September 2007

    Day 5 - Sunday, September 23, 2007

    Again we slept in. It's OK since our tour doesn't begin until 12:30p.  Here's the lovely city of Cannes from our balcony:

    We presented ourselves at the disembarcation deck at 11:30a for our tender ride to Cannes.  The water at the marina is too shallow for a ship our size, so we have a ten minute tender ride to shore.  There goes one of the ship's lifeboats acting as tender with 40+ of our passengers heading for shore:

    Once there, we had the standard "milling about" phase as we were sorted into busses:

    We eventually connected with our tour guide "Elody" (she said "Melody" without the "M"):

    .. and boarded Tour Bus #14 for an hour trip to Monaco/Monte Carlo. She was very informative and we enjoyed the ride.  The day was beautiful and Cannes is lovely:

    We de-bussed (is that a word?) in Monaco and spent several wonderful hours in this tiny country.  The first building we encountered was the museum and aquarium:

    We love aquaria but there wasn't enough time for a visit.

    We toured the national cathedral where, among others, Prince Ranier III and Princess Grace are interred:


This is the dome inside the cathedral

    There's something worth photographing everywhere you look:

    There were plenty of tourist-type shopping opportunites:


This is the Royal Palace

    And, for the grandboys:


The nicest playground in the best place on earth!

    In Monaco we returned to the bus -- which wasn't where we left it.  Kind of a "tour bus mystery tour" but almost everyone found it eventually.  We did leave one couple behind.  Not us.

    The bus ride to Monte Carlo was brief.  We had time for an hour's visit (turned out to be enough).  You're not allowed to bring a camera into the casino so I left it on the bus; hence, no photos.  Too bad, too, as the buildings surrounding the casino (and the casino itself) are beautiful.  Shoulda/woulda/coulda.   I had a run-in with an admin woman/bitch at the casino that prevented me from making a wager.  Pissed me off so I never was able to place a bet.  I'm that much farther ahead, I'm thinking.

    The hour's ride back to Cannes was uneventful as was the tender ride back to the ship.  A regatta had wrapped up yesterday but the marina was still full of great looking (and expensive) sailboats:

    Here's the Century as we approached in the tender:

    Dinner tonight was "on your own"; no set seating so Gael and I dined at a two-top.  Here's Cannes from our balcony as I sat down to write this.

    Tomorrow: Florence!
 
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