A Day in Monaco & A Fireworks Show

We stayed in a little town called Villafranche Sur Mer, which means tax free town by the sea.  Long ago they wanted people to settle there so they made it tax free-not sure why they needed any incentive?  It was a beautiful town right between Nice and Monaco and directly North of fancy Cap Ferrat.  Kelly and I took an awesome morning walk down to the beach and little town.  Here was our morning view...

We took the winding, hilly crazy drive to Monaco and drove some more trying to find the Prince's automobile collection.  Charlie isn't much of a museum guy but we thought he would like this.

These were the racing ones, but there were hundreds of different cars in there, most of it was lost on us non-car people, but Charlie really enjoyed looking at them all!

We met up with the girls and enjoyed the Christmas market down by the harbor, lucky for us it was still going on.   They had a giant ferris wheel that the kids took a spin on..

Love this picture Kelly took of Charlie on the ferris wheel!

Besides the cute market and beautiful harbor full of fancy yachts...they also had an ice skating rink which we were prepared for and we brought along our own skates!

 A few yachts in the harbor!!!

Somehow this just had to go on the blog!

Kelly didn't skate but took a photo journey to the casino which was quite a hike up the hill.  Here is what she found on her adventure...

 The casino...

 Christmas decorations outside the casino..

 Map of all the fancy shops, Kelly didn't think her babysitting money would go very far in any of them!

Love the lemon tree with Gucci in the background!

Just a beautiful building!

We headed out from Monaco, caught a beautiful sunset...

We also got to drive through this-crazy huh?

We made it back to the tiny town next to ours for their annual fireworks. It was a different type of fireworks show, it was all low fireworks set to music on the town square.

As we waited the crepe guy made the kids some wonderful crepes and they had mulled wine for the adults!

We had taken a picture of the town bandstand and joked that it was the last night of the bandstand's life because as the fireworks show went on we thought for sure it was going to catch fire and burn down!

 The bandstand/gazebo in the background..before the show..

The bandstand/gazebo covered in fireworks burning from the top down...crazy but really cool looking! The fireworks show was a very fun way to end our great day!