Nice France and Monte Carlo

This month's trip was pretty exciting.  Originally we had planned on
going to Portugal or Southern Spain, but we couldn't find anything
that worked nicely with our schedule.  We've become rather selective
about which flights we'll take and which London airports we use. 
Lastminute.com has some great deals on two night trips around Europe,
but often they involve a flight out at 9pm Friday with a return flight
at 7am on Sunday.  But with Expedia.co.uk you can more easily select
your flights *and* get a good deal.

So November's Portugal and Spain trips were all of the Friday 9pm -
Sunday 7am variety.  But there was a great deal on for a trip to Nice
France!  So we booked our trip exactly one day before all the rioting
and burning of France began.

But by the time we left, things had simmered down somewhat and there
hadn't been any incidents around Nice for awhile.

Our flight was great, we flew British Airways and had a yummy cheese
baguette on the flight there.  They must have been preparing us for
our regular lunchtime diet of super market baguettes and cheese when
we go to french speaking countries.  On our approach into Nice it was
a nice clear day, and the jet cruises along the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea at low altitudes for a long time.  I was able to
snap some nice shots of the area south of Nice.


The first thing we did when we landed was get all excited about the
tropical'ish plants.  The palm trees, wild Alovera plants, Orange
trees and odd cacti.


We stayed at a Best Western that was smack dab in the middle of the
city.  We were amazed that we weren't given two single beds!  It was
the first time in awhile!  Once we checked in we made a bee-line for
the water.


On our first day we didn't have our walking legs broken in yet (so to
speak), so we took it easy.  We checked out the city by bus and tried
out some french.  I was able to get by pretty well there was only a
couple of  instances when the person we spoke to replied to me in
English.

Interestingly enough, on Friday evening, there was almost nobody on
the streets.  We were worried that we were stupid tourists walking
through a dangerous area, or that we hadn't been told about a cerfew
that was being imposed in the area.  Turns out that it was just an
unexciting evening.

We had our baguette/cheese/pudding picnic lunches, and ate croissants
and pain au chocolate every morning.

This was yummy, but it  wasn't entirely by choice.  Store hours were
such that we had to get what we could!  In the morning nothing is open
because no one has gotten to their stores yet to open them.  Just
after lunch time everyone closes up to go do goodness knows what, in
the evenings many places close up because they didn't close up in the
early afternoon.  So you're guaranteed to have stores open for about
nearly three hours of the day.

Our second morning, Laura and I walked to the train station to see
about heading to Monaco.  A friend of ours recommended that we should
go there if we're in the area so we figured we'd check it out.  Turns
out that it cost us 9 Euros (12CAD, 6GBP) for two return tickets to
Monaco from Nice.  Not too bad!  Although Monaco is only 10 miles from
Nice.  We sat in first class by accident but didn't feel guilty about
it.  It allowed us to sit in comfort while we watched the Seaside 
view and ate our Croisants.


Not knowing much about Monaco prior to this trip I did a little
research before we left.  Turns out that Monaco/Monte Carlo is a
sovereign city/state known as a Principality.  It has a king and is
ruled as a true monarchy.  The current ruling family has been ruling
Monaco for over 700 years, except for a brief stint when it was
annexed by Napoleon.  But when Napoleon was ousted, Monaco regained
its Independence by negotiating a land deal with France where it gave
up half of its land to maintain it's Independence.  Because of the
loss of land, the King at the time realized they needed to earn money
somehow, so in the 1800s they started building fancy casinos and made
Monaco *the* tourist destination in that part of the world.  The
previous King (who died in April) married the Hollywood actress
Grace Kelly who was the mother of the current King and his siblings.
She died in a car crash in 1982.


There is about 30 thousand residents so there isn't much need for long 
license plates


The city of Monte Carlo is the most picturesque place I've seen

The whole place is basically built on cliffs surrounding the
Mediterranean and is made up of very nice houses and flats.  There is
a lot of money there.  The harbour that is in the centre of the city
is full of yachts that are absolutely enormous.  They are registered
out of all sorts of places, London, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.
 I loved some of the names of the boats.

This is certainly a city of opulence.

After wandering around the city for awhile we decided to head up
towards the big castle-like building at the top of a cliff, on the way
up we took a nice little forest path that over looked the city.

When we got up to the top, we saw a whole bunch of military people
standing around looking official.  We thought maybe we had stumbled
onto something exciting


When were able to look around we could see all sorts of people dressed
up in formal clothes, military, secret service people and a large
Palace.  We found some people who were speaking in English so we asked
them what was happening.  Turns out that within the next few minutes
the new King was going to be Coronated!

What are the chances??  So we found ourselves a spot that over looked
much of the square and watched!  It was a neat ceremony that involved
a lot of brass-band music, marching soldiers and flag passing.  King
Albert was dressed in his military uniform

(It was hard to get a good shot of him)

It got interesting after the ceremony.  The police and secret
service let everyone move to the front of the palace and everyone
yelled and cheered as King Albert and his family waved from the
windows up above.  It was quite the scene, very once in a lifetime.  I
took a movie of it.


I was really surprised at how few people were there.  Granted there
hundreds of people, but there was plenty of room for more.  Many
people were chauffeured out of the square and most people were in very
formal wear.  We found out on our way out, that we had (completely
accidentally) managed to sneak past a security perimeter that they had
put up all around the Palace.  Every entrance to the palace (almost) had
metal detectors and police checking everyone entering the area. 
Because we had taken this little forest path to the top, we
circumvented all of this and got into the square without knowing what
was going on.  We can't be sure, but based on the lack of people there
and number of people who looked like invited guests, I think it might
have been invite only.

Thats right, foreign dignitaries, influential politicians and Laura and Kevin.

My Aunt Kathleen told me that she watched it on TV!   We were excited
to see it on BBC International when we got back to our hotel.

It's interesting, in the front windows of all of the stores there are
pictures of King Albert.

I don't mean in most front windows, I mean in *all* the windows of businesses.

After all the excitement we continued on our way and took in some of
the other sights

I can't imagine how they managed to build that building on the cliff.

Back in Nice, the next day Laura and I wandered along a path cut into
the side of the rocks along the coast.


Then we walked through the narrow market streets of Nice and did some
Christmas shopping.


After another trip to the beach we got our bags from the Hotel and
started walking along the coast and watched the sun set before getting
onto a bus back to the airport.


This was certainly the most relaxing of our trips.  You really can't
beat this part of the world.  I kept finding myself looking at real
estate prices. :)  Not to worry though it's a little out of our price
range (for now).
Here are all the pictures.