La Bastide du Golf de Mougins

ok, it was more "collecting a new country" than being really interested in Monaco. Strange, when you go there from Nice airport by bus it costs you 18 € one way, when you go from Nice bus terminal it costs 1 € one way. Monaco is a very clean city. I have never seen so many big and expensive cars. I saw the casino and the castle. Nice, but not spectacular.

I know I always write the same...great weather, such a nice city, good food....but I have to say that Nice was a (very) big surprise for me, I can say that it is my favourite city in Europe (ok, number 2 after Lisbon). You have the mountains, the Cote dŽAzur (when you see the water you know why the name is Cote dŽAzur), the market with fresh vegetables, fruits, honey, oil, soap, you have great restaurants ...

It is Sunday and very wet and miserable here in Antibes. Quite a change from the glorious day we had yesterday. Ideal for computer work in fact... (Except that then things didn't pan out as planned and it is now Monday)

It wasn't my intention to have an entry before my departure but the response to my initial circular has been so overwhelming that I feel it merited an ...

... so we are hoping that our 9kg will suffice but I am not confident. We have been on the continent 5 weeks now and we are still on the first bottle but it is near impossible to guess how much is left. My best guess is that there is a 1/4 left (give or take a 1/4) Electric Boogaloo ... Keeping the lights on We have 2 batteries, one for the car to start and one for leisure. When the Car battery is full then the leisure battery is recharged. We can also hook up to Mains ...

On this morning we left Switzerland and travelled south into Italy en-route to the French Riviera. The scenery was pretty spectacular, with snow-white capped, jagged mountains that seemed to swallow the highway. Surreal!

When we arrived at our hotel we had about 30 mins to get ready for our trip into Monaco! On our drive to Monaco we crossed the bridge that Grace Kelly was killed on in a car accident. The roads are ...

... other spots in Europe, here we didn't need to wear our polar fleeces...) we decided to extend our stay to include the weekend and spoilt ourselves with a stay in a 4 star hotel right near the beach! Its our first splash out since we started and would you believe it was almost in budget!!! Guess the off-season thing really applies here. Its a bit sad that we haven't come here in summer as its a bit chilly still, particularly when the sea breeze comes up. We've been very jealous of the 30 ...

... real world and have worked my way up from the bottom(Somewhat but not really). But Monaco was ok, it was very clean but again it was very small and how hard can it be to manage 3 city blocks. I did manage to see 2 city protests within my 5 hours of in country time. Apparently they were cooks that wanted more money or whatever.

Bottom Line: Monaco is OK. Definitely not a must-see unless you want to feel like a peasant.

... Nice and then the bus to Monaco/Monte Carlo. it took about an 40 minutes and we saw some great scenrey on the way of villages overlooking the mediteranean. Monaco was a bit closed off when we were there because they were setting up for the Grand Prix which is on there soon, so a lot of the pedestrian paths were closed but we still got some good views of the port and the MASSIVE yachts in port there. We also saw the casino but were not ...

After eating a good breakfast on the terrace of our hotel, we drove into Monaco to see the Prince's Palace and the changing of the guard (which only happens once per day at 11:55am). The drive to Monaco was gorgeous! Mountains on one side, the Med on the other! We found a public parking structure, then headed up to Monacoville to see the little storybook town and palace. The gardens on the walk up to the town were ...

... again. We pulled into Milan about 10pm, checked into our hotel room (Yup... 1 room, 4 beds) and Karla went to bed. Kelly, Felix and I found this dicey place around the corner. It was a Spanish Discotech/Diner. But for about 17 Euro, we had a great bottle of wine, and 3 awesome entrees! Not to shabby for a weird place near the train station! Then it was back to the hotel, and to bed before our trip to Venice!!!!