After a much-tolled approach, the usual bout of sign misreading, driving in circles and swearing we finally found our campsite in the village of Villeneuve-Loubet-Plage near Antibes on the French Riviera This was the best campsite so far - clean, picturesque and with a heated pool Even really hot showers - with in-shower entertainment You see I was enjoying a scaldingly hot shower one night when a fellow camper came in, acknowledged Bianca and stripped down to his underwear in front of her Nothing particularly unusual there

He then proceeded to gargle, quite unerringly I thought, the first sixteen bars of Beethoven's Ode to Joy before breaking into a Louis Armstrong come Kermit the Frog impression (singing not gargling now) I suspect that living for years in a campground with shared facilities may blur your personal space until you just don't know when you're doing stuff in your head anymore

Changing of the guards
Still, great entertainment
Our first day was another dedicated "van day" where we worked on the long and seemingly ever-growing list of defects in our beloved vehicle I even did some - brace yourself - preventative maintenance The next day, having decided that our van was probably not worthy of Monaco, we caught the train into Monte Carlo

Monaco is pretty much exactly what you expect Beautiful coves lined with expensive yachts Spotless streets lined with Gucci, Armani etc Immaculately manicured gardens The whole place has an atmosphere of surreal perfection You're not even allowed to walk around town without a top or shoes, so there are no fat tourists to spoil the vista
We went and saw the changing of the guards at the Monaco palace Unlike the pretentiously formal guards at Buck House, these guys were really cool which is funny really given that in Monaco you'd might expect them to be more pretentious than anywhere They were smiling and joking with tourists, seating kids and elderly at the front and generally being good blokes It certainly beats being standing motionless all day and probably makes the "What happened at work today, dear?" question a bit easier for them too

Next we walked back to the spotless aquarium According to our waning travel guide, the aquarium was dedicated to famous French oceanographer and scuba inventor, Jacques Cousteau Instead there were lots of statues of and tributes to Monaco's Prince Albert I who was a keen oceanographer in his spare time Which - perhaps not surprisingly as a royal family member - seemed to be all the time judging from how he got around in his purpose-built boat

Monaco harbour


Apparently (again according the travel guide) if you are going to see one aquarium in the world, this is the one to see It was impressive though on my disturbingly long aquarium scale it ranks somewhere below San Francisco and Sydney though above Melbourne and London's paltry efforts The most amusing bit was the Cuckoo Wrass fish, which are "successive hermaphrodites" In short, they live in a so-called "harem" with one male enjoying the fishy loving of all the females When he finally dies, the oldest female has a self-performed sex change and takes over from where he left off Bizarre
We headed back to the campsite on the winding coastal train - many questions about the Cuckoo Wrasses still going through my mind