Nice, France, Monaco and Montpellier

Upon leaving Valence, we headed to Nice on the French Riviera. The water was beautiful. It was in the high 50s and we did actually see 2 old men go out in the water for a bit.

We intended to start our walking tour at the Hotel Negresco. According to our book, it has the priciest rooms on the Rivera (despite its pink dome). It even offers mink bedspreads. It has a chandelier in the lobby with like 16,000 crystals that was commissioned by Czar Nicholas II, but was never delivered because of the Russian Revolution. Sounds pretty cool, but didn't see it because we would have had to back track several blocks from where we parked. Any unnecessary walking for us is not in our best interest. :)



Along the promenade, this orange tree was one of the first things we saw. I love the pretty building it's in front of too.








We had pizza, caprese salad, and crepes in a little cafe next to the white, columned building (a casino?).












We walked along the water for a while, but since Mike had been getting Ezra hyped up for the ocean all morning, there was really no way we could avoid going down to the water. They did pretty well, and in the end, Mike was the only one who ended up with a wet shoe.








Back on the promenade, we saw a little tourist "train". So we took that around the old city and up to Castle Hill. They give you headphones to listen to the historical information about the sights you drive by, but with a squirmy kid next to you or on your lap, the headphones don't stay securely lodged in your ear for long. Unfortunately, we missed a lot of the info, but saw a bunch of stuff.




Here's a (bad) picture of yachts in the Nice harbor. I read that just a few towns down the Riviera (St. Tropez I think?) it costs like 12K a day to dock a yacht in the harbor. Yikes! As if owning a yacht isn't expensive enough.




Here's a couple of views from up on Castle hill. This a Russian Orthodox church in the old town that I thought was pretty.



You can see Hotel Negresco in the picture of the coast line (above, right).


So after we came back down and ended our train tour, we headed back to the car to begin our driving tour up the coast (about 20 min) to Monaco. The kids had little interest in my tour guide information (from a book) as we drove.





According to the book, the pale yellow tower is part of Sean Connery's property. >


Just another mansion overlooking the Mediterranean.

Monaco was nice I guess, but is so completely packed. There are high rises everywhere. It seems like we didn't see much of Monaco, but since it's only .75 square miles, I think we probably drove every inch of that trying to find our hotel.













We had a 1 bedroom apartment with a sea view. The kids slept on the pull out sofa in the living room. Our view--straight out, was the ocean and straight down were more houses/apartments. We walked down to a Monaco burger joint and got dinner to take back to our room.






The next morning we woke up to wind and rain. I really wanted to go into the Monte Carlo casino, but as there is a dress code, I did not think I was appropriately attired. So we just drove by to snap a few pictures.










A Rolls parked out front. There was a Porche right next to it.






The other thing I wanted to see was the Grand Prix route.
This is what the route looked like the day we drove it. Slightly unimpressive. But I bet it's cool when race cars are zipping through the city and winding along the coast in May. This is about where the book said the starting line was. We saw what we suspected was a sign marking it, but it was mostly covered by a advertisment poster. Weird.











It took us forever to find our way out of the winding streets of Monaco. Even the GPS seemed baffled (which doesn't take much...).

We were able to get out of the rain a little between Monaco and Montpellier, but not much. :( In Montpellier, we had planned to take another little tourist train thinking that would be a good way to see the city without having to get too wet. But as it turned out, the train wasn't running due to the inclimate weather. Boo. So we sloshed our way to the mall and had some ice cream. Then sloshed back to the car in defeat.

We did manage to document our time in Montpellier with these two pictures.
"The rain can rob of us our time in Montpellier, but it'll never break our spirits!" (Is what Ezra is saying.)