Pisa Solo

[Maryanne]With Kyle off to work I was left to entertain myself in Pisa for a week (along with a week’s worth of boat jobs to do also, but priorities and all that!).

About 17 years ago, I found myself in Pisa under very different circumstances; my best friend Annie and I were doing a ‘grand tour’ of Italy. That trip of perhaps a week has given me hundreds of fond memories. We rented a car in Rome which provided enough entertainment in its own right. Both Annie and I prefer our own driving to that of the other; at that time Annie drove like a snail (bicycles overtook us) and she thought I drove like a F1 racer so we’d race to the car each morning to bag the driver position We travelled to Sienna (and ate pizza in its beautiful square Piazza del Campo), Florence for its great art, San Gimignano with its Manhattan skyline of medieval towers, and Pisa for it’s single famed tower (the town was mostly closed when we arrived – oh, and we got a parking ticket which I believe we have still to settle!).. Annie was visibly pregnant at the time so it was left to me to sample the local wines. It was a most wonderful road trip. So many fond memories, and these are refreshed now I find myself again in Pisa.



The leaning tower (bell tower) and associated parent cathedral
Well, the leaning tower is still here, and Pisa is still closed (like much of Italy) between around noon and 4pm daily.


A pretty impressive wind gauge/dial found above the tourists in Piazza del Duomo - and a beautiful flowering tree from the botanical gardens
Since I’d be based here for a week, and I’d already ‘seen’ the tower, I was able to focus on the rest of the city (OK, so I did go and see the tower again, several times, when in Pisa and all that). I, like so many tourists, had focused on the tower and ignored the rest. I was amazed at some of the beautiful squares and gardens not a block away from the tower that were empty of tourists, while the main “Square of Miracles” with the leaning tower was overrun and many tourists deep.

I had a bit of exposure to underwater archaeology was really excited at the prospect of visiting the “Museum of the Ancient Ships of Pisa” (see here) which opened in 2010. An excavation and building work of some new railway buildings uncovered an ancient harbour complete with 16 complete Roman boats, (1st century B.C - 4th century A.C.). Nine of the boats were recovered and preserved over a 10 year period and now on display. No other ships of this age and completeness have ever been recovered, and these are especially well preserved for any wooden vessel, and in some cases included cargo and tools (indicating perhaps flash flood events, or unexpected sinking, led to their loss? Rather than simply abandoned old boats). Various web searches had led to conflicting information on the opening hours, so I eventually asked at the Tourist Information office. Unfortunately I was advised it had been closed for about a year (after only opening last year) due to ‘financial issues’. Oh well, one less thing to spend my money on I guess – what shame.


The 'other' Towers of Pisa, to fortify and protect, are common along the old city wall
Pisa is an historic University town (University officially founded in 1300’s, but active since 11th century), so away from the tourist focus, there is plenty else buzzing in Pisa. There are ancient walls and along the wall towers aplenty around the city. There are Roman ruins, tranquil piazzas, arches, coffee shops, restaurants, market places, churches and a labyrinth of passageways to explore. So without too much focus I was happy to wander around Pisa and discover accidentally what it had to show.


Must eat your greens (and yellows and all colours)
Italy is the home of the ‘slow food movement’ with its goals of promoting alternative to ‘fast food’, and one of my hopes during my time here is to do more cooking and pick up a few tips and recipes. The vegetable markets are an obvious place to linger, and for now I’m finding it a bit of a culture shock to be surrounded by unknown vegetables, or even known vegetables looking very different (courgette/zucchini with flowers attached – apparently you can eat them, aubergine/egg-plant in sizes much bigger than I’m used to, and in many different colours, and many other examples of strangeness). I feel I need a guiding hand before I’m brave enough to experiment!


Buildings preparing for the luminara
Next weekend (unfortunately we’ll miss it) is the luminara festival here in Pisa. The bridges and buildings lining the river Arno are covered with small oil lamps (arranged to outline the windows and building features), candles float on the river. All lit at sunset, the Arno becomes the place to be and just in case there wasn’t enough sparkle the evening is topped off with a firework display. Clearly the preparations are well under-way with the boards for placing the candles already fitted to many of the buildings.

So among my boat and household chores I had several excursions to Pisa (mostly on my fast deteriorating bicycle – it’s about a 35min ride on flat terrain). I have working cell phone and Internet service aboard now (big relief!), and I managed to befriend and meet up with another Couch-surfer to enjoy a stroll through the botanical gardens and a coffee in a trendy student hot-spot - thanks Ariadna. Progress with my Italian: Poor. Oil change: done. Not a bad week at all, all I need now is my husband back, such a shame he was unable to enjoy it too.



Different views of Pisa

Kyle Adds a Bit of Perspective

[Kyle]Firstly, in response to Maryanne's recent post of balance and thanks. Of course I’m not going to let Maryanne walk 2 hours with me on a dark road to the train station! She’d just have to turn around and walk another 2 to get back when almost everybody else in this part of the world is asleep.

I managed to escape the bulk of the rain this time. It started when I was about five blocks from the station. There were enough awnings and balconies to walk under that I wasn’t too wet when I got there.

The train ride was the worst I’ve ever had. The station was heavily populated with the sleeping lumps of the homeless, a few ranting drunks and one particularly scary fellow who seemed like he needed meds having a violent screaming match with himself. He didn’t hurt anyone, just yelled a lot. Everybody gave him a wide berth.

I was relieved when the train arrived. I shouldn’t have been. The inside of the train had a very seedy atmosphere. The lights were all out, presumably so people could sleep. The only lighting in the car was what came through the windows. from the station and a dim bulb at each end by the door. Each car was divided into compartments of six seats each with a narrow hallway down one side, like a cell block. As soon as I boarded, it became apparent that they had sold way more tickets than seats. Every bit of flat space was covered with people trying to sleep in the least uncomfortable position they could manage. I carefully squeezed by people standing while simultaneously trying to avoid stepping on the hands or hair of people sleeping on the floor. When I reached it, my compartment was a mass of bodies all stretched out horizontally with their feet on the opposite seats. My seat was occupied by someone who I would not have been able to disturb without waking up the whole compartment. I started to wonder if I had somehow boarded the wrong car. I was not about to re-climb my way back over the fifty people I had already disturbed and the train was leaving in a few seconds anyway. In the end, I stood until the next stop hoping my seat would clear then. It didn’t. I eventually found myself on a fold-down, backless seat in the aisle with my bag between my feet. At first, I would get up to let people squeeze by. By the end of the trip, I was just letting them rake over me with their luggage like everyone else was doing. I spent the three-hour and forty-five minute trip in a miserable state of half sleep alternating between balancing my head on my hands, my shoulder and a nearby handrail. Time has rarely passed so slowly for me.

I took the 2:15 train to avoid losing another precious half-day off and another €100 for a hotel. These days, we simply can’t spare either. If Calnited would give me back my flight benefits, I would have been able to take a 7:00 flight out of Pisa instead.

Maryanne’s right about the marinas, too. The +60% catamaran surcharge that seems to be common around here is killing us. In spite of the nice things she said about me preferring her in a marina, which I do for her safety and convenience, I think we’re going to have to go back to our old mode of finding a nearby anchorage and rowing in. Good anchorages that are well protected from all sides are few and far between on this coast, but we have to try something.

Maryanne has been really good about supporting me through my half of our lives. She’s been a great sport about doing everything she possibly can on her end so that all I’m left with when I finally do make it home is the long, overnight sails. We occasionally have a little conflict when she wants to really pile up the tourist itinerary but I just can’t spare the energy for the whole thing. She is super-sweet and she is only doing it because she doesn’t want me to miss anything. She doesn’t want me to feel like my life is all of the work and none of the fun. It’s possible to get so tired that I no longer care about missing some really neat museum in town, though. I just need to get a little rest – the real kind, not sitting up. She’s been getting better lately about looking into my glazed eyes and suggesting we take it easy this afternoon.

Monaco to Pisa

[Kyle]We had originally been told by the Fontvielle marina that we would have to leave at Noon, we were hoping to leave about 6pm, but we pressed them until they finally agreed to 2pm. I had hoped to check out much later, not only to have more time to explore Monaco, but to wait for more favorable winds, which were not supposed to really get going our way until 8:00 or so.

We left and immediately found the winds along the coast were all over the place, both in direction and speed. The local midday sea breeze and the topography were interfering with the larger regional wind pattern. Eventually, the wind set in as a direct headwind, which we were really hoping was short lived. I went off watch and Maryanne spent the rest of the day tacking against it and the prevailing current, which runs westward along this coast.

By the time I came back on at Midnight, Monaco, while farther, was still visible. We were struggling right at about the French/Italian border. About an hour later, the winds finally stabilized and started blowing hard from the north. It stayed that way for most of the trip across the Liguran Sea.

The wind began to die down a few hours before we reached the other side at the entrance of the Arno River, just downstream of Pisa. Our speed decreased until we were going slowly enough that it became clear that we were not going to make it until just after it got properly dark. We considered heaving to until daylight, but the prospect of sitting watches to spot traffic on a boat that was not even moving had little appeal. We were both pretty beat and were in need of a long night of sleep together instead of short, alternating watches. Conditions were calm and we had the radar up and running. We decided to go for a riskier night entry, hoping to find a fuel dock or something to tie to while we slept until morning.


Some of the smaller fishing nets on the River Arno

And in the distance, the net that stopped us... We discovered later we could have got around on the other side!
We came in at reduced speed. Everything went pretty smoothly for the most part. Except for the occasional surprise unlit mooring ball, there weren’t any real hazards until further up the river. All along the banks of the Arno, there are giant gantries supporting big, square nets. They were like the ones we encountered going up the Garonne in France only this time on a much bigger, commercial scale. Once the river became narrow enough, the supporting gantries gave way to lines strung across the width. The lowest height of these lines was reported to be 18M at the bottom of the sag, so they should not have been an impediment to 14.6M high Footprint. At the first line, we had to squeeze between a lowered net and the mooring line of a trawler backed to a quay. It was a pretty tight squeeze, so I slowed to dead slow and we inched our way through. At some point, we stopped moving. I was reluctant to put the boat in gear as I was worried we had caught a rudder or even the drive leg on one of the trawler’s bow lines or possibly some hidden part of the submerged net. Then I looked up and saw the net support line gently resting against our furled Genoa at about 13M. Yikes! Glad those weren’t electrical cables.

We inched our way back the way we came and tied up to the next available dock with free space at the NovaMarina, where we slept and slept and slept.

The next morning at about the time we would expect a marina to open, we roused ourselves and went looking for the person in charge to no avail. After several conversations in broken English and Italian that always seemed to lapse into French, we were able to determine that the guy, Paolo, generally only shows up a few times a day, less on Sundays. It was Sunday. Almost everyone told us he would come right down if we called his number. We tried explaining over and over that it was our first few hours in Italy and that we didn’t have phones yet, but everybody just kept telling us to call.


New Country Flag raising ceremony! And Kyle tries to make contact with the locals in Italy with a UK SIM card with barely enough credit!
After swapping around our various sim cards, we were able to call on roaming and international bouncing. We had enough credit for about five minutes. I was relieved after starting in my halting Italian that Paolo responded with good, quick English. He said “Va bene”. We could stay all week. He would be there in three hours to give us the key and the gate code.

Three hours was not going to work for me. I needed a train ticket to work and I was worried I would not be able to buy one in the wee hour of Monday morning (I turned out to be right). We decided that instead of going into Pisa together later, the best thing to do was split up. She would wait for Paolo while I rode the bicycle into town to get my ticket. Afterward, on the way back, I made a detour and went to the leaning tower. I was worried we’d never get around to it otherwise. How would I explain to people that I sailed to Pisa but never got around to seeing the tower?


Leaning Tower of Pisa - Kyle's initial back street views and a more traditional one!
It was pretty cool. I approached from the opposite side of the angle seen in the most famous photos. I was just riding through the street, past cafés and shops and there it was: the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I allowed myself a few minutes to marvel at the fact that I was actually there, but time was running short and I had to get back to Maryanne and Footprint.

A note to balance things and to thank my wonderful husband

[Maryanne]Well, if you’ve been keeping up with the blog you will know that we’ve been busy and jetting about (as best you can on a sail boat) in the Med. The blog doesn’t accurately reflect the huge struggle this current lifestyle it is for Kyle. He often only has 2 nights at home after an overnight commute home. He’ll want to night sail through one of those nights to the next place on the agenda, and gets up early the next one to find a train or whatever transport to the airport to start all over again. Right now we are just outside Pisa in Italy. Kyle had a two-hour walk (in torrential rain) to get a 2:15am train to Rome for his flight back to work (where he will eventually check into a hotel for a well deserved rest). It is ridiculous and I can’t persuade him to change the plan much.

In order to negate the need to pay import tax on the boat (at 20% of the boat value) we must make it to Turkey by the end of November, and Kyle is keen to spend most of his vacation time really relaxing in Greece where we also hope to meet up with some very good friends. To do all this we must put in the miles now. Kyle likes sailing and he is resisting having me move the boat while he is at work; he doesn’t want to miss out on the fun, but of course he misses out on being the tourist!

He is a complete hero, he wants to leave me in safe marinas while he is off to work, and he won’t even let me walk with him to the train stations at such early hours. There seems to be nothing I can do to help except make sure he is well fed and looked after when he is home. We both look forward very much to his eventual retirement.

Things are also proving to be much more expensive than we imagined. Kyle’s commute, his train and hotel fees, are one obvious big expense. Marinas are generally expensive, and where we’ve sought out the rare cheaper ones (described in our guide book as in the range €25-40 a night) they are always exactly at the top end of that range (or well beyond), and normally with a catamaran surcharge and with no weekly discounts. All the reasonable anchorages have long ago been turned into marinas, so if we want to save money we are left with questionable anchorages in inconvenient locations.

While Kyle is off at work I try and do a mix of being a tourist, connecting with locals, and boat and household chores, while also keeping in touch with family and friends across the globe. I seem to be doing a lousy job at all of these, and Kyle has little chance to even try.

Wi-Fi is rare in marinas, or anywhere in fact, I’m always very excited if we do have a reliable connection. The odd coffee shop will have it, as will McDonalds, but these sites are not so common (or convenient to our boat), and these are nothing like logging in to check your mail with your breakfast aboard. Even for Kyle and me to keep in touch with each other is a struggle and/or an expense as we keep changing country and don’t have the right SIM in the phone for the ‘local’ calls.

On a practical note we have become fans of RebTel, a phone service that allows us to call each other back and forth at a more reasonable rate than our phone companies allow. As soon as I have a SIM card for each country and find Wi-Fi, I set our RebTel account up so Kyle can call me from the States at a much cheaper rate than through his AT&T account – in fact we can each use our individual phones to call each other on ‘local’ number and then just pay a reduced ‘RebTel’ fee for the international part of the call – it helps. Of course if good Wi-Fi is available then Skype is much preferred and I pay something trivial like $4 a month to make unlimited calls to the USA. On another practical note – our French Orange SIM kept losing credit inexplicably, and rapidly. I assume other provider SIMs will also do this in the future. It turns out simply installing the SIM in the phone (in my case an iPhone) removes/blocks the menu that you can use to manually prevent Internet through the phone service provider. Opening many apps, or checking already downloaded emails was (unbeknown to me) racking up Internet minutes off my phone credit at a disgusting rate. Eventually I came across a 3rd party app (optional donation) to stop this and will share and recommend for those who follow: with wi-fi/internet on your phone – go to web site unlockit.co.nz and download the software/app to turn off phone internet behind the scenes – easy and has saved me a fortune of money and frustration.

So yes, we finally left France and are now in Italy; so I must turn to my Italian lessons. In my naivety I had assumed Italian would be fairly straightforward with its similarity to French (both romance languages) but this isn’t the case (at least not so far, for me) and I’m struggling to get past the first lessons. This both takes up time and limits the interaction I can have with the locals; I feel very rude and will just have to keep working at it, especially since we plan to overwinter here.

I know we lead an amazing lifestyle, and get to see fantastic places and live incredible experiences. These are the things we normally post about in the blog. This post is to add a little more balance to those viewing from the outside.

Finally a big thank you to all of you who have hosted Kyle on the odd weekend or evening he has been in your neck of the woods, he really appreciates having your friendship and company – and I really appreciate you looking after him.

Adventures in Monte Carlo (Monaco)

[Kyle]After a long commute home to the boat in Toulon, I had to hit the ground running for our next trip. The forecast was for a switch from big tailwinds to big headwinds right around the time I was to get home, so I wanted to get as much of the tailwind as possible.


Leaving Toulon and preparing for Monaco - we'll need that courtesy flag!
We did fine leaving Toulon harbor and up until the next corner, where we turned right into the teeth of the building wind. We had 27 miles to go before we could turn the following corner and swing the wind back away from the bow, where we like it. We were also fighting a current so there was no benefit in turning off the wind more - if we did this we'd simply be going backwards! It took us all night to bash through those 27 miles. It was a long, miserable night. To add to the pounding, shaking, and low speeds, the weather was also spitting rain about half of the time.

I had originally hoped to make it to a protected anchorage by St. Rafael by about 3am, where we could catch up on some rest and wait out the rest of the blow until milder tailwinds kicked in midday. By the time we had made it through our 27 miles, it was already daylight. The wind had also made its predicted shift right about then. We were tired, but I only had a few days off of work, so we decided the best thing was to keep sailing right on up to Monaco.

After the corner, our sail was lovely summer sailing the whole way. It was painful, but we had so little time that we had to sail right past LOTS of places we wanted to see: St Rafael, St Tropez, Antibes, Cannes, Nice. At each one, a cluster of sailboats meandered around while in between, super yachts and mega yachts raced to the next place on their itineraries. (Mega yacht owners to super yacht owners: “Oh, you have a super yacht. How cute.”) It was all so beautiful. The little blue harbors were all backed by giant mountains of granite and marble covered with a pleasant mix of warm weather foliage that was heavy on flowers. As we passed Nice, with its busy airport, we started seeing a lot of helicopter traffic, mostly shuttling between the airport and Monaco.

Monaco stands out along this coast because it looks like Park Avenue has been wedged in between a mix of villages and villas on either side. The entire little country is jam-packed with mostly high-rise apartment buildings at the density of major capital cities.

As we approached, I asked Maryanne if she managed to obtain a Monaco courtesy flag (the one conspicuously missing from our compliment). With all that she had to during the past week, like building the passerelle, purchasing a Monaco flag had fallen off of the bottom of her list. Undaunted, she quickly dove into a locker and produced the materials, which she then spent the next hour or so hand sewing into a very high quality courtesy flag (She had decided pulling out the sewing machine was not worth the effort). Monaco has a very simple two-color design, so it wasn’t too difficult, but the quality was very good with nice, straight hems and even little loops sewn in for attaching the corners. It’s honestly nicer than most flags I’ve seen in stores. {Maryanne: Kyle is so sweet! This is just the second flag I’ve ever made, the first being a single yellow rectangle of the Q flag. With the seams an iron would have really made things easier, but we only needed the flag for 24 hours and I didn’t think anyone would have been inspecting it too closely – so I sewed it on route – just in time!}


First sights of high rise Monaco - and the Oceanographic institute
We arrived in Monaco just before sunset to the older and smaller of the two marinas: Fontvielle. What an incredible setting for a marina. On one side, it was bordered by the district of Fontvielle, which has the feel of an upscale American condo development, on the other, soaring way above the tops of even the largest masts was a vertical cliff topped by the cathedral and the palace grounds. At night, the cliffs are illuminated with colored floodlights for an even more dramatic effect.

Even though it was late and we’d just finished a 26-hour sail, we decided we just HAD to go out to the Casino Monte Carlo. Since a jacket and tie was required, I donned the Prince Charlie (Kilt) and we set off to walk across the country to the casino on the other side.

It seemed like it should have been straightforward enough. We immediately encountered a couple of problems. The first is that Monaco is not on a grid system. Since there are only a handful of roads, I assumed this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. We would just navigate by pilotage. This is easier when there’s a sun or some stars available for reference, but I’m still pretty good at finding things with my “I think it’s that way” method. Since Monaco is such a steep country, many of its roads look like Lombard street in San Francisco; very confusing. I still had a pretty good idea of where we were going, but Maryanne gave me a look that said she was less confident. Confidence regarding where we were going was something she wanted a high level of since she was dressed for the casino and wasn’t wearing the most comfortable of walking shoes.

The other problem was the cliff. There were no roads nor path at the base of the cliff and a sign at the entrance to the tunnel punching through clearly indicated no pedestrians; our only option became to go up, up and ever up. Once on the other side we could see the casino just beyond the newer, giant, marina, but there was still the question of how to get there. The Grand Prix had just ended a couple of days earlier and crash barriers and stadium seating blocked access to all ‘normal’ paths and crossings. We wandered this way and that for what seemed like a long time, looking for gaps in the barriers to reach our goal before we finally spotted a unusually small sign with an arrow indicating the casino was down and to our right (even though we could see it above and to our left). We descended the indicated stairway to find a marble lined tunnel which passed under the road, and joined up with elevators that discharged us onto the street about ½ block from the casino.


A late night foray into the unknown


Kyle at the Casino entrance wishing that it was his car parked outside!
On arriving at the casino via the grand entrance, the first thing we noticed (apart from everyone taking pictures) was a whole string of top end sports cars parked right out front (and hilariously, one mini cooper - how did that guy get to park there?). We paid our cover charge and went in. The casino is very grand and beautiful (no photography allowed, unfortunately. We couldn’t even find postcards of the inside), but it was surprisingly subdued. I’d expected such a famous place would be jam packed with people waiting for their chance at the tables, but there could not have been more than 100 people inside and only 8 tables in a relatively small, but grand, hall. Beyond was a second hall of quiet slot machines (no bells, no dinging, not even that much flashing! Just the restrained sounds of buttons being pushed).

In the main hall about half the tables were completely unoccupied (those with the high minimum bets) we went to the bar and purchased a couple of drinks (After both considering a Martini, shaken not stirred, Maryanne had a tequila sunrise and I had a whisky to match my outfit), but heck, you only live once right? The drinks were about €20 each, but to their credit the bar tender glugged generous portions – mine seemed to be at least a triple.

Back on the labyrinthine walk we had on several occasions remarked we were expecting it to be equally difficult to find our way home; the drinks certainly weren’t going to help with that!

We returned to the main hall and observed a few games. Most people were bandying about huge amounts of money (plenty of €500 notes being thrown on the tables in exchange for chips or even for direct bets). One guy changed his €10,000 chip into a €5,000 and a bunch of €50’s, about half or which he lost at the next spin of the wheel, all without the least hint of concern at all. I felt a bit phony asking the croupier for €50 of €5 chips. We played a hand full of numbers and mixes and lost on all. In the end, I tossed our last chip on the table and asked the croupier to put it on number 14 at the other end of the table for me. He used his pusher stick and moved it to approximately number 24 (oh well, no better chance of winning than number 14), soon afterwards another croupier at the table tidied up by moving it to one of the corners on the the grid, giving us 21, 22, 23 and 24 at lower odds. The marble struck 22 and €40 worth of chips in a neat stack were slid over to us. I briefly considered investing the €40 in another game, but then I realized those chips were real money that I could use for something lasting longer than 3 minutes (like a three hour train ride), and thought the better of it. I hadn’t really expected to come away rich, particularly at roulette, which has relatively poor odds, but I put on a bow tie, placed a bet at Monte Carlo and had the croupier slide me back a stack of chips. That was the full experience as far as I was concerned and I was quite happy. I didn’t need to spend my next seven paychecks trying to win enough for one of those cars.

We watched others do a lot of that instead until the hour started getting to us, then we decided to brave the walk back home. Outside, we found it drizzling. In no time, that turned into rain that quickly became bad enough to send people running for shelter in buildings and under awnings. We looked at each other and telepathically agreed to dive into a cab.


Kyle prepares for his invite onto one of the Grand Prix teams for next year - apparently if the bus can do it, so can he!
Even the cab ride was cool. About half of the way back was on the grand prix route. Since it hadn’t yet been dismantled it still looked like the grand prix route. It was pretty cool to go whizzing by crash barriers and zinging under big banners. The other cool thing was the tunnel to Fontvielle. It turned out not to be a tunnel at all, but a whole subterranean road system with turnoffs, intersections and even roundabouts. No wonder they didn’t want us walking in there.

The next morning, we worked out that our first 6 hours in Monaco cost us around $400. Ouch, that’s not sustainable.


Writing Postcards and sipping coffee outside the Casino
The sun woke us up later the same morning much earlier than we would have liked. We weren’t about to waste our giant marina fee sleeping, so we made coffee and headed out to get some pictures of the place in daylight. There was much less trial and error getting to the casino. We found all of the Lamborghini spots occupied by delivery vans. We sat at a café next door and watched the world go by while sipping espresso and Perriér Menthe watching Ferrari after Ferrari drive past.


Shopping Malls and the Cathedral - very grand





Exploring the top of the cliff, and the Palace
We headed back via the palace cliffs, which also held the Oceanographic Institute, the cathedral where the entire past royal family is entombed (including Grace Kelly) and what must be the most posh neighborhood in the whole world. From the tops of the cliffs, we could see Footprint down at the Marina. She really did look tiny amongst all of those giant boats.


Views from the cliffs - and Footprint sitting waiting for us to return
[Maryanne]Monte Carlo was to be a highlight of this trip and a destination I had been very much looking forward to ever since I understood it to be a possibility. The country and town (hard to distinguish between the two) have the feel of a grown up Disney Land. Everything is clean and perfect. There are no crumbling buildings, street litter, or graffiti. There are lots of public park areas with beautiful planting, and plenty of sculpture, fountains and other artwork. Many of the buildings have amazingly ornate paintings, mosaics or gilt work, along with beautiful balconies with cascading flowers, so each home seems very special. Even the only hospital we saw seemed like an elite and very grand resort from the outside.



A tidy town with lots of attention to artistic detail
All the boring things needed for day to day life (your basic high street stores, etc.) were hidden away underground and seemed accessible ONLY if you knew where to look for them. The street maps we had of Monaco seemed useless pretty quickly; the whole city/country is built in 3-D with major pedestrian walkways and even giant malls and supermarkets all underground cut well into the rocks – on the maps we had, only the roads and surface features seemed to be marked, and it was not even clear if these roads were always above or below ground… All made for good fun. We didn’t get to spend nearly as much time as we’d have liked there, but we DID make it there and we did win at the casino (OK, it might not have been more than the total we bet, but we did win). How cool is that!