Monaco

Monaco is only 9 kilometres from Nice, but they are a windy, slow kind of kilometre. They run along the coast road and give some great views of the incredibly wealthy, both houses and super-yachts.

Monaco itself has a lot of its key roads running underground as space is a premium. We forgoed Monte Carlo, partly by accident and went instead to the Prince’s palace.

A walk up the hill with some views over the bay and lunch in a little restaurant at the top was our essential experience of Monaco. There were a lot of tourist shops at the top of the hill, and the actual palace was strange; a very fake castle wall with a turret in one corner. Several mansions across the square are the real ‘castles’ There is a lot more to do in Monaco, but we had places to be and so took the car through the underground highways and the winding hill roads to a new town.​

Monaco is lovely, and you could easily spend a weekend or an inheritance there without noticing, but it is a costly place to linger.