Canne and Monte Carlo

(I've made a couple of catch-up posts today, including a video post of Grenoble below).

We're already losing track of what day it is so we must truly be on holidays. Already this is turning out to be an awesome family experience where we're all having a great time, even though Sandra and I both have colds (nothing the wine can't fix).

Yesterday (Thurs 3 June), we spent the first half of the day at Marineland which is a couple of blocks away from our campsite in Biot (about 20 mins out of Nice). Marineland is pretty similar to Sea World on the Gold Coast, but the kids absolutely loved it and Johanna has described it as her favourite experience so far. Jo loves dolphins, so it was fantastic to see her face light up during the show (though the rest of us got an unimpressed grin when we said we preferred the killer whale show which was pretty awesome).

After visiting the theme park, we jumped on the train around the corner at the rather unimpressive Gare du Biot which has an impressive view of the Meditterean Sea, and headed 15 mins west to Cannes. Cannes is a very beautiful city, though hard to live up to its movie-star reputation. We wandered the streets and did some shopping before settling into a restaurant down near the harbour for dinner. It was probably one of the best meals we've ever had together as a family, not so much for the food, but because we were all relaxed and loving the atmosphere. Lachlan and Johanna get friendly smiles and laughs from the waitresses as they're trying to get into the language and thanking everyone with a "merci" and farewelling with a polite "au revoir".

Today (Friday 4 June) we had a chat to Sandra's parents via our temp French mobile phone which was great to stay in touch (Ian: I'll try to post a video of the campervan over the next couple of days). We again jumped on the train, this time heading west to Monte Carlo. The trains seem to be a tale of two extremes along the southern coast from perfectly on-time to pretty average. The latter was true unfortunately today when it broke down at Nice, so we had to catch the next service on our 1 hour trip through to the world's second smallest country.

The views of the harbour of Monte Carlo, particularly from the palace above, were truly stunning and worth many millions of euros. We eventually found a hop-on/off bus which took us around the city sites, including a very quick wizz past the famous Monte Carlo Casino. Unfortunately the bus couldn't get up to 200kph with us sitting in the open roof area, so we took in the Grand Prix route at a more gentile pace. While we didn't have time to get off at the casino after the earlier train breakdown, we did stop to check out the palace and the views from above (check out the video below). Video footnote: Lach has a thing for sports cars he's calling "fashion cars".


While we've been through Nice by train we haven't yet stopped there so that will be tomorrow's plan (Saturday). We're so glad we decided to spend an extra day here, which means we'll now check out of the campsite in Biot on Sunday morning. I've found a place which does canyoning near Nice so I've booked in to do that on Sunday as we leave. They provide the wetsuits and helmets to dive in and under the caves and jump into rock pools below (looks great on the brochure). I think Sandra and the kids will probably opt to chill out at the shops instead!