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Have Camera, Will Travel
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- Oct 28, 2006
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Day 10 - Villefranche, France (Monaco/Monte Carlo/Eze)
So I thought I'd start out by mentioning that I am very, VERY lucky to have the pictures from this day. At dinner the next day (the last sea day), the brand new memory card in my camera decided to give up the ghost. *FORTUNATELY*, I had been backing up my photos virtually every night to my iPad. I'll tell you, that alone made buying the iPad totally worth it! Once I got back to the States, a guy at Best Buy pointed me to some software that SanDisk had on their website that was able to recover most of the pictures from the 2 missing days I hadn't backed up yet. All in all, I was very lucky. I can't imagine losing all my pictures on the last day of the cruise! That would have killed me! More about this with the Sea Day report.
So, anyways, this is the last port day for this cruise. Villefranche was another tender port, so we met fairly early, and caught the tender to Villefranche.
The Magic from the tender.
The town around the port was quite colorful and cute.
We didn't spend any time in Villefranche, however, and got right aboard our motorcoach for the drive along the coast to Monaco.
It's really a spectacularly lovely coastline.
This is our local guide, Frank. Frank was *very* French! I really didn't realize just how close he was leaning here, but I imagine I could come up with *ALL* sorts of stories to go along with this photograph of Frank and I!!!
Today was my Birthday. (Yay! Wonderful way to spend a Birthday!) Tina & Robyn gave me a Birthday card, and a special Birthday pin, and got the whole bus to sing "Happy Birthday" to me. I quite enjoyed that!
Once we got to Monaco, we parked in an underground parking lot, and emerged beside a dramatic, monolithic sea side view of Monaco. I *thought* that Frank said that this was a portion of the Prince of Monaco's Palace, but I'm not quite sure if I'm remembering that correctly. In retrospect, I *think* it might be the back side of the Oceanographic Museum. Whatever it is, it's quite impressive, and a beautiful setting.
We walked through part of the town and eventually past what was definitely the *front* part of the Oceanographic Museum. There were several sculptures around the area that showed the internal musculature of their subjects, such as this unicorn, and the pregnant woman you can sort of see in the coastal picture above.
The park-like area we walked through to get to the palace had some really nice sculptures, and some really gorgeous views!
I thought this was a really interesting way to do an open-air bus tour. I imagine it's a pretty comfy tour bus! (Oh, and yes, that is part of the Palace in the background!)
We took a tour of some of the currently unoccupied rooms in the Palace. Very opulent, lots of cool art & furnishings. Rough life! There were some absolutely wonderful family portraits of Princess Grace, Prince Rainier & their kids. Too bad photos were, once again, not allowed!
After we left the tour, as we waited to watch the changing of the guard, suddenly this very dense fog just started to roll in out of no-where (as you can see in the previous pictures, the sky & all were crystal clear up until this point). It was very bizarre, but it also was very dramatic. It never made it all the way up to the Plaza area where we were waiting, but you could see it in the areas below & around us, and it did encroach, just a little bit, on the towers around us.
The changing of the guard did not quite have the pomp & circumstance of the London version, but it was still cool to watch.
The whole group.
After we watched the ceremony, we walked back along a cliff-side path towards some of the other buildings of Monaco.
We took a walk through the lovely Cathedral where Princess Grace & Prince Rainier are buried, along with other members of the Grimaldi family. Very lovely, simple tombs, in a peacefully resplendent setting.
After we finished in the Cathedral, we regrouped with Frank outside. It's funny; I find I haven't mentioned before this the Whisper systems that we used in Rome, Florence and Monaco/Monte Carlo. For those who don't know what they are, the tour guide has a mobile microphone they can talk into, and all the people on the tour have little receivers (about the size of a pack of cards) that hangs around their neck (with ear-bud earphones). That way you can hear the tour guide over the ambient noise, the tour guide does not need to shout (imagine how chaotic *that* would be) and you don't have to be right next to the tour guide to hear their commentary. Sometimes there was some interference, and the distance on them really varied, but I found that, for the most part, they worked very well. Cool idea. Anyways, it wasn't always necessary for us to stop for Frank to give us commentary, but occasionally he would, anyways. The weather was so gorgeous, and the area so beautiful, we just walked, or stood, or whatever, and didn't much mind which.
Continued below
So I thought I'd start out by mentioning that I am very, VERY lucky to have the pictures from this day. At dinner the next day (the last sea day), the brand new memory card in my camera decided to give up the ghost. *FORTUNATELY*, I had been backing up my photos virtually every night to my iPad. I'll tell you, that alone made buying the iPad totally worth it! Once I got back to the States, a guy at Best Buy pointed me to some software that SanDisk had on their website that was able to recover most of the pictures from the 2 missing days I hadn't backed up yet. All in all, I was very lucky. I can't imagine losing all my pictures on the last day of the cruise! That would have killed me! More about this with the Sea Day report.
So, anyways, this is the last port day for this cruise. Villefranche was another tender port, so we met fairly early, and caught the tender to Villefranche.
The Magic from the tender.
The town around the port was quite colorful and cute.
We didn't spend any time in Villefranche, however, and got right aboard our motorcoach for the drive along the coast to Monaco.
It's really a spectacularly lovely coastline.
This is our local guide, Frank. Frank was *very* French! I really didn't realize just how close he was leaning here, but I imagine I could come up with *ALL* sorts of stories to go along with this photograph of Frank and I!!!
Today was my Birthday. (Yay! Wonderful way to spend a Birthday!) Tina & Robyn gave me a Birthday card, and a special Birthday pin, and got the whole bus to sing "Happy Birthday" to me. I quite enjoyed that!
Once we got to Monaco, we parked in an underground parking lot, and emerged beside a dramatic, monolithic sea side view of Monaco. I *thought* that Frank said that this was a portion of the Prince of Monaco's Palace, but I'm not quite sure if I'm remembering that correctly. In retrospect, I *think* it might be the back side of the Oceanographic Museum. Whatever it is, it's quite impressive, and a beautiful setting.
We walked through part of the town and eventually past what was definitely the *front* part of the Oceanographic Museum. There were several sculptures around the area that showed the internal musculature of their subjects, such as this unicorn, and the pregnant woman you can sort of see in the coastal picture above.
The park-like area we walked through to get to the palace had some really nice sculptures, and some really gorgeous views!
I thought this was a really interesting way to do an open-air bus tour. I imagine it's a pretty comfy tour bus! (Oh, and yes, that is part of the Palace in the background!)
We took a tour of some of the currently unoccupied rooms in the Palace. Very opulent, lots of cool art & furnishings. Rough life! There were some absolutely wonderful family portraits of Princess Grace, Prince Rainier & their kids. Too bad photos were, once again, not allowed!
After we left the tour, as we waited to watch the changing of the guard, suddenly this very dense fog just started to roll in out of no-where (as you can see in the previous pictures, the sky & all were crystal clear up until this point). It was very bizarre, but it also was very dramatic. It never made it all the way up to the Plaza area where we were waiting, but you could see it in the areas below & around us, and it did encroach, just a little bit, on the towers around us.
The changing of the guard did not quite have the pomp & circumstance of the London version, but it was still cool to watch.
The whole group.
After we watched the ceremony, we walked back along a cliff-side path towards some of the other buildings of Monaco.
We took a walk through the lovely Cathedral where Princess Grace & Prince Rainier are buried, along with other members of the Grimaldi family. Very lovely, simple tombs, in a peacefully resplendent setting.
After we finished in the Cathedral, we regrouped with Frank outside. It's funny; I find I haven't mentioned before this the Whisper systems that we used in Rome, Florence and Monaco/Monte Carlo. For those who don't know what they are, the tour guide has a mobile microphone they can talk into, and all the people on the tour have little receivers (about the size of a pack of cards) that hangs around their neck (with ear-bud earphones). That way you can hear the tour guide over the ambient noise, the tour guide does not need to shout (imagine how chaotic *that* would be) and you don't have to be right next to the tour guide to hear their commentary. Sometimes there was some interference, and the distance on them really varied, but I found that, for the most part, they worked very well. Cool idea. Anyways, it wasn't always necessary for us to stop for Frank to give us commentary, but occasionally he would, anyways. The weather was so gorgeous, and the area so beautiful, we just walked, or stood, or whatever, and didn't much mind which.
Continued below
) and also was really happy that that did not mean I missed the commentary & information from the great guides.
