Friday, April 18th, 2009, Monaco

Bob and Monika:

Amazingly the Noordam docked INSIDE the small harbor at Monaco, but getting it shoehorned alongside the wharf was a very tricky operation given the number and size of the yachts moored all around us. We watched it all from the 10th deck, which also afforded us a grand view of the entire postage-stamp sized country of Monaco from the peninsula with the palace to the East (our left), the harbor and old casino directly in front of us, and finally the ranks of condominiums sandwiched between the mountains and the sea to stretching off to the West (our right).

In the next cove to the West we thought we saw a beach that we recognized from our very earliest travels in Europe in 1973 on a BMW motorcycle. If that's right, the little town behind the beach is Imperia, Italy, where we visited Monika's Uncle Joachim and his family in the summer of that year. Monika thought she could even see the seaside restaurant where we had family dinner with all those wonderful people so long ago. Many of those folks have died in the interim, unfortunately, but the nice memories remain, at least.

Bob headed off for the Maritime Museum located at the edge of the same peninsula as the palace, just down from the cathedral, in fact, where he spent several happy hours. Monika for some reason didn't want to spend yet another day reading every word on maritime museum displays (go figure!), so she decided to spend some quality time with her sisters-in-law, Lois and Phyllis. Since our experiences were quite different and don't overlap a bit, we decided to let the Gentle Reader decide whether to read Bob's Tale or Monika's Tale for the rest of the day.

Back on ship at last, we had the sad task of packing since the next day we were leaving the ship in Citavecchia and heading over to Rome for the start of our bus trip. But first we had a last dinner with our nice tablemates Darleen and Bob. The headstewardess Annemarie who always had enjoyed chatting with us, came over and gave Phyllis the recipe for the bread pudding, Phyllis' favorite. Of course, we also said good buy to our wait staff who had been great.