600 years of Grimaldi's, there are a lot of streets named after them. Avenue Prince Pierre, Boulevard Rainier III, Avenue Albert II.

Monaco is not a place one immediately things of as a destination for children. There are, however a few touristy things that are of interest to smaller sized humans. The first is Prince Rainier's automobile museum and the second would be the a fore mentioned aquarium.
Ranier, as you may recall, married American actress Grace Kelly in 1956. She died tragically in an automobile accident in 1982, while Rainier lived to 81, passing away in 2005. He left behind his automobile collection:

I love that he collected cars just because he liked them. Less lovable is the notion of wealth so extreme that he could afford to buy whatever vehicle tickled his fancy, but, whatever. He had a nice selection of cars.
And of all the odd things, we have a small car buff in our family: Hope. She loves cars. Who would have thunk? Living in a city as we do, and hoofing it frequently, she has a lot of exposure to automobiles: I trot along behind her on the street as she muses over the merits of Volkswagens vs BMWs. She has already decided that she would like her first car to be an Audi TT. To which I have said something along things lines of, "Good luck with that, I do hope they raise the minimum wage for McDonald's workers, 'cause you have to work a lot of shifts to pull together that kind of scratch."
Anyway, to the cars we went. She insisted on being photographed with her favorites: here we have a 1937 Jaguar.The classic Jaguar is one of our favorite cars. The lines on those things make me weak. Although in my opinion, this photograph does not show off its sleekness to a proper advantage.

There are about a hundred cars in the collection; and carriages, and the random boat or snow machine. There is a ton of money tied up in it all.

Honestly, as I was leaving my one hope was that someone was taking these cars out of the museum periodically and using them. As beautifully restored and cared for as they are, they are still cars, and I can't help but think they are meant to be driven.
The car museum behind us, we headed off to the Oceanographic Museum. It has been quite a few years since I took the children to an aquarium, mostly because the last time we went, I spent a small fortune on admission, then spend a bare, albeit, tiresome hour wandering around, nearly dying of boredom before we left. The whole experience left me feeling that aquariums are a serious waste of time and money. But, there isn't a whole lot for children to do in Monaco, and the Oceanographic Museum did come highly rated as an activity, so off we went.
Turned out to be a huge win. I won't bore you absolutely to tears with the fiendish photos Hope took of the Mystery Hell Creatures that Roam the Deep, but I was pretty terrified. There's a lot of freaky stuff living at the bottom of the sea. You know, like that.

We were all really entertained for quite a bit longer than I ever would have imagined, although I spent most of the afternoon trying not to faint every time I caught a glimpse of the Moray Eels. No, no photos of those. I have some mercy.
But, the best, best, best part of the whole Oceanographic Museum was at the very end. They have shark petting! I have no idea what the ethics are of this one, but it was pretty cool. The sharks are quite small, but very shark like, so it took a few minutes for Hope to warm up to the idea. But one she petted one, she put "shark" on her Christmas list.

Why on earth they do not nibble on human fingers, I do not know.
And with that, we were finished with Monaco. We never even got around to seeing the Casino: they don't allow children in even to view it, and one must dress properly, including a jacket and proper shoes for me, so right there, no chance. On the upside the weekend was warm, sunny, and the city is a charming. Downside, it is expensive, even in the off-season, plus rather hilly for marching around with children.
Monaco is simply never going to make my Top Ten European list, because, I'm not the sort of person who Monaco is interested in attracting. Beautiful people, gamblers, Formula 1 fans and Lamborghini drivers, are all more at home here than I would ever be: as they say, different strokes for different folks.
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