Nice and Eze Is Not A Haircolor
Today we are docked in Villefranche. This port is situated right in between Nice and Monaco on the French Riviera. We're docked here, apparently, because the bay is deeper and our ship is bigger. Of course they can't get the ship all the way into the bay, so it anchors offshore and we have to tender to port.
We are on the Nice and Eze with Wine and Cheese tour. Its meeting place is at Sessions, the piano bar with the really obnoxious purple and green quilted pillars. It looks like the Joker threw up in there. This is the one bar we don't set foot in for the whole cruise, unless they make us meet there for a shore excursion.
Our crew member dispatcher (Dave from Canada) thinks it's really funny to call the excursion "Nice and Easy Wine and Cheesy," probably because the French pronounce it "Neece and Eeeez." He thinks this is really hysterical. What is it with these Canadians anyway? The drunk woman showed up for the excursion, but she's wearing sunglasses indoors.
Dave hands out our Mickey stickers while trying his best to make the tired and hung over appreciate his jokes. Then we have to go down to Deck 1 and board our tender boat.
The boat fills up with other shore excursioners, if that's a word (and if it is I will have to remember it for the next time I play Scrabble because there is an X in it). Linda and Amanda are on the boat. They are going on the Scenic French Riviera excursion, which probably didn't get sent off with jokes. I learn on the tender that the French apparently refer to life jackets as "brassieres" which makes me want to fly Air France just to see the flight attendant get up and say "In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion will serve as a brassiere. Put it on and pull the tab to inflate."
The port is inside an old fortress, which is pretty cool until you figure out that there wasn't any good place to park 8 motorcoaches and they probably had to do a lot of maneuvering to get them inside. We get on our bus and meet our guide, Pierre, and the driver Pino. Great, an Italian driver. Linda and Amanda get on the next bus, a huge aqua blue thing that looks like someone pulled the wings off of a gigantic dragonfly and left it in the road.
Pierre tries to offer the seats in the front to anyone who needs extra help. Nobody takes them. He tries to offer them to anyone who wants a better view. Nobody takes them. He tries again. Amy and I take the seats behind the driver. Some other folks decide to get the ones on the other side. Well, we gave everybody else a chance. Turns out this is the most scenic of our tours, so nyah nyah nyah.
We drive out of the fortress and up a lot of winding roads to Eze. Pierre talks about how all the rich people live here. He must be right, because the houses by the road are really elaborate. They look like museum pieces. Some of them actually look like museums.
Eze is a village on top of a mountain. When they say it's on top of a mountain, they mean it. It has little picturesque narrow winding streets. Pierre gets us off the bus once it's parked and shows us where the restroom is. It's 40 cents to get in, no pay, no pee. This is the first pay toilet I have seen on the trip although I was warned.
We walk to what looks like a main road and then Pierre says we can either follow him up into the village or go and do whatever we want. We go back to the bathroom. It's staffed by two grim-faced women who watch to make sure you put the right amount of money in the bowl, then they say "Merci!" Gosh thanks for paying to indulge in a necessary bodily function. Anyway, the bathroom is clean.
When we get out of there we walk up the mountain to where the group is. They're gathered just below the church. Pierre is talking about the village. It's mostly shops and restaurants. The main restaurant is called Le Chevre d'Or, or the Golden Goat. You have to be a goat to be able to walk up to it. There are only 35 people living in the village and you can tell who they are, because they all have gigantic calves.
We pass a guy using a device that is sort of a motorized hand truck with tank treads on it to bring supplies up the mountain. Actually, with that thing ahead of him, we let him pass us.
We poke around in a couple of shops but the higher you get on the mountain, the higher the prices go. We walked up to the church, then down the other side of the mountain, and encountered a cemetery. How do they get a cemetery into the side of a mountain? Very carefully I guess. But you get a tomb with a view.
We went all the way down the mountain on the other side and looked around in the tourist shops at the bottom where the bus is. I bought a tee shirt that just says French Riviera on it.
When we go to get back on the bus, in pulls the big blue wingless dragonfly and Linda and Amanda get out. Ships crossing on the side of a mountain.
Our bus leaves Eze and drives back down the mountain, around some more corners, and we get to see Nice. We get to see all of Nice because you can see the whole harbor from up there. We are on our way to a cheese restaurant to have our cheese and wine tasting. Pierre says they don't have anything but cheese. My kind of place, I think.
We drive down to the beach, where we are let off the bus in front of the flower market. This place is wild. They have flowers, but they also sell pretty much everything down there...food, souvenirs, clothing, all kinds of crap. We walk through getting hungrier. Then we turn off and walk down some more side streets, past the House of Pain tattoo parlor. Some obnoxious guy jumps into my shot when I try to take a photo of it, so I deleted him. Ain't digital photography great.
We reach the cheese place. We are hot and hungry and we need wine. Pierre tries the door. It's locked. He knocks...nobody comes. He rings what looks like a bell or intercom or something on the side of the door...nothing. He gets flustered. He pulls out a cellphone and starts making calls.
After about ten minutes of this, a guy comes to the door and lets us in. He has to put out the signs that they leave in front of the restaurant first because they're blocking the way inside. We go downstairs to a stone cellar with art on the walls. At the tables there is a selection of cheese and some wine glasses.
We get sliced baguettes, a white and a red wine (they're great but I can't get them home with the Chateau Neuf de Pape) and try each cheese with the wine. Our tablemates were at our table in Florence. I am getting a kick out of saying "Hello, didn't we lunch in Florence?" I try that in my best Mrs. Thurston Howell III voice. I don't think they got it.
We've got more cheese than bread and pretty soon I am eating the cheese off the tip of my knife and trying each one with the different wines. Okay, I could do this all day, but we can't stay there that long because they have another tour coming in. Pierre turns us loose in the market. We are supposed to meet outside by the beach road.
Amy and I stopped for gelato. This is not just any gelato. What we ran into was a cornucopia of gelato. This place, which was called Fenocchio (think Pinocchio with a Fen) and was located just down from the cheese place before the streets got back into the market, had gelato you wouldn't believe. They had everything from chocolate and vanilla to rosemary gelato, thyme gelato, avocado gelato and Corona beer gelato. So, conceivably, one could be here in France, eating Italian ice cream made from Mexican beer.
This place called for a double scoop. Amy's was Nutella and cinnamon. Mine was fig and ginger. I would have liked to try the rosemary. Maybe I will have to go back.
We went around the market for awhile. I tried buying a magnet in a store but they were so slow that I put it back and got one from a stall outside where they were a lot quicker and charged a half euro less. The market had marzipan and lots of spices. So far I am liking how this part of France smells.
When the group gets back together, Pierre has to call for the bus because they can't park it on the beach road. We wait and wait for the bus to come back. While we wait we cross to the beach side to get onto the bus more easily. Then we wait some more. We kill the time staying out of the bike lane because the bikes will run right over you, and trying to find topless bathers on the beach. There are a few and they're all little skinny girls.
When the bus comes we jump back in so as not to tie up beach traffic on a glorious weather day, and on the way back they stop the bus on the hills and let us out so we can take panoramic photos of Nice.
When we are driving back to the port, Amy says she won't make it to Monaco. She's too sick and needs to go back to the ship and sleep. She is coughing a lot. I think I will go on to Monaco, I won't be too happy if I came all this way and don't see it.
So when they finally get the bus parked, she goes to catch the tender, and I check with the cruise people who say they aren't checking in for the 1:30 Monaco tour yet. So I go wait in line for the bathroom.
When the Monaco tour finally gets going, I am the only person on the bus who admits to having been on a morning tour. Our tour guide is Sandrine and the driver's name is Michel. I only remember his name because he either thought he was in the Gran Prix or he was trying to show us exactly how Princess Grace drove off the road on the mountain.
They stop first to let us out of the bus and take panoramic photos, this time of Villefranche harbor and the Magic. Then we get back on the bus and Sandrine talks. She tells us about the principality of Monaco - it's the second smallest independent nation besides the Vatican. They have no taxes, and the native Monagasques get cheap rates on apartments. Most people who live there are French and/or rich. The French get taxed by France. Only the Monagasques (and there aren't that many of them) get off tax-free. Monaco survives on tourism and whatever the casino makes.
Sandrine also wants to impress upon us that Prince Albert II is single. Don't know what that's supposed to mean. I'm no Grace Kelly.
Michel tries his best to drive us into the Mediterranean but he gets us into Monaco. Our first stop is the section called Monaco-Ville, or the Rock. Up there is where the palace is, and the cathedral, and the Oceanographic Museum which had a lot to do with Jacques Cousteau. We are set to meet at the Oceanographic Museum for our tour.
The bus parks in an underground garage and Sandrine leads us up some escalators to the first of the Infamous Monaco Elevators. This will take us up some more floors where there are more escalators. It takes her forever to get everybody into elevators and send them up. She assembles us in front of the museum and I think she managed to find everyone. She tells us that our future meeting point is in front of the museum, so after she turns us loose we need to find our way back here.
We walk past the museum (there is a yellow submarine out front) and on our right is Princess Caroline's white house, Princess Stephanie's yellow house, and the Cousteau family's pink house. On our left is the public gardens. You can visit the public gardens but you must pay to use the restroom. You can't pee for free in Monaco.
Around the corner we find the cathedral and the Hall of Justice. Across from that is a spot for more panoramic viewing of the section called Fontvielle. Past the Hall of Justice is the Prince's castle, which looks oddly like it's made of Lego bricks. There is a white flag flying from the parapet, which Sandrine says means the Prince is in residence. Oh, and did she happen to mention that he's single, too. Nudge nudge wink wink.
She takes us past the palace to get some photos across the harbor of Monte Carlo and La Condemine, then turns us loose. There are a lot of little shops in the area. I manage to walk past one that has tee shirts for 5 euros so I buy one.
I went back to the cathedral and did the walk around to see the graves of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. Grace gets more flowers.
When that was seen, I took a walk through the gardens and then back past where the princesses and the Cousteaus live. Then I spent some time poking around the public areas at the back of the Oceanographic Museum. These are beautiful. They built the museum pretty much hanging off a cliff. In the water you could see what looked like oceanographic study vessels.
When Sandrine came back she rounded everyone up (not before I had time to buy a Coke because it's hot) and herded us back down to the bus via escalators and elevators. Michel drove us down into the harbor area toward Monte Carlo and threatened to show us the Gran Prix route.
We were let off in the "Grand Prix tunnel" and taken down to ride another elevator. At the top of this one we came out into a garden overlooking some huge yachts moored in a small cove.
To one side is the back of the Hotel de Paris, to the other is the Casino of Monte Carlo. Sandrine says we have tickets to get in. She is going to lead us in, and then she will sit in the bar and drink water until we leave.
When we enter, they take our large bags and cameras and check them. I can't tell what they consider to be a large bag. I just know they take my bag and give me a chit to recover it with. Sandrine hands out blue tickets and we go on into the casino.
The casino is opulent but small. There is a room for table games, a blackjack room, and a slot room. Some men in tuxes are sitting at the tables in the first room. They're the one who look out of place with all the tourists.
I go to the slot room and proceed to lose 5 euros in the machines. Didn't take long. They don't have penny slots or it would have taken me a bit longer.
I looked around a bit, reclaimed my bag, left the casino and took a lot of pictures. Then I went back to the bus.
The last people got to the bus after having won some cash in the casino, good for them. Sandrine talks to us on the way back to Villefranche about France. We hear about how much they pay in taxes and that kind of thing. She even says the birth rate is up in France. That's apparently a big thing there.
When we get to the port Michel has to wait to park the bus in its space because there are lots of other buses in line, but the way he drives he gets it parked in there pretty quick. Then I have to go and catch the tender back to the ship. One boat leaves, and another pulls in and they stuff it with people going back to the Magic.
I think if I had tried to pick a spot to sit on the tender that ensured I would be the last one off the boat, I couldn't have done much better. The Magic was pretty far out in the harbor and it took awhile to get there. Then it took much longer to get the people off the boat. There were so many they had to let them off in groups.
By the time I got up to the room it was too late to go and see When Mickey Dreams in the Walt Disney theater. Amy wasn't up to it anyway. I was up to getting ready for dinner and starting with nachos in the pub because there wasn't any real food on these excursions and I was ready to eat. I had nachos and a Newcastle ale. Everybody wanted to know where Amy was. She definitely wasn't going to make it down for trivia - of course it was sports trivia. Paul bugged me until I agreed to play. I told him I'd lose anyway, after all, I'm a girl.
I did lose, I only got two football questions right. Somehow the Muppets came up; he couldn't remember Statler and Waldorf. That resulted in this bit of dialogue, recreated to the best of my ability:
Paul: I wish Disney would buy the Muppets.
Me: They already did.
Paul: They did? When did that happen?
Me: A couple of years ago, I guess.
Paul: Well, I wish they'd have the Muppets on the ship.
Me: They already did.
Paul: They did? When?
Me: 2005.
Paul: Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, I saw them, we've got pictures. It was great.
I wasn't going to turn in my sheet but Paul made me, probably because he was jealous that I got to see the Muppets. I think he wanted it for entertainment value. They will probably laugh at it down in the crew quarters. Amy came down later to find out how badly I lost in sports trivia.
I had fish, Chateau Neuf de Pape and half a cheesecake for dinner. The other half got left behind because of the dessert buffet. That was supposed to take place at 11:30. I had a chocolate martini at Diversions in the meantime - only one martini. I heard the drunk woman in the pub the last night had been operating under the influence of five of them.
We ran into the dessert buffet - it was mobbed - took some photos and left. I left with a piece of caramel torte. They had chocolate fountains with fruit and crew members to dip them for you, but you couldn't get close to the fountains, too many people were crowded around. On the stairs we saw a guy who had a plate full of pieces of cake. He must have had about 10 pieces. Wonder how many of those wound up in the hallway for someone to pick up.
Posted by cathlam
at 1:00 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007 2:16 PM EDT