Magical Monaco

I was toying with playing around with Monaco sounds like Manukau for my title, but really, you could not get a greater variance between where I live and where I visited today.

Monaco was another stop on my 1997 Contiki, and my recollections are of posed late afternoon photos against the views, dinner out and a visit to the Grand Casino, where we bet small to say we'd done it, then did more posing with the flash cars outside. The 2014 visit was somewhat different, but equally as memorable.

Mum and I had Penny with us today, so Pat could go and do car stuff. We contemplated a trip out to Nice, but in the end stuck with staying in Monaco, and we're happy with our choice. We've learned that even though there's a lot to do within the proximity of ports, sometimes just concentrating on one area and not thinking what you might be missing elsewhere is just as satisfying as trying to cram several destinations onto one day.

For the first time we decided to orient ourselves by hop-on-hop-off bus, not that we ended up doing much hopping. Our first departure from the bus was at the top of old Monaco, Monaco-Ville, where the Prince's castle is. We took a walk back down the hill a bit to capture the amazing views on what was another great day weather wise, sunny and about 24 degrees. If you've looked on my FB page you'll see that I took a few panoramic shots on my iPhone, which I reckon came put OK.

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After walking back up the hill we came to Jacques Cousteau's aquarium and museum, and went in for a look. It was awesome. I took many bad photos of pretty fish behind glass, but loved watching them anyway.

 We chose not to go to the museum part, opting instead for an outside look of the cathedral and lunch in one of the small and picturesque pedestrian alleys.

Following this we too, a local bus (because it was not in the hoo on/off's route) up to the Jardin Exotique, exotic harden, full of cacti and succulents. It was great, although the full sun wasn't that helpful for making good photos. 

The garden wound its at downhill showing us more awesome vistas as we went, and eventually we came to the entrance of a limestone grotto. Our ticket included a 40 minute tour so if we went towards the bowels of the earth. A good few steps in, the guide told us 300 steps down, 300 steps up. Jeez. I dare not complain, my mother is 73 and Penny 71! The stalactites and stalagmites were impressive and the information thorough, though a little long winded for me. 

We escaped a little early to allow extra time to get up the stairs - though we were all machines - then caught the bus Monaco to our original hop off point and completed the circuit back to the ship about 4pm. That was enough for us for the day.
Two more stops to go. Tomorrow we dock in Marsellies, and are planning to get ourselves out into the countryside of Provence, though not quite sure how just yet! Will keep you posted.

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