At 4:00 AM on the 23rd, we took a taxi to the Airbus at the Hotel Raddison. Mom struck up a conversation with a woman, unfortunately named Susie, who was on her way to Frankfurt via standby. We arrived at LAX to stand in a two-hour line at Delta, where we saw Susie again, and shared some crushed donuts from the depths of our luggage. Breakfast wasn't an option. Susie showed up later on the plane to New York, but she didn't know if she'd be able to get through to Frankfurt. Her luggage, however, was headed all the way through.
At JFK international airport we had a long layover, so we tried to store our stuff and send email, but JFK has no lockers, and only one internet machine, which didn't work. So we had some Chinese food and sat around for a couple of hours.
From New York to Nice, Delta fed us at least four times, not counting all the soft drinks and snack mixes. I got about two hours sleep and read half of The Walking Drum (though not at the same time).
We arrived in NCE and went through customs quickly. The customs person stamped the passport on the wrong page. An American woman asked us what EU meant; she'd heard it before, but she couldn't remember. Uh-huh.
We picked up the rental car and drove around the airport a few times before finding our way out. Finding the hotel was relatively simple; finding parking was not. The hotel proprietor told us that parking was free on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and everyone in France was taking advantage of this. People were double-parked, parked on the sidewalk, and simply stopped in the middle of the street. They do this anyway, but it was five times worse on a rainy Christmas Eve. I finally unloaded the bags and found a parking space four blocks away.
Nice is full of little dogs. Everywhere you look, there's someone out walking a little dog. Occasionally, you might see someone walking a big or medium-sized dog, but mostly you see little dust-bunny dogs. Consequently, Nice is also full of little dog turds, scattered along the sidewalks like land mines.
There are also cars on the sidewalks. They park there, right on the little dog turds. If there's no room on the sidewalks, they simply stop and put their emergency flashers on, to let people know that they're in the way. There are regular street parking spaces, but they're usually full, and blocked by cars with their flashers on.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around Nice, mostly in a stupor, since we'd been up since noon the previous day, France time. It was raining, so Mom bought an umbrella. I didn't see any need for something like that, so I just walked around getting wet. Since we assumed everything would be closed the next day, we stopped in a nearby grocery store to stock up. I was in enough of a daze that I apparently left my gloves there.
We had a reservation for Christmas Eve dinner at Chantecler, a world-famous restaurant in the world-famous Negresco hotel on the world-famous Promenade de Anglais. But when we confirmed our reservation, we were told that they would begin serving at 8:00 PM. That would mean we would be up until at least 10:00 -- 36 hours -- and we were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to stay conscious that long. So we cancelled the reservation and got pizza.
France is a Catholic country, and celebrates the whole Christmas season, which extends into January. Christmas Eve is a much bigger deal than it is in the US, and people stay up most of the night celebrating noisily. But we didn't care. We slept for 15 hours.
We didn't get a very early start. We got up groggy and puttered around getting ready for much longer than we would normally take, while watching Pokèmon cartoons dubbed into French. Pokèmon is even bigger in Europe than in the US, and Pokèmon characters show up everywhere.
We got going at about noon and drove out the Moyenne Corniche toward Monaco. The Moyenne Corniche is one of three highways along the coast. The Grand Corniche is the upper, inland, multi-lane freeway. When it encounters a hill, it tunnels straight through it. The Basse Corniche hugs the coast and allows you to meander along at about 30 mph -- sort of the Route 1 of France. The Moyenne Corniche is in between these two -- up in the hills but with nice views of the Mediterranean and its coastal towns. It's also very winding, and you can't go faster than about 45 mph.
The Moyenne Corniche goes right by Eze Village, which is one of the most famous and accessible hill villages in the area. It's over 800 years old, and has the distinction of never having been successfully defended. It's been attacked and conquered and burned and reconquered and is now a quaint tourist attraction with the ruin of a castle on top.
Since it was Christmas, and raining, there was almost no one there. We parked without paying and walked to the top and wandered around. Naturally, everything was closed.
(On the way down, we saw a group of people with a St. Bernard who was not interested in walking to the top of the hill and decided to sit down instead. We didn't stay to see how that came out, but my money's on the St. Bernard.)
We went on to Monaco, where we drove around without a clear idea of where we wanted to go. We muddled our way to the Monte Carlo Casino and parked in the parking garage. The garage said "Libre" and, sure enough, we didn't have to pay anything. Monaco has free tourist maps in all the garages, so we picked up a couple and walked to the casino.
The Monte Carlo Casino has the best toilets I've ever seen. I wanted to take a picture of them, but security made me check my cameras on the way in. So I will describe them. When you flush the toilet, a rectangular box extends from the tank and clamps to the back of the seat. Then the seat starts to rotate. The box contains cleaners and brushes and some kind of dryer. The seat does one full revolution, making a very impressive whirring noise, as red and green lights on the tank display its status. Then the box retracts. I was very impressed. I flushed it three times.
Most of the casino is for high rollers, and you have to pay something like $10 per person just to get in. So we went to the American section (really, that's what they call it) and I lost three francs (about 45 cents) in a slot machine.
From the casino we muddled our way to the yacht harbor and spent a little time looking around and taking pictures of the harbor and a fat person on a fat horse.
Monaco has the smallest area of any country in the world other than Vatican City (and possibly Seborga), and it's mostly on a cliff. But this has not deterred Prince Ranier. Every square inch of the country is covered with apartments, businesses, and parks, connected with winding roads and a honeycomb of tunnels. I've never seen tunnels like these. Many of them are a single lane, with bare rock walls. One even has a place to make a u-turn and enter another tunnel going the opposite direction.
I drove around and around in these tunnels. Trying to get from Monte Carlo to Fontvielle, on the other side of the palace, should have been an easy matter of driving on the road that seemed to connect the two. I'd given up on trying to get up the cliff to Monaco Ville and the palace, because every time I tried to drive up there a bored-looking traffic cop would direct me into another lane that led back to the yacht harbor and Monte Carlo. So I tried to head for Fontvielle. When I got to France I figured I'd gone too far, so I turned around in a dangerous and illegal manner and went back into Monaco, through a tunnel, and back to that same traffic cop who directed us back to Monte Carlo again. I tried going around Monaco Ville on the ocean side, but all that's over there is ocean, and I ended up in a parking garage, so I turned around in a dangerous and illegal manner and had the traffic cop direct us back into Monte Carlo again. Trying the one road I hadn't yet tried, I ended up back in the tunnel and thence back in Monte Carlo, but I noticed that the tunnel forked, so I went around again to see where the fork went. It made a u-turn and led into another tunnel going the opposite direction which took us straight into Fontvielle. Once in Fontvielle, I got stuck in a lane that took me back into the tunnel again, but after some more looping around, I managed to get into a parking garage beneath a mall. Naturally, everything was closed.
We finally left Monaco and drove back to Nice on the Basse Corniche, winding along the little coastal villages in heavy traffic. Why there was heavy traffic on Christmas night I don't know, but it was a picturesque drive, even after dark, so it didn't really matter.
When we got back to Nice, we decided to branch out, so we got pizza from a different pizza place -- Le Quebec -- across the street from the last one. Mom really liked the Coke glass, which said "Drink Coca-Cola" in French, and asked the waiter if she could buy one. He looked a little confused and said no, but a little while later he came back with one in a bag and gave it to her.
Photos of Villefranche-Sur-Mer, Monaco, and Nice
With effort, we found our way to the Grand Corniche. I had taken a wrong turn onto a road that led up a hill to the observatory, so we had a long and scenic detour. It looked very much like the Santa Barbara Riviera.
We took the Grand Corniche toward Italy, stopping briefly to throw coins into a toll station (literally -- there's a big basket and you throw the coins into it). When we got to the border we expected a border station that would stamp our passports, but there wasn't one. There was a station a little way past the border, but that turned out to be another toll station. We stopped there, because they had restrooms and maps, then continued into Italy.
The turnoff to Seborga isn't far past the Italian border. You get off the Grand Corniche (or whatever the Italians call it) and wind into the foothills of the Italian Alps. After a few miles, you get to a weatherbeaten sign that welcomes you to Seborga. There's a faded coat of arms painted on the street, an even older sign that's completely rusted, and a Seborgan flag. There used to be a sentry post there, but it's gone.
As we got closer to the main village (okay, the only village), the houses got nicer. They're not mansions, but they're spacious houses of recent vintage. The village itself is medieval, with narrow, winding stone streets and strange passageways. There's a large parking area at the edge of the village, and two restaurants, which were both closed. In fact, everything was closed. Almost the only sign of life was a dog that joined us as we walked around.
After about a half hour of walking around, one of the shops opened up. It was, oddly, a sort of new-agey shop with candles and aromatherapy kits. The proprietor spoke a little English, which picked up as he got more into it. He was a volunteer paramedic, and had been very busy lately, since all the rain had caused flooding and mudslides. He said December 26 was a holiday, so few places would be open, but things would be back to normal tomorrow. We decided to come back to Seborga the next day, and headed back to Roquebrune in France.
Roquebrune is a medieval village with a castle, on a hill overlooking Monaco and the Mediterranean. It started pouring just before we arrived, but we wandered through the village and the castle anyway.
The castle is partly a ruin, but the view is incredible. It overlooks the village, which is the standard medieval jumble of walls and roofs and narrow streets, all crushed together on the edge of a cliff. And somewhere down there, in the rain, was a very unhappy cat. The whole time we were in the castle, we could hear his mournful meowing drifting up to us.
We got hungry and didn't want to eat in the very expensive restaurant at Roquebrune, so we drove back to McDonald's in Fontvielle. This time I had no trouble finding it, even coming down from the hills. The roads all wind into Monte Carlo, and from there it's easy, once you know how. McDonald's was open, too, which helped. We also looked around the mall and bought stamps at the post office.
After studying the map, I'd decided that the way to get up to Monaco Ville and the palace was on the road that had taken us to the parking garage the day before. There's a road that goes all the way up, but you can probably only use it if you're the prince or someone like that. Hence the traffic cop. So we went to the parking garage and found some elevators and escalators and stairs and walkways that took us from almost ocean level to the top of the cliff.
Monaco doesn't miss a trick when it comes to tourists. The first thing you see in Monaco Ville is a souvenir shop, snack bar, and money changing office. Next to that is a film called "The Monaco Story", offered in seven different languages. It's about a half hour and gives a good historical overview of the country. It doesn't mention any royal scandals, so it has very little to say about Stephanie or Caroline, but goes on at length about Princess Grace.
Monaco Ville is -- surprise! -- another medieval village. Only this one's on the same level as the palace, since the whole thing's on a mesa. The palace has a large open space in front of it which is kept fully stocked with tourists. We took pictures, bought stuff, and walked through the village.
We went back to Monte Carlo, parked in the free parking garage, and had supper at Häagen-Dazs. Europe has very nice Häagen-Dazs Cafes. They're classier than what I've seen in the US, though I would have expected no less from Monte Carlo. Our waiter spoke thickly accented English and wasn't afraid to use it to tell us all sorts of absurdities regarding what we were ordering. What was most notable about the ice cream was the cherries. They were bing cherries soaked in, apparently, pure ethyl alcohol. The first one was horrendous. After that they were pretty good.
After Häagen-Dazs, we walked around the casino area and looked at some of the famous stores such as Cartier and Fred. In front of Fred we saw our first Smart. Smart is an abnormally small car designed by Mercedes and Swatch. It's ideal for a place like Monaco, where space is at a premium. So far the car is available only in Europe and Japan.
Monte Carlo is as at least upscale as Beverly Hills. For Christmas they had put a red carpet down on the main shopping street, and were playing music over loudspeakers. We walked around a little bit, looking at shop windows. Some of them looked back at us. The streets were full of shoppers and children on scooters.
Cultural difference: All the mannequins I saw in Europe, even in Monte Carlo, had nipples. The female ones did, anyway. I don't know why this is, but it's a good look, and one that I hope will catch on in the US. On the other hand, I don't really see the point (so to speak) of putting nipples on mannequins that don't even have arms or heads.
When we left the parking garage, the machine told me that I owed 29 francs. "Libre", it seems, does mean free, but free in the sense of "available" rather than "no cost". It simply meant that the parking spaces weren't all taken. But it had been free (no charge) on Christmas, reinforcing the mistake.
We got back to Nice, and after two days of getting wet, I finally gave up and bought an umbrella. It's the first umbrella I've ever purchased. I'm concerned that it will mark me as some kind of sissy boy.
Nice has parking meters that cover a whole block. You put money in the meter and get a ticket that you put on your dashboard. It's good for four hours. We didn't need one on Christmas, but on Wednesday morning we were getting a late start, so I ran out at 8:30 to put some money in, lest the French police tow the rental car or throw me in the Bastille or something. The machine took 8 francs and didn't give change, so I spent 12 francs on pastries at a nearby market and got 8 francs in change, which I put in the meter.
Our hotel (Hotel de la Buffa) was right next to a market. Not a regular grocery-store-type market, although there was one of those, too (where I lost my gloves), but what we would call a farmer's market, stretching the length of the block in a warehouse-like space. Since it was open all the way through, we walked through it to get to the car. This morning there was an organ grinder with a monkey. I tried giving the monkey some money, but he didn't want it, so I gave it to the organ grinder instead. He didn't seem all that interested, either, but he took it.
We went back to Seborga, throwing more money at the French and Italians along the way. There had been a big rock slide on the French side of the border and the French police were routing oncoming traffic through our tunnel, cutting it down to one lane in each direction. The winding road up to Seborga was fine, though, and we got there around noon.
There were more people out today, although most of them were children out of school, several of them on scooters. The scooter craze has even reached Seborga. At a grocery/souvenir store, we bought postcards, Seborga wine (actually from Italy, but with a Seborga label), and Seborga fermented lemonade. Yes. It's called Lemoncino, and it's 30% alcohol by volume. The woman I bought it from pointed to a ribbon on the wall and then to herself and said "Minister." Minister of what, she didn't say. Probably Minister of Lemonade.
We went to some sort of official office that we thought was the embassy, but wasn't. They had a room of Seborga photos dating back to the 19th Century. We found the real embassy, but they were closed for lunch, so we went to lunch, too.
There's an excellent restaurant in Seborga, run by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I mean really excellent. Far better than you'd expect for an unrecognized city-state up in the hills. We sat next to an Italian man who lived in Paris and came to Seborga just to eat at that restaurant.
We talked to a woman who'd lived in the British West Indies and spoke English. She said that an investor from Belize is planning to build a heliport there, and they've been approached by several people from Monaco who are looking at Seborga as a possible banking alternative if anything happens to Monaco's sovereignty. I didn't notice any banks in Seborga, though. Also, Seborga is still unrecognized by Italy, and the Italian courts refuse to hear the case. Prince Giorgio is taking the case to the EU court in Brussels. I had thought that the principality claim might be sort of a semi-bogus story put out for the tourists, but they seem to be serious, and there seems to be some money behind it. As we were leaving a bus full of apparently wealthy tourists arrived and headed for the restaurant.
On the way back we stopped at the Italian toll station again to use the restroom. As I waited in the car, I watched as Mom came out of the restroom, stopped, looked around, and started to get in someone else's car. She was stopped by the man in the car saying, "Scuzi!" From then on she decided only to get in our car.
We overslept. After racing frantically to get ready and squish our suitcases shut, we made it to the airport and turned in the rental car with just a little time to spare. Then we discovered that our ticket had the wrong time and our plane had just left. The itinerary attached to the ticket was approximately correct, but the ticket itself was wrong, so we were able to get another flight at no extra cost. Instead of a direct flight, though, we had to fly to Madrid and get on standby for a flight to Málaga.
When we got to Madrid, we tried to check our luggage through, but the baggage person told us that we were in the wrong place for that. So we went up an escalator, up an elevator, down an escalator, and up some stairs to another baggage person, who put tags on our luggage, then decided we were in the wrong place and directed us to another desk about 50 yards away. That person checked our luggage and directed us down some stairs and to the other end of the airport to the standby window, where they told me to come back later. When boarding started, I went back to the standby window and they gave us boarding passes. Then we went down some stairs and got on a bus. After waiting on the bus for ten or fifteen minutes, we rode out to the plane, which was nowhere near any building. They had us board the plane from both the front and the back. We got on in the back, and had to wait for people to putter around with their luggage, figure out where they were sitting, &c., while we stood on the steps, in the rain, and waited for them. For about 20 minutes.
Then we taxied. We taxied a lot. I don't know how long we taxied, but it was long enough for me to wonder if we were driving to Málaga rather than flying. When we finally took off, the flight was short and bumpy, with a soundtrack of Christmas songs that played over and over. I heard a German rendition of Silent Night three times in the one-hour flight. They gave us drinks fifteen minutes before we landed, then hurriedly collected the cups and bottles as we were descending.
We had a sandwich at the Málaga airport, then took a bus to the bus station in the center of town, where we got the local stop-at-every-podunk-town-along-the-way bus to La Línea de la Concepción. It took three hours. It was dark and rainy and we weren't really sure if we would know when we were in La Línea. The windows steamed up from the rain.
When we did get to La Línea, it was obvious, because we could see the Rock of Gibraltar. The La Línea bus station is about two blocks from the border, which is a good thing, because there aren't any buses or taxis that go across the border. So we walked and dragged our luggage along behind us. The border guards checked to see if we had passports, but didn't actually stamp them or even check to see if they were ours. We got a taxi on the Gibraltar side and made it to the Cannon Hotel at about 8:30.
We checked in and went out to eat. We found an Indian restaurant called Viceroy, and went in. After standing there for a while, a girl asked us what we wanted. We said we were there for dinner. She seemed to find this puzzling, and went to get someone else, who came out and asked us if we had a booking. Uh, no, do we need one? "Well, that's why I asked." This went on for a couple of minutes. He seemed to think it was totally unreasonable of us to walk in to his restaurant and expect to be able to get dinner, and he made not the slightest pretense of being polite about it. So we left and ate at another Indian restaurant called Maharaja, which was quite good, though not very impressive, ambience-wise.
Tipping was a puzzle. In France, the menus usually said that a tip was included, so it wasn't a problem. But here there was nothing to indicate either way. And we paid by credit card, but there was no place to add in a tip. So we didn't.
The Cannon Hotel was old, but it was hard to tell how old. A plaque at the entrance said it was reopened in 1995, but there was no indication of when it was opened the first time. It had three stories, arranged around a central courtyard with tables. The courtyard had a canvas cover over it to keep the rain out. There was a spiral staircase going up from the courtyard, but it was so slippery from the rain that it was mostly unusable. The main staircase was carpeted and had unevenly sized steps. On each floor was a hallway encircling the courtyard, with rooms and other hallways off of it. The other hallways had doors, for no apparent reason. Our room was at the end of the hallway that extended from the end of the main top-floor hallway. The door opened with a skeleton key. Our room was one of the few with a bathroom, and that had a back door that opened onto a metal porch with stairs leading down to nothing in particular. We could see the Rock and some other yards and rooftops with seagulls.
The bathroom had a regular ceiling light, which worked fine, and two lights over the mirror, which didn't come on with the switch or have any other visible switch. The bulbs didn't seem to be burnt out, either. We asked about this, but the French girl at the desk (actually a bar) didn't quite understand us. She checked the room later and told us that the bathroom light worked, so we showed her exactly which lights we meant. She was going to check with the manager, but we never heard any more about it.
The Rick Steves guidebook suggested taking the #3 bus from the border around the Rock. It was just a city bus, not a tour bus, but it seemed like a good way to get an overview of the area. We found a #3 bus easily, though not at the border, and I got on and asked how much it was for two people. The prices were posted, but I didn't know if "p" referred to pesetas or pence. The driver asked where we wanted to go, and I said we just wanted to go around the Rock. Well. We certainly couldn't do that. The driver told us that it wasn't a tour bus, and I said I knew that. Then some of the passengers joined in, telling me that it wasn't a tour bus. I said that I wasn't looking for a tour bus and I just wanted to ride the bus and how much did it cost? The driver told me that it wasn't a tour bus and some more passengers informed me that this bus wasn't a tour bus. So I got off the bus, leaving them all to wonder about that stupid American who thought that a city bus was a tour bus.
So we figured we'd take a cable car up the Rock. It was a perfect sunny day -- the first Gibraltar had had in weeks -- so it was probably the best time to go. We'd walked up Main Street to the Trafalgar Cemetery (stopping at Gibraltar Books to get some maps and guidebooks) when we were accosted by a tour guide who offered van rides up the Rock. He gave us his spiel, telling us how the cable car would just leave us at the top and we'd have to walk to everything and it would be just terrible, and told us his price (expensive), and we said no thanks. Then another tour guide gave us another spiel. It wasn't all that different, and the price was the same, but he didn't give us the immediate impression that he was going to roll us, so we said yes. We could ride the cable car tomorrow if we wanted.
Our guide's name was Robert, and was a pleasant fellow who told us the usual Facts For The Tourists, but was also able to answer my questions. We talked about the EU, the broken nuclear submarine in the harbor, and the monkeys, among other things.
Gibraltar's Rock tours go up the main road to the siege tunnels on the north end, stopping at the Pillars of Hercules, St. Michael's Cave, the Apes' Den, and the main Siege Tunnel. The Pillars of Hercules are really just a big monument thingy and a view point where the road bends at its southernmost point. It's a nice view, but nothing much beyond that.
St. Michael's Cave is a vast network of subterranean chambers, with a large upper hall linked to a smaller, deeper chamber by connecting passages that drop to 250 feet below the entrance.
The main hall is used as an auditorium for concerts and such. I'm not sure how they handle the water that constantly drips from the ceiling.
The Apes' Den was the best part. The monkeys had just been fed, and the weather was nice, so they were all out jumping around and indulging in monkey photo-ops. While I was taking a picture of one, another jumped on my back, then a third one jumped on my back and pushed the other one off. Then one jumped on Mom's head. The terms "ape" and "monkey" are used interchangeably, but they really are monkeys, even though they don't have tails. They're Barbary Macaques, and came over from Africa at some point, though no one knows exactly when or how.
The siege tunnels were dug during the Great Siege of 1779-1783. The main tunnel goes down at a rather sharp angle from the west side to the east side of the Rock, and out to a platform overlooking the Mediterranean and Catalán Bay. Off the main tunnel are various rooms and cannon placements. There are monkeys at the entrance to the siege tunnels, too, and another one jumped on my head while I was up there, but generally they're more wild and more willing to bite you.
When we got back, we wandered around Trafalgar Cemetery for a bit, then got fish & chips at Roy's II, just off Main Street. I talked to Roy himself, who owns Roy's, Roy's II, and the Trafalgar Inn. Roy didn't think much of the EU, and had no qualms about saying so. He thought they should close the Chunnel, too.
I was trying to find some Gibraltar millennium currency, so Roy fished some out of the cash register for me, and I exchanged some British money for it. He also told me about the different types of British money. Instead of simply having a single £1 coin, the UK has a different coin for each nation of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In fact, they seem to have more than that. Roy told me which were which, but over the next few days I came across some others that are either older versions of the same coins, or something else entirely.
Roy invited us to the Trafalgar Inn for New Year's Eve. They were going to celebrate the new year at midnight, then again at 1:00 AM, which would be midnight in the UK. We considered going, but we ended up not bothering. It's one thing to travel halfway around the world for New Year's Eve; it's another thing entirely to stay up late and be sociable.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city: Main Street, Grand Casemates Square, Europort, Irish Town, and an assortment of side streets. I sent email from Cyberworld Cafe, a nice but expensive internet cafe off of Fish Market Road. I had email from Alcalde telling me that my Linux machine had been broken into, apparently by someone in Romania.
Then we did some more shopping on and off Main street, ate dinner at an Italian place, and called it a day.
We tried to go up on the cable car to see the monkeys again, but it was closed due to wind. We decided to try the #3 bus again, this time with some decoy destination so they wouldn't kick us off, but after twenty minutes or so, all we'd seen were children on scooters. So we went to the Gibraltar Museum and the tourist information center, and did some random shopping. I bought some end-of-the-20th-Century newpapers and some sparklers. We ate lunch at Roy's II again.
I went to Cyberworld again to check email. Alcalde had tightened up security on my server. We did some more shopping (Mom bought some Gibraltar crystal), washed some clothes, wrote some postcards, and generally got organized. There was a lizard on the wall outside the bathroom that, according to my guidebook, was a Moorish Gecko.
We walked through Irish Town and had dinner at The Clipper. It was very early for dinner by Gibraltar standards. They seem to eat later, like Spain, so we almost had the place to ourselves. They had decent, if bland, food, and a waiter with a personality. The TV in the corner was showing a VH1 1980 video retrospective, so I got to watch videos of The Police, The Pretenders, &c. We bought t-shirts.
