Monaco and Monagasques and French drains

Sunday, September 14

So before going into what we did on 9/14, just wanted to share a few thoughts about bathing in France. Sort of like the towel saga. Our apartment had 2 rooms devoted to personal hygiene. One room had a toilet and a sink in it. The other room had a tub and a sink. The tub had a shower attachment but it wasn’t, strictly speaking, a shower – at least, not to our American minds. There was no shower curtain, nor any way for the shower attachment to be positioned on the wall above one’s head. It was a spray attachment that one presumably held in one’s hand while getting wet/rinsing off. As with everything else, we got used to it. And kept the water on the floor to a minimum. The sink in this room had a rotten eggs odor whenever we ran the water. Pat made a comment one evening as we were returning to the car after dinner and she smelled a bad odor – “French drains!” she said. I guess we should be glad that the kitchen sink and the other bathroom sink didn’t smell bad???!!!

Monaco today. Pat and Tony adapted very nicely to what had become our morning routine. Although we were waking up early, we weren’t really getting out of the apartment before 10am each day. We had a leisurely breakfast of cereal and toast and coffee and tea on the terrace, in the cool morning air, and then set out to visit the palace in Monaco.

On this day, we followed the signs to the palace and got there about the same time as a number of tour buses. We toyed with the idea of just joining one of the tours, but they weren’t in English, so that seemed sort of pointless. We did follow the crowd, though, as they seemed to know where they were going. As with most places in the area, the parking was underground and we followed the groups up the escalators and into a shopping mall (how American!) and then we wended our way to the surface where the various parts of the palace grounds were available for touring. The grounds appeared to be a mini city, with housing and government buildings and, of course, the cathedral. Mass was being said when we arrived, so no one was allowed into the cathedral for touring at that point. We decided we’d come back, so we made our way to the palace.

We’d read that the changing of the guard took place every day at 11:55 and I think we got to the front of the palace about 11am. There seemed to be a couple of guards changing their posts, so we wondered “Is this it?? It’s not only early, there are only two guards!” Well, that wasn’t it. So we went in for our tour of the palace. There was a combined price for a tour of the palace and a Napoleon museum next door, so we went for the whole thing and bought our tickets accordingly.

We were issued audio devices in our chosen languages and proceeded on the self-paced tour. No photos allowed in the palace area, which was too bad, as there were some very interesting things. We got to see the courtyard where the prince makes speeches to the citizens of Monaco (Monagasques, as we learned) of which there are only about 5,000 – there are many more people living in Monaco, but they’re not citizens. The courtyard could not have held all 5,000 citizens, but that’s what I remember the audio telling me.

We progressed through a series of rooms where dignitaries are greeted and held until they are allowed into the next set of rooms. The throne room was pretty impressive, and there was lots of history about the royal family. I can’t remember if it was the throne room or another room, but several portraits were arranged of the various generations of the royal family, including Princess Grace, Prince Rainier, and their 3 children – the current prince being their only son. I had forgotten that it was the early 80s when Princess Grace died in a car accident while driving on one of the Corniches. The portrait of the 5 of them was a group portrait that had been painted the year before she died. It is very creepy – an extremely romanticized painting, not nearly of the caliber of the older portraits in the room, and the entire family is dressed in white, with gold trim. Everyone but Grace is awkwardly holding onto each other in some way – Grace stands apart. I didn’t like it at all.

After the tour of the palace, we went outside and it was almost 11:55. There were plenty of tourists there that morning and they were all standing, 10-20 deep, at the rope that separated them from the guard area. I took the opportunity to find a public restroom, but Jim and Tony did their best to stick their cameras into the air and get photos of the several guards who were changing places according to schedule. After all that excitement, we went through the Napoleon museum and then got something to eat. We also got Dylan a cute pair of overalls with Monaco racing emblems on them. I haven’t seen him wear them yet, but they were a little on the large side.

We went back to the cathedral where we were allowed to take photos and there was a beautiful altar that I had no luck taking a picture of but which Tony captured beautifully and sent me later. Several members of the royal family are buried in the cathedral, including Princess Grace and Prince Rainier; there were a few flowers on the prince’s grave, but the princess’s grave was quite covered with flowers. I suspect her son has at least some of them placed every day. People were so interested in lingering at her grave that there was a guard there to move people along – in French, but we got the gist.

This was our last evening with Pat and Tony, so we went out to dinner at a place we had scoped out earlier, called Edmonds – in Cap d’Ail center, so we would be taking a chance on the parking issue, but it all worked out. We had a lovely dinner and I even ordered a glass of wine. However, I had misremembered a glass of sweet Muscadel wine I’d had a few weeks earlier this year as the Muscadet that was on the menu. Ah, one letter can make such a difference – it was very, very dry wine. I forced it down through the course of the dinner.

We lingered over dinner for a nice long time. We got to hear about other trips Pat and Tony had taken in France years ago. They are also planning a trip to India later this year. We also got to see another patron enter the restaurant with her dog, which lay on the floor for part of the time and then got led around the restaurant the rest of the time on a leash by a little girl of about 4 years old who also was there with her own family. Dogs in restaurants!