While staying in San Raphael we took a day trip to Monaco. I was very keen to see this tiny country (slightly bigger than Vatican City at almost 2 square kilometres) and we set out early one morning for the train trip along the coast. Which was beautiful. Monaco was beautiful too. And I hated it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the day out, and I’m very glad I went but I didn’t like being in a place that flaunted wealth so openly. My disgust surprised me and the only way I could describe it was to say that I felt the overt flaunting of material possessions was obscene. Perhaps it comes from living in a country (China) where people do with so little all the time and we are considered wealthy, and in Monaco we would have been so very poor. Perhaps it was all the Ferraris and BMWs. Or the boats at least ten times the size of our house. Perhaps it was all the women wearing designer everything, fresh from a botox treatment, sitting down to a champagne lunch with the other trophy wives. Perhaps it was seeing the obsession with the royal family – most streets are named after a Monaco royal person and pictures of the head prince are in so many shops. I don’t know why I was so dramatically affected by being here. I’m glad I went, and I now have no need to ever go back there. Still, here are a few pictures of the day…
Thankyou for sharing the natural beauty of this area with us as well as the thoughts about it’s materialistic lifestyle. INteresting. Cherrie
It looks so much bigger than 2sq km in the photo. Just as well those huge boats don’t have to fit on the land or they’d soon run out of room. ‘Tis a world of extremes!