Monaco

Principality of Monaco is famous for its casino in Monte Carlo.

Underground parking lots in Monaco are a bit chaotic. At first we had problems finding free spot, since those on first five floors were all taken or reserved. Nonreserved spots start at lower levels. We ended up on floor G and we barely fit into narrow space. Payment system is also somewhat unintuitive, so we asked a scurity guard for an advice.

First we headed to the city with no particular goal, just to see the city itself. It is prohibited to walk around naked/half naked or indecently dressed. This aplies to everryone, but especially men, who love walking around barechested in hot summer weather.

The view of Monaco and port from the top is really amazing.

There is a rather long waiting line in front of the Oceanarium, but in our opinion it is very much worth it. Did you know, that male seahorses are the ones that get pregnant? We have seen several with a big belly. Most aquariums were inside a dim lit interior, but sea turtle was swimming freely in a tank outside between floors. Ticket can be used to unlock videos about life of Eskimo people, even though you can find out a lot just by seeing exposition. What we find very interesting is the oldest model of a submarine and one of the first diving suits. 

You end your children will surely love interactive videos of sea life. A whole projection room creates a 3D effect, which will draw you in and you can even trigger a short animation if you touch designated touch points on screen. Out of all exhibited skeletons we were most amused by the "mermaid" one. Princ Albert I. and later his descendants did a lot of expeditions to north pole, where he studied the life of Eskimo people. He wrote about his travels in a diary. Expositions are spiced up by many interesting videos, where actors try to reanact some of the most adventurous and dangerous moments of those travels.

There is a smaller exotic garden near oceanarium. But this is not THE main exotic botanical garden, that we wanted to see. That was our next stop in Monaco.

The trip to exotic botanical garden was longer and more complicated that we expected. Road signs were very confusing. First they showed the way to garden is left, then right, then left again... So which direction is it? Nobody knows. Luckily, we had GPS, but even so we couldn´t avoid wandering around. To be honest, considering the heat (almost 40°C), it was brutal.

Monaco has public city elevators, which you can´t find in Slovakia. You can use those to get to a higher "level" of city, if you want to avoid walking uphill. But they are not everywhere.

We asked locals for directions (in french) several times and they always told us to go even more uphill. In the end, we have found cactus exhibition, which was definitely worth the trouble. However, the botanical garden itself was closed because of reconstruction.

The view of casino in Monte Carlo district was obstructed by a crane. You could go inside, but photography wasn´t allowed and every visitor went through a security check up. Right across the street in front of casino was a park with many exotic plants and modern sculptures. Hotel for rich people and luxurious cars brought a lot of attention. Some tourists couldn´t resist and made a selfie in front of an expensive car. Rich people are used to onlookers, so it didn´t seem to bother them.

Theatre is basically right around the corner. And it´s walking distance to the port from there. Dogs are not allowed to enter to public gardens and parks. This restriction is valid in most french cities. For example, until recently only 16% of parks and public gardens in Paris allowed dogs. Since 2019 these restrictions were loosened based on public voting. Dogs must be still kept on leash and can´t run around freely on grass. Many parents were concerned about dogs in parks coming too close to their children, which was deemed as not only potencially dangerous, if an owner doesn´t have situation under control, but also unhygienic. A modern statue of Adam and Eve can be found at the end of the park.

We used public city elevator to get to yacht club. Sailors were getting ready for energy boating competition. The challenge was to amke sure, that their boat is fuelled by clean ecology friendly sources. Many of them used solar panels. We have seen teams from a whole world, including our neighbours Polish people.