Tuesday in Menton & Monaco.

Tue. Apr. 5: This was our day to visit Monaco. On Steves’ recommendation we took the 1€ bus to its last stop at Menton. We were surprised to find that the entire two hour trip along the coast is densely developed and populated but we had lots of stunning vistas to enjoy. The turnaround is near a Farmer’s Market and a park which walked through and then we found the Tourist Information. Armed with a map we made our way to Old Menton to wander before getting coffee and sitting in a square. Back on our feet, we made our way through the Old Town market and then to the Promenade along the Sea. Nearing the end we stopped at the Mirabella to sit outdoors and have their daily special of “pintade avec artichaut” or Guinea hen with artichokes, which was delicious and came with chocolate mousse for dessert. We walked on to the extensive gardens of lemon and other citrus trees for which the area is famous. They had the biggest lemons we’d ever seen! Returning to the bus line we caught next bus to Monaco and got off to see the Casino. It is pretty spectacular with lovely gardens and fountains outside all surrounded with hip high tulips at the height of their blooms. I wanted to mail a postcard from Monaco to James Sims for his collection so Marv asked the GPS to find a post office. She took us 1 kilometer pretty much straight up the hill. Heidi and Kris encouraged us to go ahead without them because it was so steep and so tiring. We sloughed our way up to the Post Office only to find it was closed. ARGH!!!! So Marv told the GPS to take us to the Prince of Monaco palace. Monaco is built on such a hillside with roads at different levels that the GPS was having a terrible time telling us where we were and where we needed to go. But happily along the way we came across an open Post Office so I mailed the card. Although the GPS ended up going dead we found our way to the bottom of another l-o-n-g hill up that appeared to be the palace. Up we climbed again and we were there! It was 5:25 and they cut off tours at 5:30 but after all we had been through we felt we had to see the palace. We picked up our English speaking audio guide and followed the directions of the tour. About halfway through, we had a uniformed guard hanging around with us and closing off the areas as we finished. He was soon joined by a “suit” (administrator?) and then a second guard but they didn’t rush us or even speak to us. They just closed everything off as we moved along. At the end when we turned in our audio guides the three women who took them followed us out and went home. So we really closed that joint down!! We wandered through picturesque Old Town but it was also closing down so we headed back down the hill, where we found the very bus we needed to get back to Nice. All this time we had no idea where Kris and Heidi had ended up. Walking back to the hotel we stopped to pick up a baguette, some Camembert cheese and two apples which we enjoyed with a packet of tuna and some of our wine from the Sunday festival. As we ate on our “balcony” we saw Kris and Heidi returning from the bus. They had spent their time at the Princess of Monaco rose garden, opting not to do the climb up the hill to the palace. They hadn’t eaten so we went with them to l’Oval, a rugby (and other sports) bar where they had nice salads and we had dessert. Being pretty tired from all the uphill walking we had done Marv and I headed back to our room before they did and looked at choices for tomorrow and caught up the blog.