Friday, April 18th, 2009, Monaco

I decided to climb the zig-zag path up the face of the peninsula rather than take the elevators and escalators inside the hill because I thought I could get some nice views of the Noordam and the other ships in the harbor. I discovered that the tip of the peninsula was actually an old fort, complete with some stacks of iron cannonballs. The grounds of the fort had been converted to a flower and sculpture garden, however, which provided many pleasant pauses on my climb up the hill.

The Maritime Museum building has two upper floors of exhibit halls plus a huge basement area convered into many acquarium exhibits by Jacques Cousteau's group. The two basic areas of the aquarium exhibits were a set of tanks with Caribbean coral reefs and fish on one side of the basement and a section of Mediterranean fish and environments on the other. The Caribbean coral reefs were lit perfectly to show off their brilliant colors, and since the walls were all a flat matte black I could get great pictures without reflections. Some of the tanks even had the glass front angled in such a way as to avoid reflections or perhaps to allow the use of flash photography. In one of those tanks was the absolute largest Moray eel I have ever seen. He was a big, fat, ugly critter about 6 feet long and at least 1 foot in diameter, but a jaw that big, with numerous sharp teeth just has to get your respect!

Other fish were, of course, much prettier. They ranged from your basic silver-sided teardrop-shaped fish to flat forms like flounders and skates to just bizarrely-shaped fish with stripes and long, droopy fins, and such like. I even finally got a decent picture of a large octopus in one tank who was surprisingly jetting his way around rather than hiding in a corner which I would have more expected.

The Mediterranean section focused on the species native to the entire sea. I learned that the Mediterranean is not, unfortunately, a very fertile sea although there is quite a bit of commercial as well as recreational fishing. The fertility problem is mostly a lack of nutrients to support the basic stages of a food chain, although pollution and over-fishing in the past are also playing a role.

The main exhibit halls each had whale skeletons in the center apparently left over from the days of Prince Albert the 1st who created the Maritime Museum early in the 20th Century. They even had ship models of the ever larger and larger yachts that he had commissioned for pursuing his oceanographic research; the "Prince Albert II" was a huge steam-sailer over 70 feet long, as I recall. I was curious where all the money came from to support the Prince's huge yachts and far-flung maritime expeditions--Monaco is not that large, after all.

If you ever visit the Monaco Maritime Museum, don't forgo a slow walk around the upper balconies in both of the main exhibit halls. Unlike the aquarium section, the plaques were usually only in French, but the exhibits themselves were fascinating even without the explanations. I saw beautifully done examples of craft work from the Innuit in the far North to the African tribes in the far South as well as a lot of old pieces of bric-a-brac from the Caribbean, the South Seas, and so forth. So if you visit that museum, make sure to just look through those curios just to see what strikes your fancy.

The temporary exhibit hall on the main floor was again done by Costeau's people, I think, as it emphasized the French contributions to Arctic and Antarctic exploration and climatological research. All the exhibits were very scientifically-oriented, very high quality, and had explanations in both French and English. The focus point for the set of exhibits was global warming and the effects on the oceans and peoples of the world. Unfortunately, the French research corresponds with the research from all the other countries of the world and confirms that there are already disastrous levels of CO2 emissions, global warming and rises in sea levels which appear to be both unstoppable and irreversible. I was heartened to see the Japanese attempting to re-seed coral reefs off of Okinawa, especially given the atrocious behavior of their whaling fleet, but disheartened to learn of potentially catastrophic, decades-long droughts in sub-Saharan Africa that might well occur with climate change.

Somewhat depressed, I had lunch back out in the gardens and then walked down the street to the royal palace where I took some pictures of the guard walking his beat. It looked to me like there was still only 1 guard on duty, marching up and down in front of the palace entrance. That made me wonder if the changing of the guard might still be the very simple and fast event I witnessed back in 1973, which was basically over in the blink of an eye, or the much more elaborate ceremony implied by the pictures on the tourist brochures.

Still, the houses and shops in the palace area were quite picturesque. I stopped off at a souvenir shop to buy a sewing thimble with a picture of Monaco on it for Monika, and then swung by the cathedral and back into the park beside the Maritime Museum before heading back to the ship. I was really getting tired by that point and succumbed to the temptation to take the escalators and elevators down to the parking lot, from whence I could meander back to the ship on a flat trail. Back at the ship I just took off my shoes to air out my throbbing feet and stretched out on the bed to rest a bit before Monika came back to tell me of her adventures.

Click here for Monika's Tale:

Click here for the rest of the 18th: