After spending some hours during the morning in the famous casino, we continued our exploration of this bite-sized country by walking, exploring its various neighbourhoods.
It is definitely a rich person's paradise. One can see it with the various equipment that are on display, whether it's fancy cars, or the fancy yachts that are parked at the harbour.
We started by walking the promenade that is accessible from behind the casino. It is essentially a long balcony, which also acts as a roof, for the structures that are beneath it. And there are a few sculptures that are interesting to look at, as one walks along the path. This path traces the seashore, and provides a good view of the sea, as well as of the harbour.
Eventually we reached the port, Port Hercule. This port was completed in 1926, although the area has been used as a port already since ancient times. This is perhaps Monaco's best "front yard" so to speak. Fancy yachts are parked here, and sometimes you also see the fancy cars that are attached to the yachts, in one way or another. Looking at the license plates as well as the flags of registration, these people come from all over the place. It is interesting to see where these yachts are registered: there were quite a few who were registered in far-away countries such as the Marshall Islands, or Bermuda. I can't help but think that these are registered in those places due to tax avoidance.
Eventually we reached the Old Town of Monaco, which is actually located on top of a hill. There are narrow streets here, and we explored these streets up and down, back and forth. There were also some charming-looking restaurants, but as we already had lunch in the market, we didn't explore this aspect.
We spent some more hours on top of the hill, as it provided some very nice views of the scenery below. Monaco is essentially surrounded by water, and there are ports on pretty much the entire length of the country. Whether we were facing Port Hercule or the other side, there were yachts that were parked somehow. In any case, as mentioned already, it is a rich person's paradise.
Eventually we started to descend and head back to the train station. Monaco is also a country of staircases, elevators, escalators, and tunnels. There's a staircase, elevator, escalator, or tunnel going somewhere. After all, it is a country that grew vertically, so there are multiple levels and one sometimes has to go up and down these levels to go somewhere. That's what we did in order to return to the train station, and from there we headed back to Nice.
