Escalier des Gaumates

Don’t walk too far down this staircase, save your energy for the rest of the trip, you will need it.

From here, you get a cracking view across the Monaco landscape, which is super hilly – it goes up and down all over the place. The route today will take us down this hill to the harbour, before we climb up that hill on the other side, so make the most of your time this morning; it will go faster than you think.

From this point, on the far left side you can see the Port Hercules, home to the Monaco yachts, where we will end up in a bit so you can have a better look at these fabulous pieces of machinery

Next to the Port is a road – it seems fairly normal, nothing that special, but this, my friends, is the Monaco Grand Prix Circuit. We will have the opportunity to walk round it as we go along, as it is a regular road that runs through the heart of Monaco when it is not being used for Formula 1. We will revisit the world of Formula 1 in a bit, but it’s worth reiterating that the Monaco Grand Prix has one of the only street circuits in the world, however when it comes to the race weekend, they put up barriers and screens all over the city so that you can’t watch it for free – obviously, Monaco wants to squeeze as much money out of people as possible. However, they can’t put up barriers across this staircase as it provides public access, which means that this is one of the only places that you can watch the race for free. People will start to assemble on this staircase hours before the race begins, hopeful for a bit of room where they can watch the fast Formula 1 cars drive way over there in the distance. The Monaco Grand Prix really turns people crazy.

Then next to the track we have a lovely little swimming pool. In fact, it’s not so little – it is an Olympic sized swimming pool, which is now open to the public, as a pool in summer and as an ice rink in winter.

This pool was a wedding present from the prince to the princess – from Prince Albert 2 to his wife, Princess Charlene. Charlene was an Olympic swimmer, hence the Olympic pool as they got married - fellas, listen up, an Olympic swimming pool is not a bad wedding present at all. The couple actually met at the Olympics, in the early 2000s, as Prince Albert 2 was also previously an Olympic athlete, competing as an athlete for the Monaco bobsleigh team, believe it or not.

Monaco enters the Olympics every time they come around, summer and winter, as an independent country. They haven’t won any gold medals yet, or any medals at all to be exact, but the bobsleigh team came in 6th place in the last Winter Olympics, so one to keep an eye on. Monaco the Underdog perhaps.

Anyway, they met, got engaged, and got married in 2011. However, it’s not the perfect fairytale wedding you might hope it was – Charlene has received a lot of negative attention from the media and the tabloids, in Monaco and in France, and Albert has his fair share of criticism as well. Back in the day, he was known for being a bit of playboy, for sleeping around quite a lot. Depending on which reports or articles you read, it is claimed that he has several children across the world – none of them are heirs to the throne, there is no affiliation anymore.

As I said, they met in the early 2000s and got engaged, all seemed fine until a Brazilian woman came forwards and said that she had very recently had another child with Albert. Whether or not this was true, Charlene was disgraced and tried to leave Monaco to go back to her home country of South Africa but she was stopped at the Monaco border by the police and taken back to the royal palace at the top of that hill for her wedding day. So if you look up pictures or videos of the royal wedding of Monaco between Albert and Charlene, you will see that she is crying in plenty of them. Not so much tears of joy, just tears of tears. She is now stuck in the royal institution of Monaco.

The locals call this the Grimaldi Family curse – on this tour we will revisit this family curse and the Grimaldis a little later, who they are, why they are significant, where they come from – but for now I will say that the family curse states that “No marriage will be happy here in Monaco”, so to any couples on a trip out here, don’t spend too long in Monaco. Get in, get rich, get out.