I’ve been getting a lot of grief lately from our family members for posting a recap of our most recent vacation before I ever recapped our honeymoon (whoops). So I guess now is as good a time as any to get started on those honeymoon recaps.
For our honeymoon, we decided to take a 9 day Mediterranean cruise with Carnival (noticing a trend here) that left from Barcelona, Spain and stopped in Monaco, Livorno (Florence), Civitavecchia (Rome), Naples (Pompeii/Amalfi Coast), Messina (Taormina/Castelmola), Palma De Mallorca and Marseilles.
Our first stop was alongside the beautiful hills of Monaco. This was literally the only stop where we had beautiful scenery to welcome us into the port. And it was the only port where we could walk right off the boat and start our tour.
In the Mediterranean, most of the ports are hours away from the popular tourist areas, so we took advantage of Monaco’s unique location by doing our own tour.
We started out the day taking lots of pictures of Monaco from the top deck of our ship. The scenery really was something to behold. And since Monaco is so small (less than 1 square mile), we could see the entire country.
Once we got off the ship, we made our way over to the Old City area that holds Palais Princier and Saint Nicholas cathedral.
In our climb up the mountainside to the Old City, we found a shortcut (aka a set of crazy steep stairs) to Fort Antoine. The Fort was originally built in the 18th century to protect the palace.
With Monaco now facing a slim chance of invasion, the Fort has been adapted into a large outdoor theater.
Since the Fort overlooks the Monaco cruise pier, it gives you a great look of the other sections of Monaco, including La Condamine and Monte Carlo. After catching our breath, we continued the steep climb to the Old City.
Along the way, we saw these amazing cafes and pastry shops. It really started to sink in that we had arrived in Europe.
We took our time wandering through Monaco’s old, charming streets since the Palace would not be open for tours until 9:30 (our ship docked at 9). After meandering for awhile, we made it to the Palace square.
While this is probably one of the world’s smaller palaces, it was still gorgeous.
Although a structure (fortress or palace) has been located in this square since the 13th century, the current facades and the interiors were redone in the 1940s, as part of Prince Rainier attempts to restore Monaco to its previous grandeur.
Since the palace sits on a mountainside, you can overlook the La Condamine section from its northern side and the Fontevieille section from its southern side.
With our scenery shots out of the way, we entered the Palace for a tour. For 7 Euros (they let us use a credit card here by the way), we got an audio tour of the State Apartments within the Palace.
Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures so I will have to source these ones out.
Once you pay your admission, you ascend a staircase to the Palace’s main courtyard through the Galeria D’Hercule (pictured above). The area is decadently covered in Carrara marble and Italian Renaissance frescos.
Once you pass through the Galeria, you walk through a series of interior rooms that our elegantly and extraordinarily decorated. Each room has its own unique history that is explained in the audio tour.Once we finished in the palace, we headed a few blocks down the street to the famous Saint Nicholas Cathedral.
A cathedral has been in this location since the 13th century, with the current Cathedral being consecrated in 1875. The cathedral is the burial grounds for many of Monaco’s royalty, including Prince Albert I and Prince Charles III.
But the Cathedral is most famous for holding the grave of Grace Kelly, who was married to Prince Rainer III of Monaco. Even though she’s been gone for 30 years, visitors still leave flowers on her tombstone.
After finishing our tour of the Cathedral, we walked down the steep hill from the Old City over to La Condamine, Monaco’s market and harbor center.
On our walk, we saw the tracks for Grand Prix and the ever present fan stands.
We wandered over to the open air market on Princess Caroline Rue. It was so neat to see the European version of farmer’s markets. I wish I had this kind of market in my neighborhood everyday.
We grabbed a quick lunch from a stand in the open air market and decided to head over to the Casino. We should have known with Monaco’s steep terrain that it would be quite a hike.
After 20 minutes of walking up a steep hill, we finally made it to the famous Monte Carlo.
It’s true that there are tons of fancy cars just sitting outside the Casino’s doors. Older couples were walking around in ballgowns and suits (it was the middle of the afternoon). While we didn’t go in (it requires a suit jacket), the uppitiness was so flagrant that we could feel it outside. But it is cool to say that we’ve seen it up close.
Across the street from the casino is an open air square that overlooks the harbor in Monaco. It was a beautiful location to take pictures of the entire landscape.
We decided to walk back to the ship along the harbor so we could see more the of Grand Prix racetrack. It’s really odd to see fan stands just sitting in the middle of a city.
We arrived back at the ship long before our departing time, which was fine with us. We had seen everything we wanted to see in Monaco (no Oceanographic or Exotic Garden visit for us…not big on random museums about oceans and plants) and honestly we were beat from all the uphill walking.
Monaco was the perfect way to ease into our cruise since the next 7 days would be packed with adventures from sunup to sundown.
Up Next:Pisa and Florence All in One Day