The travels of Tim and Megan: Monaco

Monaco

On Sunday morning we again woke to a glorious sunny French morning...although we were a little slower to get going. We checked out of the hotel and had another brilliant breakfast, this time at Cafe de Lyon. We sat outside soaking up the sunshine and watching the French early-risers going about their business. Breakfast was fantastic - we can fully recommend the crepe au nutella and the chicken club sandwich, although the croissants and pains aux chocolats were top notch too.

We caught the train to Monaco (we were just like locals on the ticket machines by the Sunday) and this time we were treated to a busker with an accordion providing live entertainment on the train. There was also a rather odd guy who leapt up and started singing and dancing along to the accordion music! We also had no problems finding our way from the train station this time. However, some of the bus routes were suspended due to the annual Monaco/French Riviera marathon that was held that morning, which meant that we had to walk up the hill to the Princess Grace Rose Garden.

This would not have been such a problem, except that it was very difficult to find the garden, and we ended up walking a lot further than we probably needed to. The difficulty in finding the garden, in conjunction with our already tired legs having to walk up and down some hills, meant that we were not in the best of moods by the time we found the garden. This was not helped when we saw that there were no roses in the rose garden at all - obviously not the season for roses in Monaco! The garden actually looked rather bland without any colour - so if you're visiting Monaco when it is not rose season, perhaps give this one a miss off your list of things to do.

In saying that, the garden boasts over 3,500 rose bushes of over 150 varieties, so when it is the correct season, the garden will no doubt look amazing! The garden was inaugurated in 1984 and was dedicated to Princess Grace, who was a great lover of flowers. There is a fine statue of Princess Grace at one end of the garden, one of many statues and sculptures scattered throughout Monaco - there is actually a Sculpture Trail that you can walk and admire the works of art as you go.

Our next stop was the Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium, which unfortunately meant a walk back down a hill and a walk up a different hill. The museum was built between 1899 and 1910 to house collections of underwater species brought back by Prince Albert I from his expeditions. In the St Martin Gardens next to the museum there is a bronze statue of Albert I at the helm of his ship - see photo of Megan helping him steer in Part 1 blog.

The aquarium is one of the most famous and impressive of its kind in the world. Over eight tanks, in which for every species the original natural environment is recreated with minerals and local flora, contain fishes of all shapes and colours from the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, as well as shellfish, giant squid, turtles and many other species. The tanks are filled with sea water pumped directly to the foot of the museum and it is constantly renewed.

We were all very impressed with the aquarium - there were so many amazing creatures to see, including small spotted eels, that looked like really small snakes that stand vertically with half of their bodies buried in sand at the bottom of the tank and half sticking out of the sand in the water - very odd. Tim was also amazed by the flat silver-coloured fish that can camouflage themselves in deep sea water by deflecting light downwards, thus becoming almost invisible at the right depth. They look almost see-through on the photo below. Megan was intrigued by the octopus and Libby with the sea horses.

Because of time restrictions we didn't visit the oceanographic museum, although we are reliably informed that it contains skeletons of marine mammals such as killer whales and that it has embalmed penguins, polar bears, sea lions and polar birds, etc etc. Another visit perhaps. We returned to the same spot for lunch, although not to Le Bambi, this time a place further down the street. We had another very nice lunch, the common theme appearing to be hot chips with mayonnaise. Yum!

Nice

We then caught the train back to Nice, where we had hoped to check out a few of the shops in the city centre. However, that plan was thwarted by the Sunday trading laws in France - none of the shops were open! We got down to the beach and walked along the Promenade des Anglais (along with several thousand other tourists and locals). After getting an ice cream from a gelateria we sat down on the beach, away from the crowds on the promenade, for a while.

As we were leaving again, we were treated to a very "special" display from what we could describe as a street busker, only he wasn't "performing" for money; he was doing it for the love of the game. There was a guy who was obviously trying to impersonate Michael Jackson - he had long black hair, crazy pants, an open shirt and he had actually painted his face white to look more like the modern MJ. He then had a stereo sitting on the footpath playing various Michael Jackson songs, while he "danced"/swayed in a drunk hippie kind of way with arms going everywhere. He reminded us of all of the famous David Brent dance-off from The Office TV series.

He had a few moves that kind of passed for Michael Jackson, such as the kick in the air and the grabbing the crotch region and he actually did a very impressive moonwalk. However, the moonwalk was the only impressive part of his routine. The rest was a cross between comical and scary. The best part was watching the expressions on peoples' faces as they walked past - disbelief, shock, fear. A few people took some pretty wide berths around the guy to avoid being hit by a flaying arm. He is probably the best advertisement yet for why kids should not do drugs.
Nevertheless, it was a memorable send-off from the French Riviera.