Day 2: Nice to Menton via Monaco

Our aim in originally booking this trip, all the way back in 2019, was to visit Monaco. We realised a few years ago that we've visited the majority of the countries in Europe now, including many of the smaller ones like Andorra and San Marino, and of the countries that we haven't been to yet, Monaco felt like one of the easier ones to knock off the list. A quick look at hotels indicated that we definitely couldn't afford to stay in Monaco, so the plan was to visit it as a day trip while staying in the nearby town of Menton in France.

We had breakfast in our hotel in Nice this morning, then checked out and took a short walk to the main train station. Monaco is only around 20 minutes away from Nice on a regional train and there are two trains per hour, so it's a pretty straightforward journey. It felt like we spent almost as long queuing for the ticket machine to buy the tickets as we did on the train itself

It seemed like Monaco was a popular destination on a Saturday morning, because the train was exceptionally busy and most of the passengers were getting off at the same stop as us. We emerged from the train station and were immediately confused because streets seemed to be closed off, there were stewards herding people in various directions and a lot of security. We wandered around the streets for a while, unclear what was going on. I knew there was a Grand Prix in Monaco and I also knew that it definitely wasn't this weekend, because I'd checked in advance. But every so often we could hear some loud vrooming noises in the distance, so there was definitely something happening. Eventually we figured it out!

We'd inadvertently timed our visit for the day of the Monaco E-prix. I had not checked when the E-prix was happening because I'd never heard of it But it turns out that it's a race which takes place in Monaco every two years as part of the Formula E championship, which is for racing in electric cars.

Apart from the noise - which was more than I expected given I thought electric cars were mostly silent - it was a bit frustrating that we'd accidentally ended up visiting in the middle of a car race because quite a large part of Monaco was roped off to allow the racing to happen. We walked up and down some really pretty streets...

...but every so often we'd find that the way we wanted to walk was barred off. There was definitely no chance of following the walking tour in our Monaco guidebook!

We eventually worked out that the roads that were closed were the flatter ones at sea level, while the higher ones were open as normal. We began walking uphill. As we did, we got a view of the Prince's Palace where the royal family of Monaco live.

We also got a view down towards the harbour, where it looked like there were some rather expensive boats.

Walking uphill in the heat was a bit tiring, but the views got even better as we progressed.

Monaco is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and it certainly felt like it; there were a lot of cars and buildings and people.

We were hoping to find the famous Monte Carlo Casino, so followed signs in that direction.

We got a glimpse of it! But we couldn't get any closer because all routes towards it seemed to be closed off.

We managed to have a little walk in the exotic gardens in front of the casino, but this was as far as we could get.

I wasn't very impressed by this nearby sculpture of a woman inside a banana

Retracing our steps, we realised there might be another route to get a bit closer to the casino building.

That was a better view!

Much better

Everything was barricaded off here too, though.

We soon found ourselves on a very posh street.

We felt like we might be somewhat underdressed for this part of Monaco.

There were some lovely displays of trees and flowers though.

I particularly loved these little windmills which were part of the displays in this part of town.

And I was impressed by what looked like a very old tree.

We'd worked up an appetite by this point so started looking for somewhere to eat. There were plenty of restaurants but they were all incredibly full because of the racing. We eventually managed to find somewhere that could fit us in and had some delicious pizza

The day had been a bit cloudy in the morning but by the time we'd finished eating it was really bright and sunny. We sat outside this cafe for coffee and chocolate mousse, before heading back to the train station to catch a train to Menton.

The train to Menton took less than 20 minutes. There are two stations - Menton and Menton Garavan - and we were getting off at the latter, which is on the edge of town, closer to our hotel. We checked in and found that the room was fairly standard...