MONACO

April 14th—We traveled via train to Monaco today. The principality of Monaco consists of three distinct tourist areas: Monaco-Ville, Monte Carlo, and La Condamine. Monaco-Ville is located up on a hill referred to as “The Rock” by the locals. This is the oldest section and home to the Prince’s Palace. We visited this area first by making the walk up the hill. Our first stop was the Prince’s Palace. This is where Prince Albert lives, son of Prince Ranier and Princess Grace. Actress Grace Kelly first came to Monaco to star in the 1955 Hitchcock movie To Catch a Thief, in which she was filmed racing along the Corniches. She later married Prince Ranier. In 1982, Princess Grace tragically died in a car wreck on that same Corniche. Outside of the Palace are cannons and cannonballs overlooking the city below and a great view of the port and the Grand Prix bleachers being set up along the streets. The race takes place on May 21-24 this year. Just down from the Palace is the Cathedral of Monaco, where Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly were wed and later buried. As you walk through Monaco, there are many Princess Grace billboards (small) marking certain events that took place throughout her life. Abby was very interested in all of them because they had a “Princess” on them. Every time we saw one, she would immediately ask “what does that say?” She was also interested in the palace because a real Prince still lives there. She kept looking for him, although we never told her she would be looking for a 50 year old bald man! From Monaco-Ville, we decided to take a bus to Monte Carlo. On our way to the bus stop, we saw a small pair of sunglasses sitting on a wall. Abby was the first to point them out and wondered why someone would just leave their glasses sitting there. Well, Austin had received a pair of sunglasses from the Easter bunny and quickly lost them the next day at the beach. We had gone back to look for them, but were pretty sure that someone had picked them up. So we decided to pick these up and Austin immediately adopted them as his own. We laughed about the glasses all the way to Monte Carlo. The bus ride was about 15 minutes and very crowded! We walked up the stairs from the bus stop to the beautiful Monte Carlo casino. Mike and I had to take turns going into the casino since the kids weren’t allowed. We both just made it into the lobby area because the actual gambling area has an admission fee. So, basically you are already 10 Euros down before you even start gambling. While standing outside the casino, we saw lots of money with Rolls-Royces and stores like Prada & Cartier lining the streets. From the casino, we walked down the hill towards La Condamine, the port area of Monaco. At this point, it had a been a day of lots of walking and just snacking so we wanted to find a real meal for dinner. Unfortunately, most restaurants don’t start serving dinner until 7:00 and it was only 6:00. So, we decided to head back to Nice on the train. Once arriving back at Nice, we went to an area recommended in our guide book that has many cafes along the street. We started at one, but waited over 10 minutes and still had not even been waited on. So, we moved on to the next café, and were immediately greeted and given menus. The unfortunate thing is that it was all in French and our handy French dictionary didn’t have any of the words in it. After about 10 plus minutes there, the waitress comes to help us. We asked her if she can help us in English and responding to us in English, mind you, she tells us no. So we politely tell her that we are sorry, but we are going to have to leave. If it wasn’t almost 8:00 at night with tired kids this situation could have been manageable. Anyway, we decided to just head back to the apartment, but we ran across a restaurant on our way and decided to give it one more try. It was a great restaurant because in the end we got great service and food. We left this restaurant to walk to the bus station only to find out that the buses stop running around 8:00 p.m and it was after 9 at this point. With tired kids, there was no way to walk back. We knew there was a night bus, but were not familiar with them so our only option was to get ripped off by the taxi drivers. While the buses are super cheap, the taxis are a different story. Most of the taxis are Mercedes, so I guess they have to charge more to cover their cost. So we hoped in our Mercedes taxis and 15 Euros later, we had made the 2 mile journey back to the apartment. The best news of all is that we arrived back to the apartment safe and sound!