11-2010

This small principality on Cote d’Azur was one of my most recent visits but someone that was with me complained that I have not written about it yet “because you are ashamed of what people might think” as she told  me. So this is Monaco which I was lucky to visit with one of my colleagues and a very good friend of mine. I don’t know if I should mention her name or not but this is for you, Anna. Oops!

One of the pocket size countries of the world -the smallest is the Vatican City- Monaco is the size of a city. In fact if you drive on the A1, the French highway, a little over the speed limit you might pass it without noticing. This is the country that has about 8000 inhabitants, the rest 25000 are just residents. It has the most difficult citizenships of the world. These are the rich and famous in all their beauty.

You can visit Monaco in a day from Nice and that was our plan as well. The cost of life in this place is beyond any kind of logic. One of our jokes was to sit outside the real estate agencies and check out some places, trying to pick which would be the right for me or Anna. Of course no place was right since they all had some downside which we pointed out. I am sure that the income of the inhabitants is enough to support a couple of African countries. This is the unfair world we live in.

Its sights are the beautiful palace where the prince lives and the tiny doll city next to it. By the way the prince had gotten recently married or engaged as we guessed from the pictures that were in every store. Under that “poor neighbourhood” is the beautiful marina with the world’s most luxurious yachts. It’s a site to remember. The city streets look like they are thoroughly cleaned and as for the people, they live in their own dream world. The landscape of the principality, if you skip the sky-high buildings, should have been really dramatic as it’s on the side of a very steep mountain that comes down almost vertical to the sea. Of course we didn’t see the world known Grand Prix. It drives literally on the steps of some of the buildings and it was advertised everywhere. Another place to go is the Grand Casino which is seen in many movies from the ’70s. Now if you are wondering about our visit to it, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you since none of us is a big gambler. And I guess you must have a lot of cash that you don’t need to step your foot in there. After having a big argument about what colour our Ferrari should be, we took Voukefalas and left the rich to decide their own faith.

As small as Monaco is, it was a site to remember as the extremely opposite from some of the countries I have been to and a nice change to my usual of the beaten track countries. And as my father smartly said, “it was about time you visited some country that is not in war or faces some other disaster”. My funny dad always worries about me.

Moments to remember: The look on Anna’s face when we found out that the prince was married. I am joking.

As very correctly my sister and text editor on this site(Kleo) pointed out, when she was checking the texts, the difference between Monaco and Mali(Thanks for reminding me sister)