We arrived in France this morning marking the seventh country visited on our trip. I woke up around 7:30, and we all headed upstairs to Topsider's for breakfast. It was a beautiful morning so we sat outside and enjoyed the view of Villefranche. After breakfast, we got ready and then headed down to Diversions at 9:00 to meet up for our excursion (Nice and Monaco). Katrina and Hilda were running the excursion, so they told us really funny (ish) jokes while we were waiting for a tender to pull up to the ship. A tender finally arrived and we headed down to the gangway. We managed to survive the tender ride without any of the problems of the day before. The Magic looked beautiful sitting in the harbour. When you think of the French riviera, you are probably imagining Villefranche. It is a colorful town set into green hills, right by the clear, blue Mediterranean. Just incredible.
We arrived at the tender terminal, a much nicer facility then we encountered the day before, and were escorted over to our bus. The terminal was built right into a mountainside, and the bus parking lot was surrounded by cliffs. We were assigned to bus 23, the same number as we had the day before. With all of the problems of the previous day, we should have realized that this was a bad sign. We boarded the bus, and immediately the counting began. It seemed that our tour guide was extremely afraid of losing people (only to an extent as we would find out), and delayed our departure for 20 minutes so she could count us several times. She also seemed to keep forgetting how many people were on the bus.
After five counts, we finally headed out of the port and off to Nice. We got a beautiful view of the harbour and the Magic as we headed up through Villefranche and across the peninsula into Nice. Villefranche is sandwiched between Nice and the principality of Monaco. We arrived in Nice and took a short walk from the bus drop off into the old town. Our tour guide kept referring proudly to the "dirty old town" of Nice. We assume that she was misusing that term. We took a high speed walk through the market, and then a leisurely tour of the cathedral (even though the cathedral was not supposed to be part of the excursion. Our free time was cut from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, and the Promenade de Anglais was skipped entirely. We ran down to the beach, since the beach is what Nice is famous for, and then ran back to the group since our guide made us meet up far from where she had left us. Since the whole group wasn't back yet, Dad and I grabbed gelato, and then we all headed for the bus.
Back on the bus, we were counted three times before heading off for lunch. We took the higher road above Villefranche on the way to the medieval village of Eze where we were having lunch. Once again, we had an incredible view of the Mediterranean and the Magic. Our lunch in Eze was at Le Cheval Blanc, and even included an accordion player. Lunch was delicious. We started with a traditional French salad that I can't even begin to spell, had chicken and potatoes for our main course, and finished with ice cream.
After lunch it was back on the bus, and off to the principality of Monaco. This is where things got ugly. Monaco was in the midst of Grand Prix preparations, so tour buses had to park in a central area, and special shuttle buses had to be used. The shuttle buses were city buses that had been reserved for tours, and didn't hold as many people as we were told. They crammed two Disney buses worth of people onto a bus only big enough for one Disney bus worth of people, and we headed towards the Rock of Monaco.
We were dropped off near the Oceanographic Museum where our guide rambled on for a few minutes. We then headed up the street, passing by several beautiful gardens, before arriving at the Monaco Cathedral. Of course, another church. Fortunately this church was a little more exciting then the one in Nice, and included the tomb of Grace Kelly and all the prince's of Monaco. We then continued on to the prince's palace where we were given free time of about 20 minutes, barely enough to look around and make it back to the bus. Our tour guide even refused to give us directions back to the bus, she just told us to take that alleyway over there and keep walking. Great, a caring guide as you can see. We enjoyed the great view of Monaco, and stopped in the free bathrooms (a rarity in this part of Europe). We then made our way back to meet up with our guide, who ended up being late. She also had us on the wrong side of the street, so we missed our bus, and the next bus was not coming for 20 minutes.
She convinced the transportation operator to let us onto a bus, which turned out to be a city bus, that ran its entire route. We spent the next 30 minutes crammed on a city bus running along the grand prix track meaning that we were dead stopped in traffic. When people started complaining to her, she responded that she was doing it for us and we should feel so lucky to be on the grand prix track. Yeah, right! It became clear that this woman had no idea how to run a tour. We finally arrived at casino square and headed for the Cafe de Paris. While waiting in line (why is there a line for a reserved seating exactly) several groups in our tour group finally let our guide have it. Several of us had plans onboard the ship that she was making us miss by her poor organization. I almost ended up leaving with another DCL bus back to the ship, but I decided to stay and suffer it through. We got to have ice cream at the Cafe de Paris, and you could even eat the dishes (Willy Wonka reference) as they were made of chocolate. We also learned how many Frenchmen it takes to hang a sign. The answer is 4. We strolled into the less fancy casino because I wanted to play a slot machine, but I quickly discovered the cheapest slot was a 5 Euro. Too much for me. Oddly, we were followed by security on the way out. We took a walk around casino square. Surprisingly, the Grand Casino of Monte Carlo is really small. After that, we tried going into the Hotel de Paris, but they wouldn't let us in. For anyone interested in going to Monaco, I don't recommend it. It's a very snooty place, and surprisingly, we all felt more uncomfortable in Monaco then anywhere else.
We headed back to the bus about 5 minutes before the meeting time, and were met with a scene of chaos. Our tour guide had already started boarding the bus, without waiting for everyone and without even counting us. We all shoved onto the bus, and suddenly, our tour guide and another Disney tour guide began screaming at each other in French. They almost started hitting each other. Finally we were on our way back to our tour bus, hopefully we didn't lose anybody. She counted us all after getting off the city bus, and we were all there. YAY!!! We were not dropped off near our bus, unlike every other tour guide's group, so we had to parade a few blocks away to get on. Along the way, she didn't wait for everybody at the crosswalks, but just ran across often stranding some of us on the opposite side of busy roads. I couldn't wait for this day to be over with. We hopped on the bus and after being counted three more times were finally on our way. We arrived back at the port and had to wait for tour buses to clear the narrow roads before we could get to the parking lot. Thank goodness there was only one ship in port. Fortunately a tender was waiting and we were quickly on our way back to the Magic. I overheard one of the officers saying that we were the last tour group back. If only they knew.
After a beautiful ride through the harbour of Villefranche, we arrived back onboard the Magic an hour and a half late. By an incredible amount of Disney magic and pixie dust, we actually arrived about two minutes before the 6:45 showing of Walt Disney - The Dream Goes On. I was so afraid that we would miss the show, but we made it. And I have to say, this small filler show that had been thrown together just for the Med season, was one of the best shows I have ever seen on DCL. It is right up there with Golden Mickey's and Hercules the Muse-ical. I won't spoil it for you, but it is a fantastic tribute to Walt and not to be missed. I certainly hope it sticks around.
Lumiere's opened shortly before 8:30 so I headed in for my usual chat with Summer and Igor before everyone else arrived. The Dinner menu was Taste of the Mediterranean, and it was a very exotic menu. Probably not one of Disney's best, the food quality was a bit hit and miss, but we all found enough to keep us satisfied, and the desserts were excellent. Our whole table was present tonight so we exchanged stories of our day. After dinner, it was time for Heath Hyche's cabaret. I went to grab us seats, and we ended up sitting with Mike and Susan in Rockin' Bar D. Heath's show was hilarious. He had the audience falling out of their seats. The band came out afterwards for an Abba dance party at which point I joined my friends for a little while. Everyone decided to go to bed since we were all dead tired, but we ran into Dave and Katrina on the way out and talked with them for a little while. I sat at a desk in the Promenade Lounge for half an hour and wrote out three pages of comments on our excursion. I was very thourough, lol. After that, I turned the form into Guest Services and collapsed into bed.
Up Next Day 12: Ajaccio, Corsica
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