Travel: July 2003 Archives
Ah, here I am at the last stop in our trip. We decided that we would hop the bus to Monaco for the last day of our vacation. We didn't have any particular goals in mind about where we wanted to go in Monaco, it just seemed like an interesting place to spend the afternoon.
John and I didn't rent a car for the entire trip. Generally speaking, unless we're in the U.S. neither of us gets too excited about driving in a place where we really don't know the rules of the road. And I have to say that the southern French are pretty aggressive drivers -- they put your average Chicagoan to shame! It didn't take us very long at all to figure out that it wasn't safe to step out into a crosswalk, even if the "walk" signal was present. Taxis are very expensive, so we defaulted to the easiest means of transport: the bus. The main bus line takes you to almost all the main cities you could want to visit: Nice, Grasse, Antibes, Cannes, Monte Carlo, Menton. Unlike Chicago buses, the buses in France were comfortable touring buses with big windows so that we could take in the sites. You definitely don't need to rent a car in the Cote d'Azure, even if you want to travel a bit and take in the sites.
The picture above is me trying to figure out where we are. Another very handy thing about French cities is the tourism information centers. All of them have free maps of the surrounding area -- very useful for people from places where the streets run more or less north-south and east-west.
The picture to the right is the harbor -- if you have an ultra luxe yacht, this is definitely the place to dock it. Some of these boats must have had more square footage than my house! You can also see a little bit of Monaco in the background. It's a very overbuilt place with expensive buildings and shops absolutely everywhere.
Our only real desitnation goal for the day was the Aquarium. Yep, forget palaces and wax museums, give me fish! It's not a huge aquarium (the upper half is dedicated to the sport fishing expeditions of the Monaco royality, the lower two floors contain a beautiful reef tank and examples of fish from a variety of areas, including the local Mediterranean species. The picture to the left was taken of the same harbor the boats are in from the top of the aquarium.
This picture really has no tourist value whatsoever, but I thought it was a neat pic -- they had a tube tank containing a bunch of small, schooling fish (I should remember the name of the species, because it's a common one, but I don't). John took it without a flash so as to avoid spooking the fish. He actually took quite a lot of fish pictures, but since you can find fish pictures almost anywhere, I'm just going to post the one and leave it at that.
There are some surprising things on the upper floors of the aquarium. One of them is an enormous whale skeleton (part of the trophy fishing collection) that makes you appreciate how big whales really are (there are also a number of other skeletons of smaller whales and dolphins, and all sorts of pickled sea creatures are in bottles along the walls.) Another is this stuffed polar bear (one of my few pictoral contributions to our trip). Not only is the bear an unexpected find, but John is also smiling in this picture!
Of course, no trip to a new city would be complete without a visit to a local cathedral. Not too far from the aquarium we were able to find one! Pictured here you can see the Cathedral de Monaco. We decided to avoid taking pictures inside (since there were people using the church as a house of worship and not just a tourist site), but we enjoyed the lovely artwork inside. This is the cathedral wherein the Monaco royal family is entombed. You can find Princess Grace's final resting place here along with a few other royal tombs. Not surprisingly, there were fresh flowers where Grace was laid to rest. Her memory obviously lives on long after her departure from the living.
The cathedral is on the edge of the old part of the city. I think if John and I hadn't already spent plenty of time in Cagne and Nice, we would have found it wonderfully quaint and decided to take pictures. But what we realized instead was that these quaint little areas are just the French equivalents of tourist traps, complete with t-shirt shops and places to buy panini and ice cream. Still pretty, but we decided not worth burning any more digital film on ("oh look, John -- another picture of narrow streets and quaint little houses!"... John and I have habit of taking lots of pictures of the same types of things while we are on vacation and then not being able to remember what they were.).
Such is the case with the artwork we discovered inside a little church just off the touristy area. I wish I had saved our map of Monaco so I could find the name of this lovely little sanctuary. Both of us were struck by the artwork on the ceiling and the statuary around the altar.
We figured that no trip to Monaco could possibly be complete without getting a look at the famous Casino de Monte Carlo. We aren't gamblers, but we've seen enough movies to be intrigued. Our walk back from the area around the aquarium took us by trendy shops and through some lovely gardens. We also had an interesting revelation about Monaco.
Remember how I mentioned that Nice drivers were not all that respectful of pedestrians in crosswalks? Well, Monaco is completely different. There aren't all that many actual stop lights, but there are quite a few pedestrian crosswalks. We more or less only had to think about stepping out into a crosswalk and the cars would stop! We have no idea why the driving styles are so different in Monaco... all we could come up with was better manners and expensive liability insurance for cars. But it was definitely nice not having to worry so much when we crossed the street.
I'll close this post and the Southern France travelogue with this shot of John in front of the Casino. He looks quite cross. Could it be because he wasn't dressed correctly for the Casino? Could it be because he has to fly back to Chicago soon? Could it be that his wife didn't tell him when to smile? The world may never know...
For some additional neat pictures of Monaco, check out this link
The next part of our wanderings through Nice took us to Cimiez, a "suburb" of Nice that is just to the north of central Nice. Unlike Chicago, suburb is a relative term. John and I just took a northernly uphill walk and had no problem getting there on foot. While Le Chateau marks the place of an ancient Greek settlement (by the way, the name of the city of Nice is derived from the winged goddess "Nike"), Cimiez is located on what used to be an old Roman settlement, Cemenelum.
Cimiez, in addition to being a pretty swanky suburb, by standards American or French, is home to some neat things to see. Our first stop was Eglise Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, the centerpiece church of a 16th century Franciscan monestary. ("Eglise" was one of the new words I added to my French vocabulary, it means "church"). John and I didn't visit the museum associated with the monestary, but we did take time to take a look at the church and peek inside... after all, it was Sunday, and we thought we might be able to earn some "extra credit points" with John's (very Polish, very Catholic) mom if we at least went in and took a look.
John snapped this picture before we realized that cameras were not supposed to be used inside the church. It gives an idea of how beautiful and how much art surrounds the average parishoner in one of these old churches (and this church was hardly unusual). It was a lot darker inside than the picture suggests, and made us realize why people might have gone to mass in the morning instead of at night: it was a lot easier to see what you were doing without a lot of candles. One thing that also struck me was the lack of a big crucifix at the front of the church (there was a very significant one towards the back). Crucifixes feature quite prominently at the front of American Catholic Churches, and it made me wonder when the shift occurred, since we noticed this absence in several French churches. The churches we visited also seemed to have a lot of side chapels dedicated to particular saints or events in Christian mythology. Even though I don't practice much, from a historical perspective, I found these churches fascinating (I almost majored in history during college, but worried about my job prospects...).
The gardens next to the church were as lovely and as tranquil as the church itself. John took this picture of me at the entry to the garden (I should point out that John took most of these lovely pictures... I only took the few where you see him by himself). In addition to sporting my handy daypack, I am also modeling my peasant top, which was perfect for the sojourn up the hill in warmish weather. Rarely have I been so pleased with one of my knitting accomplishments. Even though it is an incredibly simple garment, it is one of the most unique in my current wardrobe, and it makes me happy when I wear it (by the way... KnitPicks has Porto Cervo in Jeans on Clearance, if you're looking to make this top.)
We would have spent more time in this beautiful little fountain sanctuary if there had been a little more shade. It would have been a lovely place to settle in with a book and just soak in the peacefulness.
The next stop on our tour of Cimiez was the Musee Matisse, which is housed in a 17th century villa that we didn't seem to get a picture of. (One very useful fact when travelling in France is that the museums are free on the first Sunday of every month -- we didn't learn this until we got there, but we were happy to take advantage of it!). One of my favorite things about the Art Institute of Chicago (if you've never been, it's a must when you come to Chicago) is the large collection of French artists that are featured there, including Matisse. The Musee Matisse is quite small by comparison to the AIC, but had great exhibits. I particularly liked the one featuring his designs for the Chapelle du Rosaire, which included a mock up of the chapel itself, and sketches of the artwork.
After a brief stop for an ice cream and water break, John and I started off to look more closely at the Roman ruins of Cemenelum. (Here's a link to a little Roman history). I liked this picture a great deal because of the juxtaposition of the ruins of this ancient Roman arena with upscale French suburbia (which was also once the trendy get-a-way for weathy English travellers as well). There's not too much left of this amphitheatre that once featured gladiatorial combat, but you can almost imagine what it must have been like.
The arena sits outside of the rest of the ruins that are protected by the Musee d'Archeologie. This museum, in spite of its ancient subject material, is a relatively airy and modern building (and unlike the Musee Matisse, seemed to have turned on its air conditioning).
Probably one of the most difficult things for John and I when we went to these museums was our rusty French. I could read most things and get the general idea of what was going on, but I really wished that I had a better vocabulary and could remember more general grammar. Even so, we learned a lot here about the Roman empire and the structure of Roman settlements. John was fascinated about the process of heating the baths.
The picture above is some of the remaining substructure to the baths. One thing that we liked very much is that we could wander around in and actually touch the remains of this old settlement. Makes you appreciate the durability of Roman masonry work, but also made me wonder what would still be standing in Chicago 1600 years from now. Will people be fascinated by old hotels, shopping malls, and the remains of the Navy Pier ferris wheel?
The largest structure left standing is the main bathhouse. It's at least two stories tall and its kind of neat to think that they took the time to put in decorative brickwork to make the place more enjoyable to hang out in. When you get up close to the brick and mortar work you can almost imagine people building this place brick by brick and the work it must have required.
Now the structures only inhabitants are pigeons ("oh la la, les pigeons!", to quote an older French lady who was examining the place while we were there). No matter where you go, the sky rats seem to follow.
This last picture was taken inside the bath house (John found a creative place to put the camera so we could take a timer shot). I'm not sure what we're looking at (maybe keeping an eye out for divebombing pigeons), but I thought it was good for giving you a closer look at the brickwork.
Lest you think that I've done no knitting at all since coming back from France, I'll also throw in a quick update on my current projects. After feeling terribly guilty about the unfinished state of Pebbles, I've gone back to working on the sleeve. I think I'm about 2/3rd done with the left sleeve now... I like the way moss stitch looks, but I'm not sure I'll be diving into another major project that is all moss stitch and worked in a very inelastic fiber. I'll probably put up a pic after I get the sleeve finished.
I also succumbed to extreme temptation this morning and placed an order at Elann for 9 balls of Filatura di Crossa Tai in "Tapestry" so that I can do yet another top out of the Filatura Summer 2003 book. I really tried to resist, but at almost half off, I figured it was my only chance. I saw one of the tops knit up when I was at Ruhama's and just fell in love. Nothing like a good floor sample to sell yarn!
