Monaco

Monaco is a tiny country – called a principality. It is the home of many millionaires, for tax purposes. Citizens are not taxed on income – the country makes its money through land tax and income from the casino. Interestingly, you can only enter the casino with a foreign passport – locals are forbidden from entering.

I went to Monaco just for the day. It would be an expensive place to stay and there wasn’t overly much there that I was eager to see. Perhaps in another season I could spend a day just wandering around the many gardens, but it is not really that time of year.

I got off to a rocky start that day. Tickets were available and I got one easily – seats on the train I had the ticket for however were considerably less available. They had wildly over sold tickets, and about forty of us could not even gain standing room, and had to spend an hour waiting for the next train. While I waited, I did finish reading Dracula at least, so the time wasn’t a total loss.

When the next train came, we were ready. I can understand how stampedes happen now. I did not get to decide my pace – I was pushed forward in the crush, just desperate to keep moving and stay on my feet. It was standing room only by then, but it was a twenty-minute journey so that was alright. I was glad to have made it on the train in one piece.

When you arrive in Monaco, you arrive underground. I was able to pick up a free map before heading to the lifts – the main set of lifts being out of commission, and so a long line stemmed from a distant second set. I didn’t think anything of it at the time – I didn’t know any better yet – but I wonder if there’s not some other exit directly out. And if there isn’t, why not?Because the Monaco railway station is underground, yes – thirty-three floors in fact – but also: the city is made of hills. I waited and took the elevator up to the indicated exit, eventually found my way round from this back entrance to a proper road, and then had to make it back down what seemed a lot like thirty-three floors worth of hill, to get to the main parts of town. Granted, it may have felt a little longer, because I did get lost occasionally, the map a little harder to follow when many roads were stacked over the top of each other.

I found a bakery by chance and got a delicious apple pastry for lunch, to have along with the snacks I’d brought. (Monaco is famed for expense, so I didn’t plan to make a lot of purchases here, for budgetary reasons.)

When I did eventually make it down the hill, I saw a sign to the palace. Having no real plan for the order of my day – just a ‘top three’, which was really a ‘top two’, because I belatedly realised I had muddled my lists and put a Nice attraction on my Monaco list– I decided I would head there since I was close. And so, I proceeded to walk up several floors worth of a different hill. Perhaps hills are how people in Europe maintain their figures. There is an abundance of them.

Apparently, you can enter the palace at certain times of the year, despite the fact that someone actually lives there. It is open from April until mid-October, a trend I am finding to be common in Europe. Many things are closed over the cooler months. This really funnels tourist visits into the summer I feel, which seems like it would only add to the quell of crowds. It was a struggle to get on the train in late October – what is it like at peak times? From the outside, the palace is nice enough, though I am clearly becoming a little numb to European architecture. A lot of architecture has the same feel because it is from a similar era, or simply because it just has that old, traditional feel that is almost non-existent in Australia. Anyway, ultimately, I was more impressed by the views from the palace than the views of the palace. There are also a lot of repurposed cannons and cannonballs in this area though, which I found interesting, used as part of chairs and zoning off different areas.

From the palace, I was able to follow a sort of natural flow over to the Cathedrale of Many Names – as dubbed by me. It is called Monaco Cathedral, Saint Nicholas Cathedral, and The Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate, or sometimes The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, and there is of course the French equivalent in all these names (French being Monaco’s official language, which is at least moderately helpful to me). I will say, it is very stately. What was most striking to me though, was the tombs of previous Monarchs you could view inside, and the blank one just there… waiting. I wonder if the Prince (larger countries have kings, but principalities are smaller so the reigning title is Prince, as in the name) walks past it ever and thinks… “Ah, that one’s mine.” I know people do pre-purchase their own graves, but it always seems very odd and morbid to me.

Moving on to much, much happier things, I followed the path along the coast from the cathedrale, down to the Musee oceanographique de Monaco – Monaco’s ocean museum. This was my top priority in my Monaco visit. The ticket booth is around the side, and while it was a fairly short line to buy a ticket from a person, there was no line at self-service and it was one euro cheaper. People seemed to only not be using it because there were other people lined up somewhere else. I saw a few people switch over once they saw I had gotten my ticket. The building is palatial, and from what I understand, purpose-built during the 1890s and 1900s – this means that much of the internal building work, such as the designs in floor tiles, are all ocean themed. I enjoyed this very much.

It has been built right on the edge of the cliff, so you really get to take in full ocean views once you make it over to the far wall. To get to the aquarium, you take side stairs down, and as with many aquariums, follow a particular path through the relative dark. I won’t expound too much on the various creatures, but I did find the information provided to be very informative and easy to follow. It is readily available in French, English, and Italian. The jellyfish were probably my favourite, but they usually are because they just seem so magical, bobbing along in their illuminated glow. Part of the aquarium path leads you back outside for a while to a turtle exhibit, which I imagine is a bit more exciting in warmer months when the turtles, by and large, aren’t all hibernating.

After you’ve done the aquarium downstairs, you can head upstairs to the museum floor where you can see various artefacts and a few models of different ocean finds, research equipment, replicas of – usually sized down – Inuit hunting and living equipment, as well as historical ocean and ship paintings. There is also a simulation room, with interactive image projection onto all four walls and the floors. Largely enjoyed by kids scaring off birds or having shoals of fish move away from their feet, it gives some insight into a wide variety of ocean and Artic scapes and weathers, and is a nice place to stop and rest.

On ground floor, there are a few small museum items and paintings to look at on your way out, and there was a photography exhibit running during my visit as well.

I enjoyed this experience wildly, even with one of the museum rooms closed off for refurbishment.

It was threatening to rain after that, and I had forgotten my raincoat. But I have no idea when or if I will ever head back to Monaco again, so I decided to push my luck. The other thing on my Monaco list was the Roseraie – the Princess Grace Rose Garden. Not really the right time of year for it, but I thought perhaps they wouldn’t all be spent. And while the season was largely over, the ones that remained had some really wonderful perfumes.

I wandered back along to the main port where there seemed to be some sort of fair happening, and made my way up the other hill just opposite to see the casino. The casino is rather iconic to Monaco, and I was tempted to go in just because my foreign passport would let me. Ultimately, I decided I was too tired, especially after making a wrong turn and adding to my journey, so I just enjoyed the casino from the outside and at a distance. It was quite nice lit up.

Finally, I turned and faced the bulk of the hills – what came down had to return back up again. I got my return ticket to Nice in the nick of time and ran to get on the next train. I marvelled at my luck that the evening rain had held off and I hadn’t needed my raincoat at all during my whole visit. However, my mask was in my raincoat, and I was packed on a train, still with standing room only, and when I moved to get away from one person coughing, the next area seem to have another half a dozen people coughing! Alas.

Tune in next time when I travel to Marseille, and the outcome of that train ride eventually makes itself known!