the blog post feel a bit better rather than bombard with loads of photos.  For my Youtube shorts for Copenhagen, click here for shorts.

 

Day Three

Our first stop was checking out this bakery place called Hart Bageri (website), which was about a 10 min walk from our Coco Hotel.

Hart Bageri

Hart BageriYou can say that my friend really loves pastries, but so do I (mainly in Copenhagen though). Continue reading Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part Two)

Denmark

Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part One)

Author ByRyan Lee

I came to Copenhagen to explore a new city / country prior to going to Tomorrowland (click here for my tips on surviving Tomorrowland).  As the first Nordic country I’ve ever been to, overall I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.  Everything was simple, minimal, walkable / bikeable, clean, organized, and civilized.

I came here without any expectations except for the fact that food was supposed to be expensive in these Nordic places.  But to my surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.  Plus, I only knew about Noma, the holy grail of three star Michelin restaurants.  But little did I know that there were a lot of fine dining restaurants and aspiring Michelin restaurants in this city.  My friend even commented that a lot of the techniques used in Michelin restaurants around the world were first adopted here in Copenhagen.  The reason for that was because of its relaxed culture, allowing chefs to take on risks and experiment; compared with many other places in the world, chefs would be scolded for making mistakes.

Adding on to that, from stories I hear from other people, Denmark does have a culture of leniency and relaxation and a stronger emphasis on work life balance.  For example, if you’re in United States or Asia, you’re expected to go to school and go directly to university then start working.  In Denmark, it’s expected of you to take a gap year before, during or after college so you can take time off and do what you want.  I even had a friend’s family in law where one of their daughters in Denmark took a total of three gap years, so by the time she was in the workforce she was 25 years old or something like that.  What I’m trying to say is that Denmark has a very relaxed culture, which encourages people to find what they like, discover about themselves, and allows them to experiment and take risks more. Continue reading Four Days Itinerary in Copenhagen, Denmark (Part One)

Hong Kong

Tour Around the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir

Author ByRyan Lee

This is going to be a very short blog post.  But I just wanted to write this quickly because a couple of weeks ago, I went to the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir tour in Hong Kong, and the tour exceeded my expectations!

Despite the images of the service reservoir and how it looks like as if you’ve traveled back to Europe, what was the most fascinating of this place wasn’t the remnants of the reservoir, but actually the presentation on the history of Hong Kong’s water situation and why the reservoir was built, as well as a guided tour talking about why the service reservoir was designed the way it was.

You’ll get to learn about the history of why the service reservoir was built, how some districts that we can stand on Hong Kong were actually the sea, problems when distributing water before, water shortage problems in Hong Kong, how Hong Kong people behaved back in the days to manage the water supply, and so many more interesting tidbits of information. Continue reading Tour Around the Ex-Sham Shui Po Service Reservoir