Mon-a-co!

Monaco!

Snipits from the travel book:
Current ruler: Albert II, who apparently attended Amherst College in Connecticut (Tim's alma mater.)
Monaco is less than a square mile in area. Has 35,000 residents, only 5,000 of which are Monégasque citizens.
Monaco is indeed where Philadelphian film star Grace Kelly came in 1954 to film To Catch a Thief, and ended up capturing Prince Rainier's heart.

I took an overnight trip to Nice last week with Nikki, Treasyri, and Tim (other American language assistants). Despite some rather ridiculous train strikes that lasted the week, we were still able to make it over to the little principality known as Monaco for an afternoon visit. :) Above is the view from the palace.

Treasyri and Nikki in the train station

And, of course, the Monte-Carlo casino, and our Rolls Royce parked out front. ;) Nikki and I are in the crosswalk, posing for all the paparazzi

The Monaco flag flying high, reminding all the Monogaskins (as we named them) to have principality pride!

Yes, Monaco is a lovely place. And YOU can live here too! You can buy your own STUDIO apartment, as shown here, a whopping 25 square meters (roughly 270 sq feet, for those of you non-metrics out there), for the LOW LOW price of 820,000 euros (yeah, so that'll be about 1.1 million USD).

Ferrari. Cuz dats how we roll in Monaco.

Locale of the Grand Prix. Coming up in May

Remarkable mix of old-style southern France/Italy inspired architecture, with touches of NEW (e.g. clean, flat, sidewalks, newer apt buildings, etc), if I may say so myself. And as my travel book says Monaco "possesses a mix of royal glamour and medieval charm." Yeah, I'll go with that.