Oh no it isn’t!
OK, so I know that technically Monaco is not France. But I’m posting about it in the “France” section because I went there on a holiday while we were staying in France. And they speak French. And the architecture and culture is pretty much French, from what I can tell. Monaco is to France what San Marino is to Italy. The same, except richer, cleaner and the buildings are all finished. It’s always good to start off a post with a horrendous cultural stereotype.
Back at the plot, Monaco is an obvious trip to make as a geocacher if you’re spending time in Nice. It’s easily accessible, and it counts as a whole separate country (see previous paragraph).
Before the holiday started I toyed with the idea of creating an event in Monaco, just so I’d done an event in Monaco, but then I noticed that someone had saved me the effort of creating my own. There it was on the map. An event in Monaco on a day we were due to be in Nice. Excellent. I’ll go on that day then.
Getting There
Our flat in Nice was about 5 minutes walk from the central railway station. OK, maybe 10 minutes, because it was uphill. Not far though. There’s a railway line running from Marseilles over to Genoa that hugs the coast all the way and which passes through both Nice and Monaco. Whilst I was aware that you are allowed to take cars into Monaco, I’d sort of decided I didn’t want to drive at all this week, if I could help it. I’d been doing way too much driving the previous week, so it was good to park the car in a safe place and just leave it there.
The train takes about 15-20 minutes and drops you off at Monaco’s small but perfectly formed underground railway station. The railway line takes you past a series of bridges and tunnels that follow the coastline about half a mile up. It’s very scenic if you bother to look out of the window. I should mention that I was accompanied on the trip by the good lady wife, but both children decided they couldn’t be bothered, so they stayed in Nice.
The Harbour
Monaco is famous, I guess, for two things. Firstly, it’s full of very rich foreigners who take advantage of the low taxation and generally have a Jack-the-Lad lifestyle. Secondly, it has a Formula 1 Grand Prix, despite being the size of a postage stamp. The F1 circuit runs through the town (it has to, because there isn’t anything in Monaco apart from the town). It’s easy to spot because of the red-and-white striped kerbs on the street corners. The course takes in (mainly) the area around and above the harbour. Actually Monaco has two harbours. The Grand Prix is around the larger “Port Hercule” one. Being by the water makes it easy for non-resident rich people to come and park their boat, I guess.
Anyway, when you come out of the railway station and head south, you pretty quickly arrive at the harbour. There was a traditional cache on the ramp down, and then at the harbourside there began one of the sets of adventure labs. There wasn’t really much of a caching plan here other than “find some” – I learned long ago that making plans leads to heartache. So I had solved as much as I could beforehand and was therefore just winging it around collecting as many things as I could that were en-route.
The harbourside here yielded my first 5 finds.
Uphill
Monaco is quite three-dimensional. Well, the whole coastline here is. You can’t even say that Monaco sits on a narrow strip of flat land beneath the cliffs. No. It is built on the bottom of the cliffs themselves. The land rises very steeply as soon as you stray from the waterside. The royal family chose to have their main residence on one of the few bits of fairly flat land. However, it’s not at sea level. It’s on a small plateau between the two harbours, and requires a fairly steep climb. I guess if you’re royal you can have a driver fetch you. But for us, it was Shank’s Pony.
When we got to the top, we mooched about for a while and Kas decided to go for a look around the royal palace while I was at the caching event. We also got drinks and we diverted into a little garden overlooking the other harbour where there was supposed to be a puzzle cache.
The event I went to was hosted by a group of cachers from northern Belgium, who it turned out are the organising committee for the KGB series of events. There were five or six of them, I think, plus a smattering of people from elsewhere. Despite being fiercely hot, we stood and talked for well over the allotted time. Quite a lot of the chat was about cache locations in Monaco, but also in Nice. By this stage of the holiday I’d already had some time in central Nice and was able to offer assistance on many of the multis and puzzles there. So that all worked well.
Going Downhill
It’s not possible to leave the royal palace without going downhill. We chose the direction that headed straight out towards the sea. There was a multi-cache down there that I’d been working on and needed a couple more bits of info. Also down that way is the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, which is where Kas went to kill an hours or so.
She was a bit longer than me, so I sat outside on a bench in the shade waiting for her. I would have texted, but another point to note about Monaco is that the local mobile network is not in the EU, and hence isn’t subject to EU limits on roaming charges. And the French networks don’t give a great signal. So it was a matter of sending a quick “old skool” SMS message and hoping for the best. I think I was reasonably obvious where I was sitting though.
Put it all on red!
The only other place in Monaco that I wanted to visit for caching reasons was the Casino. Not to go in, of course. That would be financially ruinous for me. No, just to gawp at the flashy cars parked outside and do the nearby virtual cache.
And from there we walked down to the famous Fairmont Hairpin for a couple more. And that was about it.
Back Home
We walked through the searing heat back to the train station and then waiting for about 10 minutes in the shaded and air conditioned luxury of the platforms. And then the train, which was also air-conditioned. Nice!
Speaking of which, Nice was where we left it, as were the kids.
We got back at around 5pm and chilled for a bit before heading out for dinner. We decided to take a walk towards the Old Town and found ourselves a Brew Dog pub, which did a selection of very edible foods and some very neckable beers, so all was good.
The Reckoning
I only made 20 finds (although there’s a time when that would have been great), but I spread it out a bit, and managed seven different types – traditional, lab, virtual, multi, puzzle, traditional, event and wherigo. So probably six types for those challenges that don’t accept labs. In fact, the only other opportunity in Monaco would be to find an earthcache. There are a couple of those but frankly they were in locations I had neither the time nor the energy to go to. So 20 finds of 7 different types, in a new country. That’ll do.
