After spending a lovely half hour
cruising along the French Riviera, we reached Monaco, a whole new tiny country.
Monaco is a tax haven, so people with the motivation to avoid tax (read people with LOTS of money) flock there in droves.
And it was spectacularly extravagant!
Something told us they like their expensive cars in Monaco...
And it would appear that they're also experts at parking! Your eyes aren't lying, this is a little smart car parked backwards into roadside carparks. It's almost as narrow as a normal car front-to-back.
Anyway, back to the buildings!
Never say they don't maximise their real estate in Monaco!
Since street parking was nigh impossible (unless we'd had a smart car to park backwards), we found a proper underground carpark that was surprisingly affordable and wandered down one of the main streets towards the water.
How's that for a 'sea' of boats?
Since 5am that morning we'd eaten only muesli bars and nuts that we had with us, so by 11am when we strolled into Monaco we were pretty hungry! We had grand plans to go out with a bang and have a fabulous and delicious last French early lunch in Monaco, but none of the fancy restaurants were serving lunch yet!
Since we had to be at the airport back in Nice by 1pm, we couldn't hang around much past midday feeding our faces, so we were forced to readjust our expectations a little.
Croque Monsieurs it was!
And then more strolling...
A bit of gawking at a real estate office window...
Couldn't quite see the figures? It's a 117 square metre apartment for an easy 4.8 million euros. No worries!
We found a lovely little market where we bought our last European strawberries...
And then we climbed the long sloping stairs up to the old town.
They had a very sensibly located defibrillateur (yes, spelled the French way) half way up. Very well prepared of them!
The view certainly got better with height.
This is the main square at the top that joins the palace on one side with the old town on the other.
As always, the statues kept us entertained.
And the gorgeous narrow streets were amazing.
We were gobsmacked by the giant seagulls...
And I enjoyed more shuttered windows, of course.
We stumbled across this gorgeous church.
And had to have a wander inside.
It's nice to see that even confession is multilingual.
We kept wandering..
And I cuddled up to a yellow submarine...
And then puzzled over statues that pointed back the way we'd come...
We found our way back to the coastal side...
And basked in the sun a bit more.
I even climbed a little pyramid of cannonballs (which reminded me of
Gallipoli)
These seagulls did their best to amuse us by cackling at regular intervals as if there was a huge joke to be had.
I admired the themed bench legs.
But we couldn't stay for long. We had to make it back to the main square by midday...
To watch the changing of the guard outside the castle.
Tom somehow managed to also get this seagull-on-the-move-overhead photo while standing in the crowd.
They take their guard-changing pretty seriously in Monaco. It seems to be a
monarchy thing.
The tourists take it pretty seriously too.
We stayed just long enough to see the guards, and then began a hurried dash back to the car, for the trip back to Nice.
Unfortunately the hard-to-follow road signs got the better of us yet again, because we ended up traveling in completely the wrong direction for a while, before turning Cleopatra around and making our way back on the highway straight to Nice airport.
You'll be relieved to hear that we arrived just in time to return the car at the airport by our 1pm deadline. Unfortunately not early enough to have time to refill the petrol tank and thereby avoid the extortionately high fuel charge they lumped on us, but we consoled ourselves with the fact that it was most important that we get ourselves onto the plane in time, so nothing else mattered.
Goodbye France! Goodbye Europe!
