Our excursion coach comes to Monaco and we climb out and climb on upwards, past the Oceanographic Museum of Jacques Cousteau to Monaco Ville - the old town up on it's promontary rock overlooking Monaco and Monte Carlo.
We come first to the Cathedral St Nicholas. This is the resting place of Grimaldi princes and princesses.
Inside the cathedral. There were fresh flowers on the graves of Prince Rainier and Princess Grace. Considerably more for ex-film star Grace Kelly in fact.
The Royal Palace of Monaco. Currently the home of Prince Albert II, the Sovereign Prince of Monaco.
Monaco is small and does not have an army of its own. The Royal Guard - the
Compagnie des Carabiniers du Prince - are "borrowed" from France. Which at least ensures that it is extremely unlikely that Monaco would ever declare war on France...
Looking over the edge of the promontary in the opposite direction to Monte Carlo we see the ancient defences of Monaco. Whilst the chap in charge of the cannon asked which way to point it, the lookout fumbled for another 20p as the binoculars went dead...
Along this coast you see most of the old towns up on high steep hills. There were many pirates on the Mediterranean and it was easier to run into low lying towns for a spot of looting, rape and pillage than it was to run up a hill, grab a likely wench and then say "
Hang on a minute love, I'm all out o' puff..." Also there's a limit to how high the cannon on a ship can point!
Looking down from Monaco Ville to Monte Carlo and the harbour.
The huge yacht in the centre is
Lady Moura the yacht of Prince Albert.
The Constitution of Monaco had to be re-written a while ago. Whilst Prince Albert has two children, they were both born out of wedlock and cannot be heirs to the throne. He is now married to Princess Charlene, formerly Charlene Wittstock, a South African Olympic swimmer though no children have yet come from the marriage. The former Constitution stated that only direct children from the
last prince could inherit the throne so there was a danger of there being no eligible heir. The Constitution now allows siblings who are direct descendants from the previous prince to inherit, so the current heir to the Grimaldi dynasty is Princess Caroline of Hanover, Albert's sister.
Ah... Princess Caroline... I fancied her from my early teens... She was easily the most beautiful of all the world's eligible princesses before Miss Franny came along and took me off the market! Had she ever popped into our local I might have been Prince Consort-in-Waiting by now...
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We only had an hour or so. Not really time to go in and win a fortune from some thin Sicilian gangster, whose beautiful companion would glare at him before swaying gracefully over to my side. In any case, this is a daytime excursion and I'm in a polo shirt and chinos - not the elegant attire necessary to draw eyes for reasons other than amusement...
In 1873 a Yorkshire Mill engineer with a background in mechanics watched the wheels at Monte Carlo, analysing the results of every spin. He found that nine numbers kept coming up more than usual on one of the wheels. He won an astronomical amount for the day before the casino realised and moved the numbers on the wheel every night.
After several days of winning that netted him the equivalent of 15 million UK pounds, he went on a two-day losing streak, finally admitting the inevitable and getting out with a remaining profit of 160,000 pounds - say, 10 or 11 millions in today's money. Joseph Jaggers died in 1892, the year that the song The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo was written about him.
My car was waiting across the road... Well, I can wish! Aston Martins litter the roads around here. I didn't see a single Reliant Robin all the time we were there.
It was extremely hot. Miss Franny and I decided we would have an ice cream and having pulled some money from my pocket, I had to go digging again to pay for Fran's... You could buy an ice cream van for that sort of money where I come from...
We had a walk up the hill opposite the casino, through exquisite gardens with intricate fountains, no doubt financed by the ice cream seller. It really was lovely there. Even with the sun so hot that 50 pence worth of ice cream was melting away every second...
We got back on the coach and he drove around as much of the Formula One track as he could. Absolute rubbish - he made no attempt whatsoever to drive quickly...
We all got off for a few minutes at the tunnel to take photos and then to gawp over the edge of the road where the cars come out into bright sunlight with the sea and harbour just a long drop to the left!
