April, 2016 | Captain, who's driving?

It’s becoming cooler, chilly even, at least in those early morning hours while we are docking. My old bones decided it is time for a long-sleeve shirt, (as opposed to the short-sleeve I have been wearing for the past 3½ months).

What a coincidence, I see a comment from one of my readers that we were on the telly! In between shots of tennis of course, 15 seconds of fame. It was another early arrival and I was remarking to the Staff Captain ‘enough already’, these numerous early calls gradually wear one down. So it was with Monte Carlo, (except the port didn’t ‘open’ until 6:30) and we approached at that time. Its an extremely small harbour for a very big ship, one literally squeezes in between the pier and mega-yachts, millions of $ worth of investment, methinks the owners would not take kindly to ‘bonking’ one of them. I asked the pilot how much it costs to berth one of these beauties, “oh, about 2000 Euros per metre, per day” OMG, some of them must be paying into the high 6 figures! Mind you, if you can afford a yacht that big, that it is probably pocket change…….

Our route from Livorno to Monte Carlo

…and the track into the berth. The green triangles are the transponders of the yachts.

alongside the floating pier

K1 and Ivana caught a bus to Nice, which lies around 30 minutes away, so yours truly stayed on board; I had lots to catch up on, so it suited me. Coming towards the end of the Grand World voyage, the paperwork increases exponentially. It was a Sunday of course and people were taking strolls along the promenade to admire the cruise ship on their doorstep; local car owners brought their sports cars to the front, Ferrari, Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, they’re just two-a-penny here, don’t know what they’d make of my 10-year old Mercedes. 🙂 (which just keeps on going….)

Now that’s Envy! Lamborghini

Off on the hop-on-hop-off bus

The famous casino

The Palace

Then, of course, there are the yachts, I forgot to mention that that fee for docking in the Marina? That goes out of the window when the F1 Grand Prix is in town, they’ll pay $millions for that week and it’s a bidding war, can you imagine? I digress, here are the photos of the yachts, the harbour and Monaco itself, I believe I’m correct in saying it’s the world’s smallest principality.