What's in Monaco

Monaco - a tiny country on the French Riviera - is more like a city state. Here's what I saw when I was there.

Monaco is a rich land; the glamour architecture buildings are either replete with gilt, flourishes, style and flair or sleek and smoothly modern.

Most of all, Monaco is a playground for the rich and gaudy, ideal for people watching. I saw:

• A young man with big, blonde hair and golden sunglasses clutching an older woman as they sashayed through the streets.
• A man accompanied by five woman complaining about where to get his shirts made.
• A young wife emerging from a designer store saying, "thank you, it was wonderful".
• A larger man wearing a bright purple polo shirt whilst driving a bright orange sports car.
• A young man wearing white shirt and khaki shorts fuming about "ultra-conservative countries that have no bearing on reality".
• A young woman sporting bright pink lipstick alongside bright green sunglasses.
• A glamorous Shirley Bassey-esque woman arguing with hot-headed taxi driver, then walking a few metres away and laughing "ha ha ha" whilst haughtily tossing one hand in the air.

Below, my favourite photograph I took in Monaco shows a woman wearing sunglasses, relaxing by a swimming pool, and not a single other person to be seen.

Eva's map of Andorra, Charlotte's map of Monaco

In my quest for maps of micronations, I took a trip recently, travelling first to Andorra and onwards to Monaco.


In both places, lovely people working in the tourist offices drew maps for me. I'm nervous of tourist offices, as whenever I've asked their staff  to draw maps, they hand me one of their many printed maps.

Eva in Andorra was about to do this, but I convinved her that I wanted a hand-drawn map. "OK", she said, and set about producing the most detailed map I've got. It's in four colours and has a legend.

I explained in fledgling Spanish why I was asking for a drawn map. "It's very interesting", said Eva looking proud of her map. And well she should.

Later in the trip, in Monaco's tourist office, Charlotte drew another wonderfully detailed map of Monaco. At one point, I wondered nervously if she was just drawing Monte Carlo and not Monaco. Then I realised it's pretty much the same thing.

Charlotte seemed pleased with her map too. "We've never had anyone ask us for this before," said her colleague.

 

 So these two very detailed maps come from two very small states - and it seems very appropriate for my project to give them as much space as the whole map of larger countries like Russia or Germany.