Monaco, April 24-26

The next weekend trip was to the city of Monte Carlo in the tiny country of Monaco which is nestled in the hills in between Nice and the Italian border. After landing in Nice, we decided to take a short 6 minute helicopter ride to Monaco as we were told it provided the greatest views of the city. This was Anthony and Amy's first helicopter ride.....



"Amy - make sure you don't slip and touch any of those controls as we are flying over water."



Great views from the helicopter.



For your viewing pleasure - a movie of our helicopter ride.



One of the people Anthony works with was the former secretary of state of Monaco so he set us up in the Hotel du Paris rooftop restaurant for dinner. The lobby of the restaurant was lovely and we pounced into the elevator only to find that we were riding up with James Bond - Roger Moore. Impressive celeb sighting. After a great meal, Amy wanted to take a picture of the centerpiece in the middle of the hotel lobby for wedding planning purposes.



We then played a little roulette at the casino (yes, we lost) and hit the sack. We started our Saturday by stopping to smell the roses - we visited Princess Kelly's (Grace Kelly) rose garden.



Then we continued on a walking tour of Monaco on a beautifully sunny Saturday. The place was perfectly manicured everyone, the people were very nice, there were huge boats everywhere and the views over the water were spectacular. We walked up to the castle and home to the Prince. The views were insane.













We tried to go to Catherdrale, but instead saw a bride walking up the stairs (the church was closed for the wedding.



Monaco is very proud of its Musee Oceanographique et Aquarium. It was pretty cool actually.



We got massages and then got ready to go to the Sass Cafe - a trendy spot in Monaco. It was so trendy, that our 9pm reservations were clearly too early since we were the first in the restaurant. Good meal. We then went to the casino for a tour from the general manager. It was interesting to hear the history of the casino and gambling in Monaco, but the casino was much smaller than we expected coming from our experiences in Las Vegas.

Unforunately, it was raining on Sunday quite badly so we cut our trip a little short and headed back to London where we did what we know best - a pub and guinness.