The Ham Nomads

19 Mar 2015. <MC> Monte Carlo; <FR> Villefranche-sur-Mer, Alpes Maritimes —

Today, Monaco. We walked down to the station, bought our tickets just in time to board the train for Monaco. About 15 minutes later, there we were in the magnificent old station of Monaco Monte-Carlo. We found our way out, and started our day in Starbucks — a caffeine fix is always in order! Walked around to Place d'Armes, to find that the market was in full session — it seems to be a regular morning market. Then we wandered down to the Port to look at all the money-eaters moored in the harbour. Wow! As we found out later, talking to a Brit football fan at the end of the harbour, one of the boats belonged to the Russian owner of Chelsea Football Club — you could pick it by the helicopter parked on the stern!

We wandered round the northern side of the port, near the Yacht Club (a huge building, somewhat reminiscent itself of a yacht). We watched some crews going put for sculling practice — one crew of girls looked very professional until it came time for them to row — then they were all over the place! We went out to where we could look back across the harbour — there are some interesting statues out there, including one that took our fancy, Ulysses by Anna Chromý. We also met a woman walking her two feisty little Yorkshire Terriers, and the football fan we mentioned before. He's a bus driver from Brighton, staying in the area for a week. He gave us one tip for travellers to Monte Carlo — don't stay in Monte Carlo (unless you have money to burn), but stay instead in places just across the border, in France (physically very close, but just outside the Principality), where costs are less than half what they are in Monaco, and you can still walk into the city with ease.

From here, we wandered up to the Casino. This is a place for the filthy rich to be seen. There was a line-up of cars out the front that had to be seen to be believed — the cheapest one was a Rolls. It's quite a good show! In front of the casino is an interesting fountain, with a convex mirror that reflects the pool beneath as well as the casino in front — it looks good!

We then walked back down to Place d'Armes, where we had a pizza lunch before making our way up (and we mean up!) to the Jardin Exotique. You can get up there by various sets of stairs, but round this way we've started to look for Ascenseur Publique, and take the lift up instead! It would have been at leat 600 steps, but it took only 5 ascenseurs to get up to the top.

The Jardin Exotique is a magnificent collection of succulents and cacti from all over the world. You've got to be careful where you put your hands — Warren got pricked at least twice on the way round!. And that the views from there are superb goes without saying!

Within the Jardin Exotique are a couple of other attractions — a Grotto, which we decided to bypass, as we had had enough of steps by this time — and the Musée d'Anthropologie Préhistorique. Warren got quite chatty with the director, M. Patrick Simon, and as he was leaving the museum, M. Simon came down after him and gave him a copy of the current edition of Bulletin du Musée d'Anthropologie Préhistorique de Monaco. Fascinating articles on European, African and Asian prehistory — and Warren's French is just about up to it! When we get back, this copy will probably go to the University of Queensland.

By this time, the day had become very hazy — at least that's what we thought at first, but then we realised it was a smoke haze. But from the Jardin Exotique we could look up into the hills behind Monaco, and we could easily see the culprit — someone was burning off, putting out a lot of smoke that just wasn't being blown away, but was building up over the Principality.

We had just about worn ourselves out by now, so we went back to the station (which you could hardly recognise from outside!), and back to Villefranche for the night. Nice tomorrow.

Distance driven — today, nil; to date, 16,259 miles ( 26,167 km )