Casino Royale and a real Royal Palace

Wednesday, June 9
Day 42
MONACO

After class this morning, I went with Betsy, Paige, Sarah and Marissa to Monaco, which is about a forty minute bus ride from the station in Nice. The bus ride is very windy and bumpy but the scenery is beautiful as the route follows the coastline from Nice to Monaco. We got off at the Monte Carlo Casino, which was designed by Garnier, the famous architect of the Paris Garnier Opera House.We went inside and paid the 10 euro to go look at the casino and the theater (there is an opera house inside the casino) but unfortunately the opera theater was closed! So we kind of wasted 10 euro, but it was cool to go in and look at all the gambling tables and reminisce about James Bond (they filmed the casino scene here!).

Paige, Betsy, Me, Sarah
in front of Monte Carlo Casino (Casino Royale)

Monaco

From the casino we walked down the hill along the pier admiring the beautiful harbor and grabbed lunch at a cafe there on the walkway. Unfortunately there wasn't anything on the menu within in my budget that didn't contain bread so I had to break my "no bread" rule and have a sandwich. It was my first bread in a week though so I'm pretty proud of myself... After eating we continued on and went up the opposite hill to the palace, which is still used as the official residence of the Monacan royal family. That was a really neat experience to visit a palace that was still in use. I didn’t even mind listening to the audio guide (because it was of my own volition and not required). The palace is really pretty, of course, and the history was interesting too. It was funny to learn that a lot of the old masterpieces that were once kept here were lost during the French Revolution. For some reason I seemed to think that the French Revolution only influenced areas in and around Paris, but that is incorrect. Even Monaco lost priceless collections in the Revolution.

On the way to the palace

The Palace of Monaco

We walked to the cathedral down the street from the palace after finishing our tour. There we saw the graves of past monarchs of Monaco, including that of Grace Kelly, the famous American actress turned princess. I also bought a couple handmade souvenirs from the nuns there, who were really nice and spoke to me in French (for the most part) for which I was grateful.
By this time it was about six o’clock so we had to start heading back down to the bus stop to go back to Nice. But it was a good day, we were able to see a lot of Monaco and appreciate its beauty and history. It was really cool to learn that it only has 30,000 citizens (the size of BYU) and the prince of Monaco is only 23 (and single) which Marissa was anxious to point out. She already called dibs though. But she told me I can have the Italian missionary--not sure if that’s a fair trade...