Jours à Monaco

The fish pedicure, one of the new attractions at the summer carnival at Port Hercule in Monaco, caught my eye only as we were heading back to the train with an exhausted 2 year old.  While Daddy G worked on some of the yachts in the port this morning, Alexa and I spend hours jumping on trampolines (3 euros for 10 minutes of jump time), riding carousels, running around blow-up fun houses, riding Nemo-themed plastic log boats, painting a carnival mask and “fishing” for plastic ducks.  Although most of the people in the French Riviera are… well… to be quite blunt, assholes to children and adults alike, this area is full of childhood entertainment.  Numerous parks and playgrounds are scattered along the coast from Cannes to Gulf Juan to Juan les Pins to Antibes to Monaco and on in to Italy.  Carousels are common, bumper cars, paid trampolines and plastic bubble enclosures where you run around inside while floating on water are very popular.  Water rollercoasters, paddle boats, parasailing, air hockey and arcades are all quite common as well.  And if you can squeeze yourself onto a tiny spot on one of the Mediterranean’s public beaches, you can enjoy swimming in the clear, cool, gold flecked ocean with all the other hundreds of European travelers.  Or, if you don’t want to fight for a space on the sand, you can pay 40 Euro for a beach chair at one of the adorable French bistro’s on the la playa.  Ha!  Let me put that in perspective for you… 40 Euro is about $60 USD.  And once you rent a beach chair, you are required to purchase all your water and food from their place too.  A day at the beach on the French Riviera for a couple or a family can easily run you 200+ Euro if you are not careful.  But the fish… the fish pedicure at the summer carnival at Port Hercule in Monaco, is only a mere 10 Euro, I believe.  Some people claim the fish in these fish pedicure tanks transfer diseases from one person’s foot to the next.  Some remind us that the fish pee and poo inside these tanks we stick our feet in to be “cleaned”.  Some claim it is the most sanitizing way to get a pedicure and their feet have never been smoother.  Some believe the fish pedicure is animal cruelty.  I think Alexa and I will head back over to Monaco this week to investigate this fish pedicure a little further for ourselves.