Cannes/Monaco 11/30/09

We woke up at 7:30am, got dressed, went down for breakfast, and then the ship docked in Cannes, France at 10:00am. We took an excursion with the cruise line to Monaco and Monte Carlo, so we were instructed to meet in the ships theater until it was time to go. Once we got there, we met Judi and Patsy. I had chatted with Judi on Cruise Critic and on Facebook before the trip, but they became good friends during the trip. Once it was time to go, we were hearded off the ship and onto tender boats. The bumpy ride took us to shore where we got on numbered buses for our tour. The drive to Monaco took about an hour and a half. We drove through Cannes, and then through beautiful countryside, passing through Nice on the way to Monaco.
Our first stop in Monaco was on top of the "Rock." We passed the Oceanographic Museum and the Cathedral of Monaco (Prince Ranier and Princess Grace were married there). Then, we moved on to the Palace of Monaco. We had a little bit of free time to wander the area and take some pictures.


We also grabbed lunch at a little deli/cafe nearby before having to meet back up with our group. Our next stop was at the casino in Monte Carlo.
We had some free time there to explore the area around the Casino...shops like Cartier and Louis Vuitton...Maseratis and Lamborghinis parked along the street. We just kept to the window shopping and picture taking!



(Fun with reflections!)
On our way back to the bus, I heard someone calling out my name. It was Chad! He had sent me a message on Facebook before the trip and we had agreed to get in touch while on the cruise. We headed back with Chad and Scott, chatting and showing each other pictures of our dogs while we walked! We drove the hour and a half back on the bus, got back on the tender boat, and reboarded the Norwegian Gem.
Back on the ship, we headed to the Cruise Critic Meet and Greet. We were a little late getting there, so we missed most of the officers welcoming us onboard, but we stayed for a bit and met up with a lot of the people I had been talking to on cruisecritic.com prior to the cruise.
We also met Andy, our Cruise Director.
We took the opportunity to ask him a question about the itinerary that had been delivered to our room. We noticed that on one of the sea days, the show was listed as, "International Super Group Il Divo." Well, we kinda didn't believe that, so we wanted to ask Andy if it was the real Il Divo. He said that it was!! We were so excited! We vowed to get to the show hours early in order to ensure a front row seat! Anyway, we met Judi and Patsy in the Magenta dining room for dinner, and then went back to our room for a rest. Singin' in the Rain was on one of the limited TV stations we got in our stateroom. Its one of my favorites and Natashia had never seen it, so we watched a little bit of it. We ventured out for a late night snack, and ran into Dawn and Anthony. We talked to them for a while, and then went back to the room to start winding down for the evening. The seas were a bit rough (although it was nothing compared to what we would be experiencing later on in the cruise!), so we took some motion sickness medicine and got rocked to sleep by the movement of the ship!

See more pictures from "Cannes/Monaco 11/30/09" HERE (Album 1) and HERE (Album 2)