Monte Carlo, without breaking the bank

 So last week I went away for a few days. Not very far, just further along the Azure Coast, to Menton and Monte Carlo. And had a really nice time.

I went largely to get away from the chaos of the Sanremo music festival, partly to visit a microstate, partly to try the local food, and also because I have been keen to do the tour of Monte Carlo casino since I translated their audioguide into English and wanted to see what it sounded like. 

 

Monte Carlo casino

I went by bus first, along the breathtakingly beautiful, winding coast road with its palms and views over rocky coves, and then by train through the tumbledown landscape of the frontier. I stopped for a few hours at Menton to have lunch and see the preparations for the annual Lemon Festival. 

Lunch was at a Breton pancake restaurant, Fleur de Sel, which is excellent value for money, although I will admit that Brittany is about as far from here as you can get and still be in France! (For a British comparison, it's a bit like dining on Cornish pasties in the Shetland Islands!) A big buckwheat pancake with bacon, mushrooms, cheese, potato and chives with some frothy cider went down really well.

As for the annual lemon festival, there seems to be a space theme this year. 

(Again a comment for Brits: given that the last time I was in this area it was full of Aston Villa fans on their way to a match in Monaco, I couldn't help the old joke popping up in my head: 

I went to a fancy dress party in Birmingham and the theme was "spice".

I dressed as a chilli pepper, but everyone else came as an astronaut!)

Of course, we've been to Menton during the lemon festival before. They're still putting up the statues for this year's event. I think the aliens emerging from their flying saucer carrying giant lemons appealed most.

Or if more aggressive big-screen aliens are your thing, how about this:
 

The statues are made of coloured plastic balls but the patterns on the ground are made of real oranges and lemons. As is this barrel outside a shop:

 

Having sucked all I could out of the lemons on view, I took the train a few stops to Monaco. Although Monaco is the second smallest state in the world, the station, which is all underground, is immensely long. I suspect some of it is actually within France. The trains from Italy and Menton stop at one end of the platform and ideally I should have taken the exit at the other end. But I didn't know so I ended up taking the upper exit at the opposite end of town, high up the cliff with a yawning chasm below. 

 

I walked down and down and down to my hotel and I can tell you that my map of the town, although detailed, is almost useless. Maps are laid out horizontally but this city is vertical, so only a few features get shown. In fact, Monaco is like a Swiss cheese with tunnels both for traffic and sometimes pedestrians, who also have lifts, escalators, stairs, elevated walkways and underground travelators to get around. Having got to my hotel after about 15 minutes walking and many hundreds of feet drop in elevation, I found the back exit from the station was only a hundred yards from the hotel! D'oh! Let's just say, the journey back to the station when I left was a lot easier!

Monaco - vertically challenged

 

The Sea

I had thought of staying on one of the many boats for hire but reading the reviews I felt that in February, even on the relatively mild riviera, it would be fairly cold and clammy. In windier weather, even in the harbour, one reviewer described his stay as "challenging". I am a landlubber and decided on a proper hotel. The Hotel de France was basic but not stupidly overpriced like everywhere else here. 

 

Monaco's main harbour as evening draws in

I started my tour at the Digue, the world's largest floating dock, where the weather was wintry, relatively speaking - for it's never really winter here - but the clouds were low and the sea was not the classic turquoise or azure that gives the name to the whole coastline, Côte d'Azur, but a disturbed inky blue-black. The stump of a rainbow rose from the surface but failed to join the looming clouds, and the suck and splash of the surf on the cliffs contrasted with the booming of the surge within the dock, like the breath of a monster. It was eerie, almost expectant, as though some sea snake, kraken, or maybe Cthulhu himself was going to burst forth. Listen...

 

Monte Carlo casino

This was one of the main purposes of my trip. You can play roulette, black jack and other such games in the afternoons but the mornings are for visitors who just want to look around. Entry is €19 and you get an audio guide. 

Smart dress is expected especially in the salons privés and this is where I faced a dilemma because all my shoes are for women but the more unisex styles I have are too casual. So I had to dig out a very old pair of men's shoes and I wore a man's jacket, which I haven't done since I've no idea when, maybe since I left office work in 2008! It felt weird. But I refuse to wear men's trousers any more and a neat pair of ladies' cotton trousers with false fly and turn-ups was fine. I wasn't going to Monaco full femme for reasons of space, passports and poor LGBT protections there that I didn't want to test.

So the casino, then, is Monaco's official source of income. Citizens of the principality are forbidden to gamble there so it's foreigners who largely support the Monegasque economy. (They do have VAT and a few other small taxes). The casino is a fine example of late nineteenth-century belle-époque French style, yet the ten or so rooms are all laid out and decorated differently, which gives plenty of variety. Taking photos was not allowed but you can get an idea from the website: Monte Carlo casino

It's a pity that this expensive elegance is spoilt by modern slot machines with their garish lights and colours. The salons privés, though are for dining, and one for smoking - that would be the one with the ceiling painted with naked ladies on a cloud smoking cigars. I'm sure that gave Victorian gentlemen something to muse on as they puffed away. One room, though, was closed as they were training new croupiers in it.

Yes, the English audio text was the one I translated but it has problems in that I could only work from photos that don't always clarify the relationship of one thing to another so I'd have chosen different phrasing if I'd had the chance to be on site whilst doing it. And the voiceover artist had a problem pronouncing some English words let alone French ones! Oh well, you can only do so much with what you are given.

The casino is worth seeing. Much as I enjoy games, I'm not a gambling type at all so Monaco's economy was boosted merely by my audio tour fee on this occasion. I had a roulette wheel as a child that was made of beaten tin, and therefore not very even-surfaced. After a while I realised that betting constantly on the 18 would enable you to break the bank after a hard afternoon's play! I doubt that works in the real world!

The prince's palace

There is a cute little palace with soldiers on guard outside.

Visiting the state rooms is not possible in winter but I quite liked the palace square with its views over the two harbours on either side.

This is Francesco Grimaldi, "the Cunning", who first captured the fortress in 1297 by disguising himself as monk causing the defenders to let down their guard. His descendants have been rulers here ever since. That's the sort of stunt you could pull in the Middle Ages and get away with!

 

The trouble with investing in munitions is that they get out of date. then all you can do is use them as decorations or legs for benches!

 

Princess Grace

The little cathedral houses the tomb of the best known member of the ruling family, Princess Grace, actress Grace Kelly as was. It's quite a place of pilgrimage, though it's a very simple tomb.

 

The inscription reads Grace Patricia, wife of Prince Rainier III, passed away in the year of Our Lord 1982, and the crown with her monogram.

There's a big rose garden dedicated to her in one of the parks. Sadly, it wasn't quite the right time of year to see it at its best.

 

There are other things dedicated to her, such as this strange fountain right at the other end of the principality.

 

Institute of Oceanography

Although a forbidding-looking building, this is a must-see. 

 

The aquarium in the basement is good, with one huge tank with reef life and lots of smaller tanks holding critters of all kinds. I always find the jellyfish mesmerising.

 

Dean Martin must have come here for inspiration for his famous song

    When the moon hits your eye 

    like a big pizza pie, that's a moray...

Upstairs it's a more conventional museum with glass cases but the roof terrace has outstanding views over the city, the sea and the surrounding mountains. I looked back along the coast to Italy. The crack in the mountain in the middle of the picture is the frontier. The furthest headland is St Ampelio Point, which my Lonely Planet guide tells me is the southernmost point of Northern Italy. Astute readers might ask if it could also be the northernmost point of Southern Italy!

 

I was also thrilled to see the Trophée des Alpes on a mountaintop, which is the vast Roman monument to the conquest of the Alps, erected in 6 BC. It's the tower above the trees to the right of the photo. I must visit this at La Turbie in France, although I didn't realise it was so high up.

The roof also has a decent restaurant and a kids' playground with a climbing frame that looks like the skeleton of a whale!

 

Parks

My favourite thing, though, was the parks. The Japanese Garden charmed me most last time I was here when looking for a place to live. it's the largest Japanese Garden I know. Pity about the encroaching buildings on all sides.

The rose garden I mentioned was in the pleasant Fontvieille Park in the district of the same name that was wrested from the sea in the reign of Rainier III. I liked the tiny islands in the pond, one with fancy ducks on, one with turtles and one with a nude lady.

 

The best park, though, was the Jardins St Martin between the oceanography museum and the cathedral. Full of significant plants, statues, and fountains, and stunning views over the sea, it was quite special.

Hubert the Heron

 

Mind your head

 

The vary rare Nice snowdrop that grows only in this area

 And the carob tree that is the national symbol of Monaco. 

 

They make a carob liqueur here and the main carob tree is a short way from the tiny government buildings. 

Carob seeds were believed all to have the same weight and this seems to be the origin of the carat measure for precious metals and stones.

It's a pity that the Exotic Garden was closed for refurbishment. That's said to be Europe's largest cactus garden and has Europe's only cave system where the temperature rises the deeper you go. I shall visit when it reopens. 

There was just one down side. I got this terrible ear worm while visiting the gardens of Monaco, the apt song with the refrain Dans les jardins de Monaco that cropped up in some Eurovision song contest in the 1970s. Look, these days I can't remember what day of the week it is or who the prime minister is but trigger a song that I heard precisely once fifty years ago and my mind's away doing it's own thing! Do I need to hire a Private Brain Care Specialist? Or is this normal? Monaco ear worm, nul points!

 

Food and drink

This was another main reason for going. Although food on the riviera is a blend of Italian and French, each town has its particular dishes and Monaco is no different. At lunchtime at U' Cavagnetu and Aux Deux Moines I chose the Monaco selections with pissaladière (like pizza but with lots of onions), pichade (more like pizza with tomato), socca (chickpea pancake), barbajuans (baked ravioli), farcis (stuffed aubergines/eggplants and courgettes), tapenade (olive jam), and vegetables fried in batter. 

 

Pichade (top), barbajuans and salad (middle), and farcis (bottom) at Aux Deux Moines. Sorry, I ate one farci before remembering to take the photo!

I tried the Monaco octopus, too, which was rough chopped with tomato sauce (oddly, it came with rice, which is not a local crop; in Italy the chopped octopus is neater and comes with potato and green beans, which makes more sense). 

The Chocolaterie de Monaco was recommended. You can have tea or coffee, of course, but hot chocolate makes more sense. I chose the thick Italian-style one and a mini chocolate muffin with whipped cream.

 

The hot choc was delicious but not the best I've had, but the muffin was outstanding. I didn't discover the nougatine chocolate hiding behind the cup till after the photo was taken but it was so good that I had to buy some souvenir ones as I left.

 

In the evenings I ate at Italian restaurants. Thousands of Italians work along this coast, including 7,500 who commute daily from my province (Imperia), mainly in catering and dock work. So you're usually safe choosing Italian. Norma above the covered market, the Marché de la Condamine, does an excellent pasta with norma sauce, as you'd hope! Norma sauce has sheep ricotta cheese, fried aubergine, garlic and basil and comes from Sicily so, like the Breton pancakes in Nice, it's about as far as you can get from its origins here! Planet Pasta with its Italian-style neatly chopped octopus with beans and potatoes is more what I'm used to. 

Other unusual sights

You come across permanent Grand Prix markings at various points, such as at the Fairmont Hairpin. 

 

Don't try and stay in Monaco during the Grand Prix - prices are utterly crazy in hotels, and it costs thousands of euros a day if you want to moor a yacht!

By complete contrast, Monaco is the start of the 2500 km long Via Alpina walking paths through the alps that pass through eight countries before arriving at Trieste.

A tiny state needs a tiny council of state (left) and a tiny courthouse (right) near the tiny cathedral.

 

There isn't an airport but there is a heliport 

The fortress has a very secure public toilet ...

 

 ... and these odd slots in the rock walls that look like letter boxes for prisoners. I've no idea what they're for!

 

The local dialect in this area is as rough and rustic as any Latin dialect of the Alps. Church Street is Rue de l'église in modern French and would be Via della chiesa in Italian. Here it's Carrugiu d'a geija. To be fair, carrugio is the name for streets in Liguria, of which this was a part once. But those of us who learnt languages in higher education institutes where they teach you to "speak proper an' all" feel the difference!

 Larvotto, the only beach of any size in the principality.

 Teddies in the windows above a restaurant. No idea!

 

 

Jinkies, this statue sure is creepy!

 

This one, however, is TGirl aspirational!

I think that gives a good idea of the things I saw and did for 48 hours in a tiny country. I visited for a day in 2019 when looking for a place to live but the high-rise buildings that here really spoil the beauty of this coast, the infuriating road layout, the high prices, the poor LGBT+ rights, and some of the dubious residents* left me cold. But it was a lot nicer as a holiday venue with plenty to interest and amuse. Rather inspired by Gina's Interrail trip two years ago, I hope to visit more European microstates. They pack a lot into a small space.

* Writer W. Somerset Maugham famously described Monaco as "a sunny place for shady people." He had a point.

 

Next

Thanks for reading. I hope that was entertaining. Next week I'll be summarising the Sanremo Music Festival as I was previously incorrect in thinking there was less of interest to trans readers this year. In fact, this time they instituted a Queer Prize. And it's carnival season with all the crossdressing opportunities that that brings.

The comment reply problem persists. I can't reply to comments because of a security misinteraction between Blogger and my browser, which seems to be an extended problem. But I'm sure it'll get sorted. Thanks you for all your comments which are much appreciated.

Have a good weekend.

Sue x