{"id":4483,"date":"2014-05-20T08:12:12","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T12:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=4483"},"modified":"2014-05-20T08:14:46","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T12:14:46","slug":"monte-carlo-monaco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/monte-carlo-monaco\/","title":{"rendered":"Monte Carlo, Monaco"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I don\u2019t follow car racing of any kind, but those who do will probably know the Grand Prix of Monaco is coming up.\u00a0 Two years ago, we spent a day in Monte Carlo during our Mediterranean cruise during the time in which they were setting up for the race.\u00a0 Honeybun was almost 4 and Sugarplum was 21 months old.<\/p>\n

While it was really cool to see where the race was going to be held and walk by the grandstands and up part of the track, I have to admit I was very disappointed in our visit.\u00a0 I was so excited to visit Monte Carlo, in fact it was one of the main reasons I chose the cruise we did.\u00a0 The glitz, the glamour, I was so excited for all of it and it just wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a> \"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0Part of the trouble was we were in port on a Sunday.\u00a0 The boat arrived and docked outside the port pretty early in the morning and had to take a tender in.\u00a0 Once in Monte Carlo, we headed towards the main area where the casino, shops and restaurants are.\u00a0 We were surprised to find everything closed.\u00a0 We wandered the streets a little bit waiting for everything to open and quickly realized there wasn\u2019t anything for us there anyway (Gucci, Cartier, \u00a0Prada\u2026you get the picture).<\/p>\n

\"SONY\u00a0We decided to get a snack and wait for the casino to open (not because we\u2019re big gamblers but just because we were there, we figured we should see it!)\u00a0 We ordered a milk for Sugarplum, hot chocolate (a very special treat!) for Honeybun and hubby and I each got a coffee.\u00a0 We were in shock when we got the bill:<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

Definitely the most expensive milk Sugarplum has ever had!\u00a0 (that\u2019s Euros, approximately 1.3 dollars per Euro at that time=almost 6 dollars BEFORE tip!)<\/p>\n

After our snack we wandered back to the casino only to find out children were not allowed in AT ALL, not even in the lobby.\u00a0 Hubby ran in real quick and had a look around while I waited outside.<\/p>\n

We then headed to the train station to check the schedule.\u00a0 We were so disenchanted with Monte Carlo we thought about taking the train to Nice for a few hours (Nice is on hubby\u2019s short list of places to visit as Monte Carlo had been on mine). Unfortunately there wasn\u2019t enough time\/train options for us to get there and back without rushing which wasn’t really an option with the kids.<\/p>\n

So we decided to head towards the palace.\u00a0 On the way we stumbled upon a cute little farmer\u2019s market and then made our way up, Up, UP the hill to the palace area, bumping the buggy all the way.\u00a0 The walk up wasn\u2019t too bad (though I was getting blisters from the \u201cfancy\u201d shoes I decided to wear) and the view was amazing!<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\"SONY\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

We spent a little time wandering around near the palace, doing a little shopping (prices near the palace were much more reasonable!)\u00a0 We still weren\u2019t all that impressed with what we found in Monte Carlo and after the sticker shock of our snack decided to head back to the boat for lunch.<\/p>\n

While we had walked up to the Palace from the city side, we walked down along the harbor side which was quite a bit trickier but also much more exciting and we got to enjoy the view the whole way down (though it was a little tricky finding our way at times and staying on the path!)<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a> \"SONY<\/a> \"SONY<\/a> \"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

After lunch hubby headed back into the city to go to the casino, Honeybun headed to the kids club and I sat in our room with Sugarplum while she napped.\u00a0 And that was Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t follow car racing of any kind, but those who do will probably know the Grand Prix of Monaco is coming up.\u00a0 Two years ago, we spent a day in Monte Carlo during our Mediterranean cruise during the time in which they were setting up for the race.\u00a0 Honeybun was almost 4 and Sugarplum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tiny-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4483"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4498,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions\/4498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}