Monaco

One day on the water and nobody’s puked so far. In fact, on our sail from Rome to Monaco, I can’t say I felt any movement at all. Dawn would concur. Only when the ship is at port have we noticed any swell and then minimally.

I mentioned yesterday that the food on board is exceptional, so even though we weren’t planning to disembark in Monaco, we did, just to get in a good walk and burn off a few calories. As it turned out it was a fabulous morning and they were very few tourists in town. Plus, it was a holiday, so the regular commercial traffic was non-existent, which made for a delightful walkabout.

From the ship, we were a short walk from the old city and the palace, so that’s where we headed. Nothing new, but the flowers were quite spectacular on hedges and balconies and the buildings in town are truly beautiful.

On second thought, we did see something new on this trip. We found Princess Grace’s grave in Monaco’s Cathedral. She’s buried alongside Princess Ranier, their tombs bedecked with flowers.


They were tearing down the grandstands from the recently finished Formula 1 Grand Prix which winds around Hercule Harbour, but much of the course was still discernable, including pit row, with the stacks of discarded tires.

We’d pretty much walked the town by noon hour, so headed back on board the Insignia. We had the ship to ourselves for the first couple of hours, before tours began returning so we visited the library for additional reading materials and then parked ourselves at the pool for the remainder of the afternoon. I think we’re starting to get into vegie mode and I think we like it.
This evening we had reservations for one of two smaller restaurants, Toscana, which served, as one would assume from the name, Italian fare with all the courses. We were determined to have something from each course, just like the Italians. We did pretty well with 5 courses, but didn’t manage to finish all of them. I forgot to mention that we went to the bar Martinis for Happy Hour and met a nice American couple, with an Iranian heritage, who we will probably see again on the trip.
After dinner we went to the lounge for live entertainment for a while, as the ship pulled away from Monaco. The city is spectacular at night and any pics I took don’t really do it justice. But, we’re on our way now to Livorno.