Monaco, Monaco

Ah, Monaco, where the millionaires look up to the billionaires who look up to the zillionaires. It is certainly the wealthiest place I have visited on my trip with all the young guys driving yellow Ferrari's, the old guys being chauffered in blacked out 4x4s and the trophy wifes driving... Renault Twingo's - as it is the only thing you can get parked near the glamourous designer stores. I drove through town in my big white dented van with "for god's sake don't clip that Porsche" on a loop in my brain. 

As a city, the vast majority of it is far from interesting, just a huge marina with increasingly bigger private yachts and a hillside with increasingly taller hotels and apartment blocks going up. The best place to start exploring the city though is the top of the hill where Prince Albert II has his Palais Du Prince.

Just down the road from here is the big Cathedral which plays trippy organ music at high volume which feels like being in the clutches of Dracula. The tomb of former Hollywood starlet Grace Kelly is here too, along with the first nativity scene I have ever witnessed... set inside a shoe!
 

Elsewhere in the city, there is not much to see apart from rows and rows of exclusive designer stores, the classy Monte Carlo Casino (which I was so tempted to try and enter but just couldn't justify the cost) and the occational section of road that I recognised from watching the Grand Prix.
  

If there was a highlight from my time in Monaco though, it has to be the superb Oceanography Museum. As well as the cavernous rooms and coastal views, there is much to see including various preserved sealife specimens and the world's first submarine. There is a special exhibition on dedicated to the marriage of Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene with countless pictures and her Armani wedding dress - complete with 40,000 crystals, 20,000 mother of pearl drops, 30,000 gold pearls... and so on to infinity and beyond.
 

By far the best part of the museum though is the gigantic underground aquarium filled with huge fish as big as me and tiny critters which need a magnifying glass. Keep an eye out for the fish which walk, the big sharks, the bright octopus, and the crab covered in moss.
 

That just about concludes my time in Monaco which thankfully for my wallet was only a brief trip - time to start up the van once more as I edge ever closer to home. Now for god's sake don't clip that Porsche.