Our Greek Isles/Mediterranean
Crown Princess Cruise May 2009
Monte Carlo Monaco
Jerry and I were up early this morning to meet our tour group at 6:30am
at the Vines Bar. There were 8 of us on the tour. We all were very 
prompt
and ready to get in line for the tender but the Princess crew weren't ready
for us. They asked us to wait in the lobby area of the Michelangelo Dining
Room. We stood in line for a few minutes and then they directed us into
the dining room. We sat at a table for a few more minutes and by 7:15am
we had been on the tender and off the ship and in the van for our tour.
Our tour guide was Franco from Revelation Tours and we were to see the French Riviera on the way back to Monaco. We were in a nice Mercedes van that seated us all comfortably. We all climbed in and our tour had begun.
Franco didn't know what to think of us at first but he soon became one of us. We had a great group and we all had a lot of fun.
We
made our way through the fairly quiet streets of Monaco and on to the other
side of Nice, France which was Saint Paul de Vence a quaint little medieval
village. It was very quiet and sleepy as we were there at almost 9am this
morning. It was occupied by the Ligurians over 2000 years ago.
Franco let us have about 30 minutes here and then we all piled back into the van and off we went to Tourettes sur Loup. Another medieval village but just a bit bigger and this one was opening for the day. There were shops there with about anything that might strike your fancy. We bought a few trinkets here. This is where the Golden Dove is where some of the big stars come to eat while in town.
Now
we are off to Nice. We were here for over an hour. We went through the market
which is much like a flea market at home. Jerry and I made our way to the
beach. This is a rocky beach and we're not talking little rocks but rocks
that were probably about six inches in diameter. We were surprised by the
amount of people laying on the beach. We weren't surprised by the topless
women we saw...this is France you know.
Jerry and I did decide to find us some lunch thinking we had plenty of
time
even though we were going to grab and go...well, we sat at one of the little
eateries by the flea market. We looked at the menu...in English but that
still didn't help a whole lot. We ordered off the menu by looking at the
ingredients and hoping for the best. We did good. I have always thought
of crepes as dessert but this was not like that. I had a crepe with tomato
sauce, mushrooms, cheese and tomato sauce. I thought it was much like a
French Pizza! Jerry's was a cream sauce, mushrooms, ham and cheese. We thought
we did great! We thoroughly enjoyed our lunch. We hadn't been there long
before Bettye and Jimmie came and joined us then Georgia and Bob came along.
We were a tad bit late because they obviously were cutting, dicing and slicing
making our lunch. It took us almost 30 minutes to get our lunch after we
ordered. I did enjoy some excellent French wine while Jerry enjoyed some
beer.
On the way to meet with Franco we stopped to pick up some t-shirts and some trinkets and made our way back to the van.
We stopped several places along the way for some photo ops. We 
traveled
along some winding roads with some beautiful views before we got to Eze.
Franco took us up as far as he could and then let us out. We then made our
way climbing up through this village which is very high up on the mountain.
We didn't stop to buy anything as we were exhausted from the trek. We were
just thankful we weren't on a huge bus that would have had to let us off
at the way bottom where you take a couple flights of steep stairs to get
to the entrance. There were many shops and some restaurants there.
We went to the grocery which is a chain of grocery stores in France, Casino. One of the other couples wanted to buy some wine so Jerry decided we should go along. We found a couple of bottles of wine and brought them back on the ship in our day packs.
After we all climbed back into the van we headed to Monte Carlo. We got
out and saw the Casino and the Hotel de Paris. They were getting the streets
ready for the big race on Sunday, Monaco Grand Prix. This is the Formula
One race. We were excited to drive on part of the road course before making
our way to the "Rock" which is where you will find the palace.
We saw the flag flying that meant Prince Albert was at home. We did visit
the cathedral where Princess Grace and Prince Rainier are buried.
We had a WONDERFUL time on this tour and would definitely book this tour agency again. Thank you to Bettye for organizing all of this!!
We did get a lot photo ops today therefore I took 745 pictures just today. It will be hard to go through to find pictures to upload quickly but I will be sure to upload more once we get back home.
We had dinner in the Divinci Dining Room this evening. This was our first attempt at anytime dining and we enjoyed it. We had some great tablemates and thoroughly enjoyed dining with them.
I also came back and did our first load of laundry tonight. I think I will do a load here and there rather than fight for the washer and dryer on sea day which we only have one of. It gave me time to work on the page and on photos too. Probably the reason you will see different formats for our pictures for today.
Tomorrow is Livorno, Italy. We will see Florence and the leaning tower of Pisa. This is our only Princess tour.