Lost in Monte Carlo

The information I took with me for my cruise tells me that Monte Carlo is only 1 square mile. So how hard can that be to navigate? Don't let it fool you. Monte Carlo is built on a hillside with tunnels, elevators, and escalators to get you from one street level to another only once you get out of the elevator or off of the escalator you can lose your bearings and be totally lost. Irregardless, I came home with really fond memories of Monte Carlo. . . lots more than I thought I would have since I figured it was a country/town for the rich and only the rich. I was pleasantly surprised and if I do say so, got quite a nice photograph of Monte Carlo. (Jane's Perspective thought: You CANNOT take a bad picture in Europe). See. In this next picture you can see what I mean about tunnels and walkways and elevators and escalators. They are all over the hillside. Ed's got that Monte Carlo "Where the F----- are we?" look.

The best thing about getting "lost" in Monte Carlo is that you can always find the water and thus never lose where you got off the boat. AND if you get lost really early in the morning like we did you'll find flower, fish and vegetable markets everywhere. But by noon they disappear like they were never there.

Lost again, Ed found this statue of an early race car for the Race at Monte Carlo. Since we are big Nascar, Indy, and Formula One race fans it was cool to walk the streets where the race occurs and now every year when we watch the race on tv we can point out places we walked and stood and it just brings back great memories to say we were really there. For one of my souvenirs I got a ticket holder with the Monte Carlo race logos. I put my Nascar tickets in it every year when I go to the Brickyard Race in Indy. Last year someone complimented me on it and asked where I got it. I was really tickled to answer "Oh, I got this in Monte Carlo". Cool.

One thing you'll love about Monte Carlo is the part of the French Riviera that you are on. The water is so clear it looks like the boats (excuse me, in Monte Carlo, they are all yachts) are floating on air.

And the shopping is so cool. Good thing it was Sunday and most of the shops were closed when we walked by or I'm sure I would have gone home with the Prada bag that my husband was pointing out in this photo or a set of Gucci luggage or a fur lined something or other. (Yeah, RIGHT).

Famished for lunch and almost at the end of our cruise with some money in the budget to spare, I talked Ed into lunch in an outdoor cafe right on the Riviera. I just had to take a picture of my 40 Euro chicken salad sandwich.

As if we hadn't walked enough, we found these wonderfully wide stairs and folks were all over them walking up and down so we headed up, and up, and up, and up. Even though they were relatively easy to climb they just seemed to never stop.

Low and behold at the top is the Prince's palace and a view to die for. (That's where I got the first picture in this blog of the city).

Heading back down from the palace, we found that there's an easier way to get up to the palace and that's through all of these cool little walking streets with shops and cafes lining each side. I just had to do a painting of this.

The only thing I regret about Monte Carlo is that I didn't drive a Ferrari. We still had one more city to visit and it would be the only city we would see in France so I was still holding tight to my money in case there was a "to die for" souvenir there. If I ever get a chance to go back to Monte Carlo, though, I'm gonna come off the 80 Euros it takes to drive a Ferrari through the streets of Monte Carlo. Although I missed that we did find the casinos and I can always tell my grandchildren that I gambled in Monte Carlo (even if it was only 5 Euros in a slot machine). Hey, its the principal of the thing that counts (Jane's sometimes Perspective).

Packing for Europe

OK so here's the details of our cruise. But like I said, what we were able to do with $50 or less on this European cruise, you can do likewise for almost any cruise. I'll point out some of my "Jane's Perspective" ideas as we go along. Hold on to your hats, here we go.

Our cruise ship was the M/S Regatta with Oceania Cruises and the duration of the cruise was Nov. 1 through Nov. 11 with departure from Praeus, Greece (Athens), stops in Malta, four Italian ports of call, plus Monte Carlo, Marseille, and Barcelona.

That said, let's go back in time to the day prior to departure.

Here you have two international flight virgins about to embark on the adventure of their lives. Never having packed for anything like this before but having taken motocycle trips when we were younger and nimbler, we pretty much had everything in two medium size bags. Anticipating fall weather (the cruise was in Nov.) I had mostly jogging suits of velour so there was no wrinkle problem, one pair of dress pants (black) and about three dressy (wrinkly free type) blouses. Shoes were a good pair of walking /tennis shoes, a pair of nice flats and one pair of heels. I kept the colors of everything interchangeable. My husband's clothes were jeans and tennis shoes with shirts that he could layer from t-shirts to long sleeve pull overs to sweaters for daily wear and then khakis and a couple of nice dress shirts with a sweater instead of a suit jacket to wear over the shirts to "dress them up" some and cover wrinkles if necessary. He had one pair of hiking type boots and one dress pair of shoes.

I was determined not to have a ton of baggage to take on the plane with me (having heard horror stories about lack of space) and in order to have my hands free for anything else I wanted to do, I took one large purse for carry on and my husband took a small size back pack. Inside these we had any medicines we might need, (including lots of sea sick pills), a book to read, and little else in order to keep them light and to be able to fill them up with other necessary items that might have to be purchased. (We had bigger plans for our backpack and purse for our self-made shore excursions later in the trip.)

Our passports and credit/debit cards were in a neat little wallet that hung around our necks that we pulled out when necessary and hid under our shirts when we didn't need it. I wanted to keep this stuff close cause if all the luggage got lost, purses and backpacks got stolen, we still had everything we needed to make the trip even if we had to spend our $50 a day replacing clothes and personal items. These little around-the-neck wallets were a last thought at Walmart the night before we packed and turned out to be one of the best items we brought along with us.

Whew, I'm almost as tired from typing all this stuff as I was packing it all. So let's pack up our thoughts til tomorrow when the real excitement begins.