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Monaco - April 2007

Meandering around Monaco

The Guinness

I had my emergency can of Guinness in my bag but hoped to find some proper draught stuff somewhere. I couldn’t see many bars or pubs anywhere but did have an address for McCarthy’s Bar that purported on the Internet to be the only Irish Bar in the country. We found it after a short search and risking life and limb crossing the roads on which rich Monégasque in their expensive Porsches raced around the circuit.

Ummmmmmmmmm - that tastes good.

When we got back to McCarthy’s Bar at shortly after 6pm it was already quite full of ex-pat businessmen quenching their thirst after a hard days work. Here was a new experience for me – we were served by Brendan, a real Irish person. In every other country up until now where I had found Guinness the bar person had been native to that country. It wasn’t much easier explaining to Brendan what I was up to than it had been the others. He too looked a little confused to begin with and then cottoned onto why I was asking him to pick a straw out of a box and it wasn’t to take part in a communal coke sniffing session.

Brenden, just getting the hang of what I was asking him to do

Getting There and around

Monaco prides itself on its appearance and the authorities don’t take well to anyone turning up in scruffy attire or topless so we donned our best tee shirts and headed off to explore this tiny country. Having successfully navigated there on the toll roads I didn’t want to risk getting caught in any complicated urban traffic system so parked in first car park we found. Even that was astoundingly smart with painted floors.

It's not the greenest country in the world, that's for sure.

Monaco, the world’s second smallest country after the Vatican City, is built on a series of hills. Pedestrians get from one level to another by using the free elevators dotted around. We queued for these alongside suited gentlemen in sunglasses off to make their next financial transaction now slightly aggrieved at bumping into a party of riff raff tourists in their best tee shirts. The elevators sometimes led you to a series of underground marble lined pedestrian tunnels. It reminded me in some ways of the Moscow underground but at the same time the countries could not have been more different.

Waiting for the elevators in the marble lined hallways.

Team Makeup

This was Guinness Capital bagging with a difference. Needless to say that as soon as the family got wind of the fact that Monaco was the next destination it took them a mere nanosecond to make their minds up that they were coming along too. A family holiday in Monaco I thought – that sounds a little pricey! I tried to put them off with stories of earthquakes, guerrilla warfare, toxic waste dumps but somehow they saw through them all and insisted they tag along. They too wanted to have a carbon footprint the size of mine. Penny, who had joined us on the Lichtenstein trip, decided she would take if the offer occupying the third bedroom in the gîte. Penny’s ability to understand French a little better than us was to prove a definite advantage.

The family in a prickly situation

Brave Penny joins us on a second Guinness trip

Accommodation

Sense told us that Monaco would not be a cheap place to stay and not the sort of place to have a Youth Hostel, so we started to explore the guide books as to what was nearby. Cannes is just along the coast, so is Marseille. They still sounded a little upmarket for the Richards family. Nice, a short hop from Monaco sounded more like it added to which we could fly there from Birmingham – ideal. Clickedy click and the flights were booked. A couple more nights searching the web and we found a gîte in the hills high above Nice a mere 12 km from the town.

Nice view from the gite but not easy to get to - I invested in a TomTom after this holiday

We’d sort of pictured the fact that twelve kilometres would take some ten minutes of so to drive from Nice, maybe twenty at the most. How wrong we could be. A strong crow with an oxygen cylinder maybe could have done it in twenty minutes but a loaded Ford Fiesta took much longer up the countless hairpin bends. The map we were sent with the gîte details was literally the size of a Monaco postage stamp, the latter being pretty enormous by postage stamp standards. With an inadequate map and instructions in French we struggled but eventually happened upon our road/dirt-track up to the gîte.

Nice Old Town - taken just a few minutes before I got a call saying I had a new job

Sightseeing highlights & food

The fact that Monaco hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix added a bit of interest for the kids. Bronze statues of famous drivers and their cars, some of which you could sit in, were dotted around on grassy oases in traffic islands. We walked though the tunnel that forms part of the Formula 1 circuit, taking a little longer than the second or two it takes the racing cars to go through. It was fascinating to see how they transformed these streets into a motor circuit. They were just beginning to ready themselves for the Grand Prix due some six weeks later. The grandstands were being built and some of the barriers readied. It looked like one giant Meccano set being put together.

Formula 1 cars have certainly changed over the years

The kids weren’t allowed into the Casino being under-18 and I wasn’t terribly driven to explore it either but the architecture of the Casino and nearby Opera House building and the terraced gardens were appealing so we sat on a bench and had our picnic lunch next to a statue of the composer Berlio. There didn’t seem to be any signs saying that picnicking was discouraged but you just got the feeling that nobody around here ever indulged in such practices.

Now that's what I call a casino

We crossed back over the harbour and climbed the steep paths up to the Monaco-Ville and the Royal Palace, home of the Gramaldi family and now the Prince Rainier of Monaco. As well as the Palace the hill was home of Monaco’s old town – told you every city around here has one. Atmospheric yes but full of tourist shops selling exactly the same things – mock Formula 1 outfits for toddlers, Prince Rainier mugs and alike.

Monaco old town

Quirky moments

Once down at sea level the first thing to catch the eye of any first timer in Monaco is the yachts. They refer to them as yachts but rather they are large pleasure boats without a sail in sight. Some had smaller speed boats slung underneath like an embryo. Others had helicopter landing decks. Armies of cabin staff were out painting and polishing the vessels ready for the next voyage or more likely ready to host the next party. On one hand you got the feeling of being a tourist voyeur but on the other you got the feeling that this is what the owners liked, being gawped at by those less well off than them. I pondered how long it would take me to be extradited from the country if I started handing out leaflets raising awareness of poverty in Africa.

Maybe I could afford the little boat.