Who dropped their wallet?

Day 34 of our travels took us from Italy to France, arriving in Nice about 5.30ish. We initially planned to stay in Nice for five days, however first impressions are lasting and the amount of roadworks really detracted from the city. Nice is more of a place to base yourself if going to Monaco, St Tropez or if the weather is good the seaside beach. The hot weather we had been having diminished and we had overcast days and some rain.

Our plans were to travel from Nice to Barcelona however after spending three hours on the internet and then a couple of phone calls we changed our plans to go from Nice (cutting it down to two days in Nice) to Switzerland. Apparently there was a festival in Barcelona and we could find absolutely NO accommodation within 30 kms to the city. We have since found out accommodation is aways booked in Barcelona because there is always some festival on and bookings need to be made way in advance.

We had two days in Nice and spent one day walking the city and went to the harbour and to the old castle where we saw some nice views of the city and wondered through the old town on our way back. The old town has some really nice character and is the nicest part of Nice, nice little restaurants and markets in the town square.

Our second day in Nice we travelled by train to Monaco. Its amazing the people you meet on your travels. On the train we met an older English couple who were going to Monaco for the day. They were on a cruise ship docked in Nice and have been living in Spain for over 20 years. Very interesting story but the thing that amazed us more than anything is they couldn't speak a word of Spanish. Apparently this place has so many poms living there that there is no need to learn the language of the country of where they are now living!

Monaco is an interesting city, 30,000 people, no unemployment or taxes and one police officer for every 16 people.

Once we got there we headed for the palace, lots of steps to get there, to see the changing of the guard ceremony, it had no sooner finished than the sky opened up and a huge downpour came down, the only places benefitting were the tourist shops were everyone retreated to, to get out of the rain. It cleared after about 15 minutes (and it ended up being a nice afternoon). The grand prix had been raced in Monaco about a fortnight before and it was really cool to take a tour that went along most of the track. Steve got a great picture of the start/finish line that still has the tyre marks on it. But the most incredible thing about Monaco was the cars and boats in the harbour. The wealth was incredible. We spent than an hour walking along the harbour looking at the massive yachts, the biggest of which was 136ft - about half the length of Greg Norman's "Aussie Rules" - but still impressive. Just about all of these boats had crew polishing everything on them and one had a guard that was around 7ft and built like the proverbial brick shit-house just standing by the car (V12 Mercedes) while it was running. We assume it was so the air-conditioner would cool the car down for whichever poor bugger it was waiting for. We didn't get too close to that boat - the guard looked hungry!!


We then went to the Monaco casino. We walked into the foyer but not into the casino because there was a charge to get in and lets face it, our credit cards probably didn't have enough limit on them for a bet :-) We did sit across from the casino and just people watch. We saw Ferrari after Ferrari after Bentley after Mercedes - every sort of expensive car just lining up around the place. I never thought I would see a place where the number of Ferrari's were like they were the common family car!!!! We witnessed the most expensive traffic jam too - we think someone must have dropped their wallet crossing the street and blocked the road.

Lina and Steve