Monaco and Monte Carlo

Thursday 16 May 2019. We are onboard the Marella Dream cruise ship for the week and after leaving Majorca, we have a day at sea and then arrive in Monaco.

That disobedient butler of ours seems to have ignored my stern instruction not to play with my yacht and he's brought it all the way to meet us here in the harbour at Monte-Carlo! I shall have to have words...

Not only that but he's tagged onto a line of others that are being towed out for a day's sailing!

We realise that the Monaco Grand Prix is due to be staged in just ten days and preparations are well under way in order to turn the roads into a racetrack and any bit of open space into a grandstand.

Our way into the town is by walking along the pits lane, overlooking the main bit of track for the start and end of the race. It's too early for any cars to have arrived just yet, but teams are knocking about getting the row of pits sorted and the grandstands are already built up in tiers supported by miles and miles of scaffolding.

We make our way into the main area facing the famous casino by something of a zig-zag route. We made use of lifts and escalators at the railway station in order to climb upwards and then found that the park we were hoping to wander through down to the casino was covered in a huge construction of tiered seating. The photo shows the Cafe de Paris. We stopped for a small bottle of Sprite each, a snip at 8 euros each, but you should expect to pay more when your maitre d' shows you to a table in full dress suit (the maitre d', not the table...) In fact I felt distinctly under-dressed in t-shirt and slacks in this area where Aston Martins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis are the norm and you are not going to turn heads even in a nifty open-top Jag. I felt sure my Mazda 5 MPV might have raised an eyebrow or two though...

Not content with expensive mineral drinks, Miss Franny has me splashing out a fiver for an ice cream! This place is not for the faint of pocket. We were security wanded down just walking into a shopping arcade!

The casino is built onto the Opera House. We didn't go in. I'm not being tied naked into a wicker chair with no seat for anybody. We walked around to the back of the Opera House and found a collection of cars which had been gathered together for some event or other. It was nice to note that British cars made a strong contribution to the display.

We had a wander through the gardens with a great viewpoint over the harbour area, dominated by the Marella Dream.

We realised we must be over the tunnel that is such a feature of the Monaco Grand Prix and walked down to this spot which overlooks the exit from the tunnel.

A lift brought us down to the tunnel itself and I remember that the last time we were here in 1996 there was much work going on in the harbour at the tunnel exit that has now turned into shops, bars and restaurants, seen in the previous photo, along the edge of the harbour.

We descended yet again to the harbour level. Across the harbour is Monaco city, where the royal palace and cathedral can be found. The royal palace can be glimpsed towards the right hand side of the photo.

We returned to the ship and I spent 3 hours doing this from Tides Bar's windows, with a drink or two to while away the afternoon.

Return to Cruise Index

St Tropez

Thursday 10 July 2008. Ah... St Tropez! The name conjures up glamour, luxury, the rich and famous. Will it live up to the image?

We have moved on now to the French Riviera. The Island Star docked in Toulon where we got off the ship and boarded a coach for the 90-minute ride to St Tropez. One passenger felt aggrieved at this... "90 minutes without a toilet stop?!?" He was a bit eccentric anyway - we had noticed him a couple of times on the boat wearing the most bizarre clothes you've ever seen.

I swear he was dressed as Robinson Crusoe one night...and there are no fancy dress nights on the Island Star... Can we carry on? Well yes, we're going to anyway as the French guide has merely stared at him and said "That is correct..." We were on the front seat and my French is just about good enough to understand the driver saying "I think he should have gone before we left...!" I did learn some new swear words as a motorbike cut us up!

And so we reached St Tropez. Again we dispensed with the walking tour and set off to walk from where the coach dropped us along the coast and into St Tropez itself.

We admired all the boats - there were indeed some luxury millionaire-only type yachts. We walked to the far end of the harbour wall and then decided to get a bite of lunch as this was our only full-day tour of the week. We found a nice pizzeria and ordered a couple of pizzas.

The loo was an experience for Fran as there were two toilets opposite each other. One had no light and no window. The other had no lock. She waited for the one with no lock and sat jamming her foot against the door. When she came out, a bloke was sitting on the loo opposite and had left the door wide open so he could see...

A few artists had set up stalls along the harbour. This one specialised in boats floating in a red sea and sky - quite effective actually - monochrome naked females with robotic joints and the odd realistically coloured landscape.

We had a look around the shops to have a laugh at the prices. All the big name high-end fashion shops were there. A half-recognised famous face (which looked much younger than her arms...) came out of one, glanced at me and hurried on.

We looked at several collections of price tags with too many zeroes and finally bought a fridge magnet.

We saw quite a few of these cars. I'm afraid I mistook them for mini mokes as made in the 1960s and used in TVs cult hit The Prisoner. Perhaps someone had bought a job lot and transported them here after the sixties were over? But since then, someone has commented on the photo at Flickr (now unavailable) that they are modern cars, based on a Citroen 2CV chassis. So they lose a number of glamour points for that then! Tres chic though! We made our way back onto the coach and then waited for ten minutes past the time for a couple to roll up. They claimed to have got lost but they were not exactly hurrying back...

Return to Mediterranean Spirit Cruise Index Page