27 March 2011: Nice Day Ten.

Well we awoke today to the first overcast day of the trip, not to mention Mark’s birthday. The plan is to meet everyone in the foyer of the Hotel and travel as a group to Monaco from there. The trip takes in a short walk, a tram ride, a train to Monaco and a taxi to our restaurant for lunch.

A short digression to remark on the taxis here. Absolutely spotless with happy and helpful drivers who know their way around and can turn their hands to English quite comfortably in need. The vehicles are roomy inside and quite modern and the drivers pack and unpack your baggage for you without exception. An excellent service that we in Australia could learn a lot from.

Lunch was served in a fairly shabby place called The Vistaero restaurant in Vista Palace Hotel, Roquebrunne cap-Martin…..so there. The restaurant is perched on a cliff overlooking the town of Monaco and the views we had were absolutely spectacular. This was Marks baby and I have to say his vision for the location of his 50^th was first class.

I don’t think I can do it justice so I’ve decided to hand the keyboard over to a real professional foodie and get Michelle to play critic and describe the surroundings, the view and the meal we enjoyed.

A grandly scaled table overlooking magnificent floor to ceiling views of the Monaco principalitie. Cream tablecloths, 3 vases of superbly cut roses and fresias down the centre, 4 waiters in handsome suits ready to meet our every need. An appetizer of 5 pieces of thinly cut celery, fennel, carrot and capsicum arranged in a whisky glass arrives, with some tiny bowls of mysterious delicately flavoured foam and oils to dip into. Superb, elegant and just the thing with a glass of champagne.

Soon entrees arrive mine is 3 braised leeks with a prawn sliced diagonally and finished with a light butter glaze.

And soon the mains arrive – for many of us we’ve ordered steak and these meals are delivered under beautiful silver highly polished cloches…. Once the other meals arrive we see that behind each person who’s ordered the steak there stands a waiter ready to coordinate the lifting of the cloches – great theatre for us all. Have to say Steve’s whole roasted poisson small chicken is the envy of the whole table. Its’ delicate aroma once they carved it up for him on a silver trolley wafts over and we swoon!

Le grand finale of a sponge filled with fresh cream, berries and other fruits is delivered to Mark with one huge sparkler and we all clap, so divine. We were so impressed that this huge restaurant was not very full yet the sense of occasion for Mark and us was not diminished… It was all Dominique had hoped for and such a generous treat to be their guests. m

No visit to Monaco is complete unless you visit the Casino, the location for the shooting of the film, Casino Royale. Mark cut a dashing figure driving up to the casino in his Bentley, dressed in his tuxedo, sipping a martini, brandishing his revolver with a gorgeous brunette on his arm…..well except that he didn’t have a Bentley, a tuxedo, a martini nor a revolver, but he did have the gorgeous brunette on his arm.

The casino itself is pretty small and there were very few tables available for play. Most of our group stayed with the Roulette table with mixed results but it’s hard not to be impressed with the layout, furnishings and the ambience. It was a little unfortunate that rain settled in late in the afternoon as we would have liked to have explored more of Monaco the town. But as I’ve said previously in this blog, we need to leave a few things behind unexplored, it gives us good reason to come back.

What a fantastic experience Monaco was and what a pleasure to share Mark’s birthday with him. Once again, thanks for allowing us to share the occasion with you and hope you had a very happy birthday.

The day ended with us having a sip of Port in the Budgen’s room and an early night to get ready for our early morning train trip to Homps (up at 4.15 am), we’re off to do a spot of boating in the south of France don’t you know.