The French Rivera - Nice and Monaco

We left Paris on Tuesday to head to the South of France. This made us homesick as this was a nice taste of the beach. The thing we noticed on this part of the adventure was that many of the people we encountered spoke no English (Marshall is now thankful for Madame Pecoy and all the extra practice she afforded him). The taxi driver, the folks at the restaurants, and many people in stores spoke only French. This only adds to the adventure.

I will say that our digs were quite spectacular. The views are what you would expect on a post card. The kids wanted to mess around the hotel room and on the beach and of course, we tortured them with walking and looking at stuff. MJ gets the find of the day. He took us to a place known as Le Chateau. It was basically a site that dates back to early roman days. The last major structure there was a castle that was destroyed in 1706. There is an amazing waterfall seen at the right and the views from up here are quite spectacular.

We did fit in a nice Marc Chagall museum one afternoon. As he has a strong biblical theme to his work, the kids actually studied a number of the paintings. OK; they looked at half a dozen and then sat on the benches while mom and dad walked along the walls. Luckily, many museums are free for kids so technically, all this cost the kids was a little part of their life that they will never regain.

The Cimiez sits atop a hill about a half mile walk from the Chagall exhibit. This is a site that dates back to the 4th century BC. There is one account that dates inhabitation of Nice back 400,000 years. The structure in the picture to the left was an amphitheater that dates to 193 AD. As we tend to gravitate to ruins, this was a nice score for the tribe. We really had a good visit just walking the streets in Nice. There is an interesting mix of people and some of the churches are spectacular.

We slipped over to Monaco one day. MJ did a report on Monaco when he was at Myrtle Grove Middle School and he really wanted to go. It is only about 10 miles from Nice so we had to hop over. I looked for Christmas presents for myself. It is down to a yacht, a Lamborghini, a Maserati, a Ferrari, or a Bentley. I could get any of the above within one block. The picture to the left was our favorite part of the trip. This is from the palace at Monaco. When the prince and his family are gone, you can tour the palace. The kids actually enjoyed this one and there as a separate display of Napoleonic artifacts that was exceptional. While the family picture is from one side of the palace grounds, the picture on the right is of the other side. Quite spectacular.....

AND there happened to be a carnival/fair in Monaco the day we visited. The kids insisted that we go there so they had cotton candy and a trip through the fun house in Monaco too.