A Whole Country In One Day

It’s a Tuesday, it’s not a public holiday, it’s not a Sunday, so we should be able to get a bus and yes, we had a choice of two arriving at the same time.  We had to wait a while at the train station as all the trains were running late; do trains ever run on time, anywhere in the world?  Around 9:15am we finally boarded a train heading to Ventimiglia in Italy, with return tickets in hand to get off at Monaco.  The journey took us past some impressive hill-top and cliff-top villages, we chugged along the edge of the beaches, through the centre of Nice and then right along the edge of the coast.  There were lots of tunnels and the views (when we weren’t in a tunnel) out to sea were lovely.  The number of boats and yachts and cruisers dotted along this coastline is quite phenomenal, plus the number of desirably beautiful villas and swimming pools is wildly ostentatious.  The trip from Antibes to Monaco took just under an hour and it has to be one of the nicest train routes in Europe.  It’s a shame Eileen missed it.

We meandered down through the Allées des Boulingrins (bowling greens) and then boarded Le Grand Tour bus; €16 for a day of hopping on and off at any of eleven stops around Monaco.  One of the first sections of the route was actually on the Monaco Grand Prix track, which gave us impressive views of the huge grandstands along the waterfront.

 

 

We made our first hop-off at the Place de Palais; the royal family resides in the 13^th C Palace built here on the top of the rock.  The story goes that Francesco Grimaldi, aka ‘Frank The Rogue’, was expelled from Genoa and he and some friends disguised themselves as monks and seized the fortified town, starting the whole Grimaldi / Monaco connection in 1297

 

 

After a bit of a roam around the old town of Monaco Ville, we stepped in to the 19^th C cathedral where Prince Rainier III and his princess, Grace Kelly are entombed; unsurprisingly there were quite a few flowers on her tomb.  We found a café for hot chocolates and then strode back to the square to watch the midday ‘changing of the guard’ outside the palace.  We then went back to the same café for an early lunch, because it had seats in the sunshine.

 

 

 

Suitably stoked we hopped back on the bus and travelled round to Fontvielle, an area of reclaimed land.  We strolled over to the Princess Grace Rose Garden, we could smell the roses as we approached, but the gate was closed and won’t be opening again until renovations are completed in 2014.  Ah well, the area around it was pretty and there were a number of very interesting sculptures to shuffle past; one of a rather angry man trying to get himself out of a rock was by a Mr Blake!  We thought we saw a lovely sculpture in the middle of a pond, but when it moved we realised that they were real turtles sleeping in the sun.

 

 

From there we walked down to the heliport; there’s no room for an airport in Monaco as it’s only 3kms long by 500 metres wide (473 acres) and no flat land.  We wandered over to the impressive Louis II stadium and then hopped back on the bus to enjoy a bit of a ride around the other end of the country.  The bus wound its way around the Automobile Museum, down to Port Hercule, around La Condomine, through the tunnel under the casino, past the Grimaldi Forum, past the Plages du Larvotto and on to the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, where it turned around as it had reached the French border.  When we got back to the casino we hopped off the bus and Rodney wanted to go inside Le Casino because as a 15 year-old he had been barred from entering and had to wait outside for his parents.  So we walked past, we think, Red Foo, a rap singer (son of Motown’s Berry Gordy) and Victoria Azarenko, the tennis player and we checked in our rucksack.  We had a little peek inside, but as neither of us are gamblers and the weather was so beautiful, we checked out the rucksack and walked back outside.

 

 

 

We wandered around the casino gardens and around the terraces to ‘the World’s most famous bend’, well that’s what the poster said.  The Fairmont Bend is part of the Grand Prix circuit and being a bit out of touch with the news we hadn’t realised until earlier in the day that it was going to be on this weekend.  In a way it made parts of Monaco quite interesting, but it also made walking about very tricky in places.  All the grand-stands were set up and there were barriers, wire fencing and piles of rubber tyres everywhere.

 

 

Hopping back on the bus and hopping off again at the top of Rue Grimaldi, we plodded down to Port Hercule and then roamed part of the Grand Prix track with ice creams in hand.  We passed yet more gleaming yachts lined up for a frontline view of the race on Sunday.  Along the main straight there were massive trucks for each of the teams (interestingly all with British number plates and all were right-hand drive) which were unloading the F1 cars and all the assorted paraphernalia that goes with them.  Then we found ourselves on the next level where the pits are.  Most of the cars were under cover and we never spotted any ‘star’ drivers, just lots of engineers and mechanics looking busy.  Interesting points to us were that the race is run through the tunnel and various sections of the city, in the opposite direction from normal traffic flow and probably, also at far greater speeds than our bus could travel.  And, the drivers have to make more than 4,500 gear changes during the Grand Prix race; that makes my hand ache just thinking about it !!!  With the only tickets still available costing €500 each and you have to buy your own ear plugs, we don’t think we’ll be going back there on Sunday.

 

 

 

Back on the bus (we were getting real value for money on this one) we travelled back up to the Place du Palais to take in the fabulous view over most of Monaco, just one more time.  Suddenly realising that the very last bus was about to go past us around about……now, we dashed back to the bus stop and hopped on the last one, not knowing where it would terminate along the route.  Back past stops eight, nine, ten and eleven, we should have got off at stop one, but continued on to stop two hoping it would go as far as stop five (closest to the train station).  We panicked at two, not wanting to end up out near the French border, so we jumped off and wove our way back up hill through the casino gardens and along the Princess Charlotte Boulevard to wait for another train that was…… running late.

 

 

The platform was packed, but we managed to get seats together on the ocean side of the train and then enjoyed the journey back even more than the one going.  Back in Antibes we ran to the bus stop as the bus went past us, but the driver kindly waited for us and we finally strolled back through the campsite gates on the dot of 8pm.  A hot shower and a quick meal were all we needed after a very long, but really enjoyable day in Monaco.