Day 9: Into the Bay of Pirates

Monaco Harbour from the Palace. MV Sapphire (top right) 

A room with a view

This morning we were woken-up to the usual tentative knock on the door from our cabin boy bringing us our tea. The time was just coming up to 7 a.m. and the pilot was in the final stages of bringing our cruise ship, the Saga Sapphire, to her birth in Monaco harbour. 

For me, this particular morning was a true once-in-a-lifetime never-to-be-repeated experience. After all, it is not every day I get out of bed, open the balcony door and step outside to admire a view consisting of a grand palace, that famous Monaco Grand Prix tunnel, and privately-owned gin-palace cruisers … dressed only in my underpants and with a cup and saucer in hand.

The Monaco principality (as it is known in polite society) is the home of some of the world’s richest tax dodgers. More than 700 years ago, the country was actually founded when the first member of the Grimaldi family disguised himself as a monk to persuade the guard of the fort here to let him in as an act of charity. Once inside, it was only a short amount of time before Grimaldi and his cohorts had control. Looking at the wealth here today, that was obviously the start of a good thing, which only goes to show that cunning and thievery actually pay rather well.

Slow train to Monte Carlo

Unfortunately, our visit to Monaco turned out to be another of those irritatingly short excursions that Saga had put on their itinerary; we only had a measly 3 hours ashore. And so after a brisk walk up to the palace from the harbour, my mother decided we should go on a 30-minute tour around the entire country in an embarrassing little tourist road train. 

Now, normally I would not have been found dead in one of those horrible vehicles but on this occasion I agreed as time was so short. And so we trundled round all the famous sites of Monaco, whistle blowing occasionally, at a rather more leisurely speed than Lewis Hamilton or Kimi Räikkonen would have liked.