Saturday, May 7, 2011

Monaco

Saturday May 7th
In light of Katie’s red skin, we decided to stay off the beach today.  As there isn’t a lot to do in Nice other than the beach, we took advantage of the time to go to Monaco.  Monaco is only 20 minutes away by train, and we thought we’d check it out, and in the process up our country count to five so far on this trip.  Of course it’s tough to count Monaco as an actual country since it’s only 0.75 square miles in area.  It’s less than a mile end to end and is the second smallest country in the world.  It’s not even run like a real country, but as a section of France with a minister appointed jointly by the president of Franc and Prince Albert II.
There’s not actually a lot to do in Monaco.  I wasn’t dressed appropriately for the casino (no sneakers, coat and tie for gentlemen) and Katie is too young, so we went to the aquarium instead. The aquarium was founded in 1910 by Prince Albert I, and is director for many years was Jacques Costeau.  It was a nice aquarium, perhaps a bit on the small side for the cost of admission.  It was two wings, one with the fish of the Mediterranean Sea, and one with tropical fish.  One of my favorite exhibits was a fish nursery with easily a thousand small clownfish.  They were all less than two months old and ranged in size from ¼” to about 1”.  They were so cute!  Katie asked what their names were and I replied that they were Nemo I, Nemo 2, Nemo 3, Nemo 4……  My other favorite exhibit was giant moray eels. I really love moray eels and these were huge, easily three times as thick as normal moray eels.  It’s actually really weird that I like moray eels because I hate swimming snakes.  Swimming snakes are terrifying, moray eels are awesome.  You figure it out. 


 
After the aquarium we wandered around looking for a reasonable place to eat lunch, but everything was so fancy.  We ended up with Panini at a take out place and caught the train back to Nice.  It was only 2:30 and still too bright to take Katie to the beach so we took a nap in the hotel and hit the beach around 4:30 for an hour or so.  We then wandered off in search of dinner, hoping to be more successful than with lunch.  As Italy is only about 10 miles away here, Italian food dominates the scene and we ended up with absolutely fabulous homemade pasta at a trattoria.  This stuff makes American Italian food seem disgusting.  I had lovely delicious pillows of ravioli with prosciutto and Katie had a creamy ham sauce on fettucine.  Katie said it was the best Italian meal she ever had. Wait until she gets to Italy!

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