Princess Grace and family, yachts, beautiful scenery and architecture, and a fabulous casino: my images of Monaco. A short 30 minute bus ride from Nice, we followed the Basse Corniche road to Monaco. There are three levels of corniche, or cliff drives: the lowest one (Basse Corniche), a middle one and a high one. Remember how Immanuel III sold Nice to Napoleon III in 1860? The Menton region (Nice, Cannes and other surrounding towns) were actually allowed to vote if they wanted to be part of France (in an attempt to appear democratic ((though Napoleon's soldiers were posted outside of the voting venues))). Monaco decided to remain independent and maintains its principality as it has for the past 800 years. Albert, a renegade Italian, was the first Grimaldi in 1287 and it seems every generation has had another Albert (Grace Kelly's son Albert is currently the prince of the kingdom). In allowing Monaco to remain independent, Napoleon agreed to build a railroad to the town as well as a road (the Basse Corniche). The highest corniche is a former Roman road used to patrol the empire and the one in which Stephanie Grimaldi drove off the cliff and accidentally killed her mother Grace.
Enough sad stories, though, because this is not a sad place. We started our walk in the Plaza space in front of the Palace where Albert lives and followed the short road to the Cathedral where we saw Princess Grace and her husband Albert's church where they were married and buried. A botanical garden lies alongside the Cathedral with the trees from the garden below creating a shade canopy for the sidewalk above. We didn't see any weeds or trash or homeless or anything that needed to be fixed or painted on our whole day....Lunch in a plaza and onto more gardens. The students make great navigators and I gladly hand over le plan (the map) to let them try not to get us lost. We climbed, oh probably conservatively 400 or more steps, to get to the gardens high on the mountain. There are public elevators that go up the side of the mountain and you get off at your street--but you need to know what street you need. We decided to be brave soldiers and made the climb. The Jardin Exotique had incredibly beautiful views. You can see the rooftops of the buildings below with all either being green, red or beige. The red are usually tile; the green are planted as gardens; the beige are hardscape and gardens. I suppose when your whole town looks down onto the next roof, you want consistency.
An interesting side note: Monaco has more people in its orchestra (100) than its army (80).
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