Continued from yesterday”¦The next stop was a quick tour of the Apollo Gallery next door to the Italian Gallery. This is ridiculously opulent room, with carved and gilded walls and ceilings. On the walls are portraits of various important people and on the ceilings are more statues. There is so much gilding that the walls and ceiling look to be solid gold from a distance.
This room was full of fancy things. The centerpiece are Continue reading
Our hotel could only take us for one night, so we checked out early in the morning and asked them to hold our bags. After breakfast, we’d head to the tourism office to see if they would help us find a room. But first thing first. We needed a real American breakfast.
We walked over to the Breakfast in America diner. We are happy to report that breakfast was truly everything we hoped it would be. We had Continue reading
Yesterday morning we said our goodbyes to Jaime. He had just come for a quick weekend visit and needed to get going fairly early to catch his flight back to England. Then we moved to a permanent spot in the marina. We were absolutely delighted to find it was a floating finger dock, although it is a shared berth. It’s funny how our perspective of what is exciting has changed so much. Finger docks make tying up so darn easy. As they seem to always do in the Med, they had us back in.
We were dismayed to find that the shore power wasn’t working. Eric messed with it for a while, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Darn, no power means that our time away from Kosmos was going to be limited to three or four days, max. We signed up for wifi internet and found ourselves glued to the internet all day. We haven’t had internet since Rome, and so much has been happening in the world that we had a lot to catch up on.
We didn’t actually venture out until dinner time, where we settled on a pizza place along the waterfront. We’d seen a lot of people in there the night before, so we figured it was probably good. We got a phenomenally good salad served with warm marinated duck, foie gras, hard boiled eggs, lettuce and tomatoes. The duck was melt in your mouth tender. For those that don’t know, foie gras is goose liver, usually served cold. The texture is creamy, more like a cheese spread than a meat. It has a light flavor, and doesn’t even remotely taste like any other types of livers we have tried in our lives. It is also very good.
This morning we packed up and walked over to the bus station. The skies were gray and it was cool out. Gray skies means the solar panels won’t be making much electricity, but cool out means fridge/freezer won’t suck as much juice, so that probably evens out power consumption. We made a wrong turn somewhere along the way and took the long, scenic route to the bus stop. The town is nice. The old part looks a lot like St. Tropez, with narrow cobblestone lanes and quaint, traditional old buildings painted cheerful colors. The old town is small, much smaller than St. Tropez. The rest of town that we walked through is more modern, with many of the buildings looking very 60’s era. We saw a lot of apartment buildings and a few houses. It looks to be a mostly residential area with not a lot of commercial activity. The houses vary widely in architectural style, adding to the character. There is a lot of greenery around, with many flowering plants in bloom. It is pretty.
When we did finally make it to the bus stop, we had missed the bus by Continue reading
Continued from yesterday”¦ As we trudged up, we passed through a clearing with two small buildings surrounded by a grassy field. They were well maintained and looked like they were actively used as vacation houses. Christi was amazed that anyone would want to be in such a remote place, with such a long hike down to the closest village. And there wasn’t much of a village there, for that matter. To get to the nearest grocery store was a fairly long drive. Antonio explained that in the olden times, these were summer houses. One building was for the people, the other(s) for the cows and goats. Farmers would bring their livestock up for the summer to graze in the cleared fields. The farmers made cheese and other goods, then would go to their winter homes lower down on the mountain.
We continued upwards through the forest, and passing through two or three more of these cleared areas. Each clearing had two or three small buildings in the traditional style with a circle of grassy fields around them. They were all abandoned, which Christi thought was no surprise. They were too high up and too isolated to be practical. We stopped for lunch in a shady spot in the forest.
After lunch, we continued up and came to Continue reading
Monaco has the biggest per capita police force in the entire world. There are closed circuit cameras everywhere. The entire city is closely monitored. This made Christi worried as we got dressed. With so many closed circuit cameras, there was absolutely no way to hide from the fashion police, a division that must surely exist here. We were both wearing pants purchased before we set off on our journey and they were way out of style now. Our shoes are practical camping kind of shoes, always totally out of fashion. Going out was risky. We could very well be arrested and deported for our clothing. But we’re risk takers.
We were delighted to see that one of the restaurants on the boardwalk served breakfast. Praise the Lord! We love going out to breakfast, and we hadn’t expected to see breakfast here. When we got our meal, we were sad to see that breakfast consisted of one soft boiled egg, toast, and a 16 ounce cup of tea, all for only $11.00 USD. So, yes, in this case, Monaco has lived up to its reputation for ridiculously expensive restaurants. And tax in restaurants here is 20%, which can add up fast.
After breakfast, we headed over to the historic district to do some sightseeing.
We couldn’t believe how nice the weather was. It was bright and sunny with no clouds in the sky. It was warm, but not hot. Talk about a nice change of pace from cold, rainy and gloomy Rome. We walked southeast down the boardwalk towards the mouth of the bay. At the end of the boardwalk, there is a set of stairs that takes you into what looks to be an old fortress. The round area on the right is now used as a theater.
The fortress is built on a sheer cliff, and these days is Continue reading