From Porto to Budapest and back Day 3

Day 3
Cannes, France to Genova, Italy through Monaco -- 220km
 
This day we had a smaller amount of road to go as we had two places to see, Monaco along the way and the destination city, Genova.

Another nice road, no problems, and we arrived at Monaco when they were preparing things for the famous Monaco F1 GP. Driving through the city I ‘put my CRV wheels on the GP track’! 

It’s amazing how they are able to organize a F1 GP in a city so full of buildings and narrow streets, specially because the modern F1 cars are so fast!

Monaco: Yachts, buildings, mountains

The streets are typically mountain streets. The mountains are the reason why France always let Monaco be, I think.

Time to walk around the big F1 trucks and different structures, lots of people and of course so many super cars! Ferrari, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, RollsRoyce, and even Tesla. I never saw so many together.

And off we went to Italy by a nice coast road passing by Nice - a much more nice beach than Cannes - having lunch in a small place along the way after crossing border to Italy. More small towns like SanRemo and then we took the highway to Genova. It’s an amazing highway across the mountains with lots of tunnels and bridges. 

After so many small and nice towns Genova - or Genoa like the Italians call it - was a bit of a chock. Big, many lanes streets, a terrible traffic, lots of small motorcycles, and again it was difficult to pay attention to that Italian traffic and follow the GPS instructions. Anyway I did it and after many turns we arrived near by the hotel I had booked previously. There was a garage near by where I could keep my CR-V out of the street and safe. I was surprised with one thing - I had to let the car key with the garage keeper so he could rearrange the cars according to the order of departing, next morning. The garage was really full.

The hotel was a small one in an old building but recently updated. The room, a suite, was just wonderful, the best in this trip. The garage and the hotel were near the old town center so we could walk there and see the sights. Not a very nice town, a bit too old and not well kept. Some nice monuments, though.

This palace is just plane, everything we see is painting, even the 'stone' in the base. The windows are real.

A 'nau' in the port. A pity they let cars park there, somehow blocking the view.

At dinner time there was just a few people in the streets and we could not see any nice restaurant so we decided to follow a couple about our age that looked like going out for dinner... and they went to a nice large restaurant! It was in a very narrow street, almost unnoticed from the main street and only visible by some window light. We wanted to have a typical italian meal with 2 courses so we ate the pasta as first course then the meat as second course, Italian way.