Alps and Med Day 6: Monaco and Nice

From Nice …

The hotel elevators don’t cooperate, but around 8:15 AM we depart our Genoa hotel for the two hour bus trip to the French Riviera, known in French as Côte d’Azur.

Mountain tunnel, valley bridge. Mountain, tunnel, valley bridge. The road from Genoa west towards France is much like the road to Sestri Levante.

Just after crossing the border from Italy into France we reach the Principality of Monaco. At just under 1 square mile Monaco is the second smallest sovereign state in the world with the smallest being Vatican City. Glamorous Monaco is also one of the richest and expensive places in the world. (We’re staying outside of Nice near the airport!) We see the famous harbor with its luxury yachts, and the Palais du Prince, home to Prince Rainier. Monte Carlo is largely free of personal income tax with revenue from the Monte Carlo Casino and high-end tourism. The Monaco Grand Prix is still 5 weeks away, but work is well underway construction the temporary Circuit de Monaco. Lunch is a salad and Limoncello Spritz at Brasserie du Mystic just a couple of blocks from the racetrack.

Leaving Monaco we visit Èze, a village perched high atop a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Here are the cacti and succulents of the Jardin d’Èze on the Place du Général de Gaulle, the Château de la Chèvre d’Or hotel and restaurant, and the Parfumerie Fragonard perfume factory and tour. Half our group walks up to the village. I join the other half for the perfume tour and it’s very informative.

Our next stop in Côte d’Azur is Nice, the largest city in the French Riviera. We walk past the harbor and down Promenade des Anglais along the seaside.

As an IBM employee in the mid-1960s, my Dad took a business trip to meet the engineers at the IBM La Guade Study and Research Centre in Nice and came to visit Monaco while here. He brought along the Canon II F rangefinder camera that he bought in Japan while stationed in Korea in the mid-1950s. Growing up I remember seeing these slides and it’s pretty cool finally getting to see these places in person!

I’ve got the Canon II F and a couple of rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 film with me! This camera is fully manual so I’m using a light meter app to determine exposure. It also weighs a ton, so I better get something usable after dragging the camera halfway across Europe. Greg and I race down the Promenade des Anglais as far as we can to approximate the location of my Dad’s Nice beach photo. But I won’t know for a couple of weeks. I’ll need to send of for processing after the trip. Patience required!