Cruise: Villefranche, Monaco and my moral dilemma re: Johnny Depp

Hello, my faithful readers. I hope you had a lovely weekend. Okay, we're going back on the Disney Magic cruise ship. Are you ready? Of course you are.  Bear with me, it's long and full of photos and my moral dilemma will be explained later.

Day...something (you really lose track of the days, but this may have been day 10 or 11) brought us to the lovely village of Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. Again, it was another glorious day.   The boat docked and we had to take a tender into shore, which Indy thought was awesome.  The view was spectacular, as were the boats in the harbor.  This was my absolute favorite:

This is the town of Villefranche.  I could totally live here.

Looking back at the sailboats.  The Disney Magic is in the back.  I'm sure the mouse ears on the smoke stacks probably gave that away.

We climbed about a million stairs on our way to the train station as I really, really wanted to go to Monaco.  From the top of the first tier, we had an amazing view of the beach.  I should mention that this was a topless beach.  Indy leaned over to me and whispered "Mom, some of these women forgot their bra tops!"  I laughed and told him this was a beach where they didn't have to be worn.  He shrugged and it was no big deal.  Whew!

We got to Monaco via train in about 10  minutes.  The train station was fancy and the country itself was lovely.  And expensive.  Holy cow.  For those who may not know, Monte Carlo, where the casino is located, is a ward of Monaco, with Monaco being the actual country.  The whole country is about the size of a postage stamp (.76 sqmi), so I'm not sure why they have ward (sections), but it's their (little) country so, who am I?

We were there on a Sunday, so most of the stores, except the touristy places.  We walked past the Louis Vuitton store and in the window they had a croquet set in a LV case.  I couldn't get a good photo because of the glass, but you can see it.  It was €8000.  About $11000.  Yikes!

Just down the road was the Casino.  James Bond took the opportunity to do his best JB pose.  Silly.

We were all pretty warm, so we grabbed a table at the Cafe de Paris (it was in Casino Royale) and grab something to drink.  See the size of that Coke Indy's drinking?  It's 33cl, which is about 11oz.  They were €8 EACH.  That's about $32.  James Bond almost had a stroke.

The Casino didn't open until 2pm and you had to be "dressed" to go in, so obviously we didn't.  I still got a photo of the interior through an open door though.  Fancy.

Exterior from the back:

Side:

After that, I wanted to go see the palace, which is on top of this cliff. 

James Bond and Indy weren't all that thrilled and were pretty tired so they decided to head back to Villefranche and head to the beach.  I figured out the bus system, which was complicated since the Grand Prix had been run the week before and the buses were taking alternate routes until all the barricades were taken down.   Oh, before I went up to The Rock (as they call the palace), I passed a bridal shop with dresses that cost about a bazillion dollars.

Once I got as far as the buses go, which is about a 10 minute walk, I headed up the hill.  The streets were tiny and full of character.

The front of the palace and the main square.

 The view from the right side of the palace square:

The view from the left side of the palace square:

Nice views, eh?  I took the tour of the palace,I wasn't allowed to take photos though-boo.  Prince Albert narrates the tour on the headphone in the English, French and Italian versions and has a lovely, mellow voice.  BTW, it's pronounced muh-NAHH-coh, not MON-uh-coh, like we would say it.  The tour started on the balcony that overlooks courtyard where the royal wedding between Albert and Charlene was held last year.  When I watched the wedding, I was all "I SAW THAT!  I STOOD ON THAT BALCONY!"  I'm a bit of a dork like that though.  There were paintings of Princess Grace everywhere.   Good golly was she beautiful.  There was even a painting taller than me that shows Rainier and the 3 kids with Grace looking down on them from clouds.  It  was sweet, but also kind of creepy.

After the tour, I headed over to St. Nicholas Cathedral.

There are 26 Monegasque rulers buried in St. Nicholas.  Here are the graves of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier:

  I finally decided to head back to the bus stop and head back to Villefranche.  This is what was waiting at the bus stop.   Pretty!

So, here's the moral dilemma.  My beloved Johnny Depp, as you may know from this previous blog post, lives in Plan de la Tour, France, which is about a 45 minute train ride from Monaco.  I could easily have left James Bond and Indy at the beach and gone to see my beloved.  Oh, you know he would have let me in and been so thrilled that I had come to him.  What to do, what to do?????  The train lured me.  Johnny lured me.  Take the short trip back to Villefranche or make the hour long run to my beloved?  It would have been so simple!  In the end, of course, I took the train to Villefranche and bid my beloved adieu.  I know we'll be together eventually, so what was one more day?

Cruise: Corsica

Did you enjoy the photos from Pisa? I hope so!

The day after Pisa, we sailed to Corsica, just off the coast of France. Corsica is of course most famous for being the birth place of Napoleon.

The weather was simply gorgeous. We were incredibly lucky to have had perfect weather on our entire cruise.

This is the view of the port from our room.  If you ever cruise, try to get a room on the port side of the ship.  You will have amazing views.

Indy and James Bond on the pier.  This was the closest we ported to any actual town.  We walked right off the ship and into the town!  The others were all at least a 10 minute walk from the pier to the edge of town, so this was nice.

A lot of the people we knew on the cruise (several of our friends were there, which made it nice) decided to spend the day at the beach on a different part of the island, but we'd spent most of the day before lounging around the pool so we decided to check out the town of Ajaccio.  We wandered around for a while as there was a huge market going on just off the pier  and eventually ended up at the house where Napoleon was born and grew up.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, they were closing for a 2 hour lunch  (how can you not love a place that closes almost everything down for a 2 hour lunch?), but "Napoleon" was still out front.

After we walked away, Indy said "He was kind of tall to pretend to be Napoleon, don't you think?"  Always thinking.

We opted to go back to the ship for lunch but found some interesting stuff on the way back, including and bakery with pastries so good they made me want to weep. I may have had 1 or 12.  We ate them as we walked around and looked at the lovely buildings and enjoyed the sunshine.  Indy was sad this fountain wasn't running.  He thought it was pretty and like the statue of Napoleon on top.  Look at the trees and the buildings around it.  Aren't they lovely?

We passed by a poissonnerie and Indy HAD to go in.  Okay.

I'm not quite sure what the fascination was, but he would have stayed all day if we'd let him.  He asked the incredibly patient workers a million questions about the fish and what they were called and where they came from which they answered kindly and with great humor.

When we finally drug him away we headed back to the ship for a very late lunch (excellent, as always) and then I went off alone back to tour Napoleon's house.  James Bond had been listening to a band play until really late the night before and wanted a nap and Indy was anxious to get back to the Oceaneers Club and do whatever insanely fun things they had planned for the day.

The inside of Napoleon's house had some rooms that had been redone, but many of them were still relatively the same as they had been when he lived there.  They had loads of artifacts from him and his family.

Cool, huh?  Our next stop was Ville Franche, France, which led me to a serious moral dilemma that may or may not have to do with Johnny Depp.  You want to know about that, right?

If you missed any of the previous cruise posts you can find them here:

Malta

Tunisia

Naples and Pompeii

Rome

LaSpezia and Pisa

Cruise Day 6: At Sea and Day 7: Pisa and the Pirate Dinner

This post has been in the works forever. We actually took this cruise in May 2010 and this poor draft languished, forgotten. Sadness over!   Back to the Disney Cruise!

After we left Rome, we had a day at sea. Thank goodness! All the go, go, go had us completely exhausted. We needed a down day. I thought we'd be bored just staying on the ship, but it wasn't! 

The next day dawned bright and beautiful and we docked at La Spezia, Italy.  Actually, this was the first dock where we didn't actually dock, but weighed anchor and had to take tenders to shore (listen to me talking all sailor stuff!).  Indy loved taking the tender to shore.  After exploring La Spezia for a little while (it was lovely) we headed off to Pisa. Since both Pisa and Florence were at least 1-2 hours away, we opted for an excursion to make sure we made it back in time. We decided we wanted to see the Leaning Tower off to Pisa we went. The bus ride was really long (a little over an hour), but the tour guide was funny and engaging, and pointed out some neat stuff, so it wasn't so bad. Pisa was...dull to be perfectly honest. Once you saw the Tower (which had a 2 hour line to get in, so that wasn't going to happen) and the church that was next to it, there wasn't much to do. Indy cleverly said, "I know why Galileo dropped those balls of the tower.  There was nothing else to do!"  Hehe. It turned into a hot day, so we got a gelato and sat in the shade while we waited for the bus to take us back to the ship.  While seeing the Tower and getting the requisite photos of us holding it up were fun, that was about it.   Ah well, still we had a good time.

La Spezia from the ship:

Here's the aft of our ship.  See Goofy painting?  Disney thinks of everything!

Riding in on the tender:

On the tender.  That's not our ship in the background.  There were 3 or 4 other ships docked.

Indy on the "biggest" compass rose in "the whole world" (his words) in La Spezia:

Holding up the tower:

James Bond:

Sitting with the pigeons near the tower:

Since there wasn't much to do, I people watched and found some interesting "fashions."  You know you want to see that.

I'm trying to figure this one out.  Is she a salsa dancer?  Trekking through the jungle looking for the mate of that blouse?

85 degrees.  Leg warmers, boots and a jacket?  Oh, wait, she's wearing shorts.  It's all good.

Where's the rest of the black shirt?  What's with the white socks and flats?

That's right, Baroness von Jungenstein is here.


Having fun is exhausting:

Back at La Spezia on the water front:

Did you see all those sail boats back there?  Gorgeous!
While Pisa was a bit of a let down, we can check it off our "to see" list

That night on the ship was pirate night!  Indy had been looking forward to this since the day we first set sail.  Everyone was issued pirate bandanas upon arrival at the restaurants.  We were eating in the animation restaurant that night.
 
Me and our assistant server, Willie, with his pirate hook.  Man do we miss Willie!

Indy and James Bond at the pirate limbo.

Before going on deck to the party, we headed back to our room for a few minutes.  James Bond did not leave his drink behind.  He's looking a bit "happy" don't you think?

There was a massive party on deck.  Singing, dancing, swashbuckling, brawling; all the good pirate stuff.  Indy loved it.

Here is with a pirate.  I should note that he fought and killed this pirate mere moments after this photo was taken.  :)

Micky even swung in dressed as a pirate.  I would not have wanted to be Mickey that night.  He went from one "smoke stack" to the next.  These things are HIGH.

After the party, they played the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie on the HUGE screen you can see just below Micky in the photo.  Of course we had to watch that.  Indy loves PoC and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to see my beloved 20 feet tall.
And so ended our day in LaSpezia, Pisa and at the pirate party.

If you missed any of the previous entries from our cruise, you can find them here:


Day 1 and Malta

Tunis, Tunisia This is a good one. A guy tried to buy me.

Naples and Pompeii

Rome

And if you want to see photos of all the towel animals that appeared on our bed at night (and who wouldn't?) you can click here.

Next up:  Corsica!