April 28th – Misjudging the Weather in Monaco

When we sailed into Monaco, the place was looking gorgeous, its crowded skyline lit up by the sun, and the rows of superyachts bobbing on the twinkling harbour. However, as we only have 2 days left, we decided to use the morning to pack up 4 months of accumulated rubbish and prepare ourselves to disembark – not much fun.

We had decided to do our exploring after lunch, which was impeccable timing because the skies had now turned black and there was a distinct chill in the air. However, it seemed silly to be in this beautiful part of the world and not go ashore; and besides, someone had given us their tickets for the hop-on hop-off bus which would involve the minimum of effort. How could you go wrong? Well, very wrong....

Almost as soon as we climbed aboard our open-top bus, the heavens opened and the rain came thrashing down. We pulled our large umbrella over us to cover us as much as possible, while we listened to an "English" commentary given by someone with a thick Northern accent who sounded like they'd just learnt to read. So, as we got steadily soaked, cold and miserable, we mainly saw the inside of our umbrella rather than the magnificent sights of one of the world's smallest (and richest) countries, before the torture ended and we got back to our starting point at the port.

With our drenched trousers now sticking to us and our umbrella utterly mangled by the monsoon, we ran back to warm up in a nice hot bath. Never mind ........