Monaco

This is indeed one of my longest journals in the blog cause believe me I still am not done about our travel. The last time I stopped the journal, I was in Cannes. The beautiful French Riviera. Let the Journal begin…….

After strolling for about 45 minutes or so, we hopped into our car and headed towards Monte Carlo, the capital of Monaco.
Monaco, I have always been fascinating with this country primarily because of the royal family. I shamefully accept the fact that I love to and I still follow their life styles. Princess Carlonine, Stephanie, Andrea… I guess a way to entertain myself once in a while. Anyways, An independent sovereign state located between the foot of the Southern Alps and the Mediterranean, Monaco was simply BEAUTIFUL. We did not get to stroll around the city as the place was quite jammed by the racers from the “ 58th Grand Pix.”

Michael Schumacher could be seen on the big Screen TV hanged outside the Stadium… sadly, I did not get to really seem him in person. The interesting thing is that back in my high school days, I had a picture of Michael Schumacher in my room from the Grand Prix victory in Monaco. And Now, here I was.

Our drive was elegant. Ferraris and Lamborghini’s surrounded us. BMW and Mercedes just seemed like any day-to-day cars. It was one of the posh areas we had ever seen. The whole outlook of the city was extravagant. It seemed like Money grew in that City. Rich people everywhere….

Monaco was again! LOVE at fist sight like the other cities. We stopped to take the picture but then were quickly shooed away by the policemen. I had read in the lonely planet book that Monaco, being a small city had policemen in every 100 meters of the city. Policemen everywhere…

We very much enjoyed driving in Monaco. It was gorgeous. The houses were colossal. Wonder who lives inside those palaces? As we slowly entered the French border, the clock ticked 9:00 clock. Even though it was nice, the night still looked quite young. The sun had just bid farewell for that night. That was another thing that I really enjoyed driving in Europe. It would be 8’ o clock, but it actually felt like 5 with the sun shinning so brightly. Our destination for that night was to go to Turin and spend a night there.

Turin looked quite far away in our map……. Almost 300 km so we came to an agreement on making a stop once we entered a big city in Italy. At this point, we had been driving for almost 9 hours and was getting bit exhausted. Prasanna was tired.

The roads winds on. The car behind us never gets any closer. The steam is more a hologram than anything else. I grazed a puddle and the nose of the car was tugged to the right but released just as quickly. I keep both eyes and ear open for the night. The night.. that never seemed to end...

Soon we were in Italy. As it was quite dark, we could not tell much of a difference from France, other than the language and the sign of the road. The hills looked the same to us. Since it was Friday night, there were people everywhere. Young crowd to be exact. The restaurants looked opened. Yes!!! We can finally have a nice dinner we both thought. Since the town looked so lively, Prasanna decided to drive even more. I really wanted to end our journey for that day at 10:30 at the most. He kept on insisting on going to this place called “Savona.” I wanted to get a good rest that night and wanted to make an early start. After making a constant request Prasanna agreed to take the next exit.

Now our worst nightmare continues..… The first few hours were very painful.

I want to continue my journal.The excitement and adventurous part is yet to come. However, my throbbing stomachache is not letting me do that. It is really bad. I feel weak and exhausted. It’s the girls thing.. I have already had Tylenol, but the situation is not getting any better. I guess I just have to rest and drink.

On the side note, we went to see “ Da vinci Code” on Sunday. I really liked the movie and would have enjoyed even more, had I not had the stomach ache. Lots of people had told me not to have high expectation i.e if you have read the book. I have already read the book two times, but my excitement level did not change one bit.

Saturday, we went for dinner at Anju di’s place. She is one of my relatives.Along with her, and I also got chance to meet myother cousins whom I had never met. The food was great. We had a great time.