I am traveling in a few weeks to Montpelier, France with my 15 year old son who loves cars. He wants to go to Monte Carlo/ Monaco and see beautiful cars; they are like great art to him. We have limited time and money; is it worth an overnight taking the train from Montpelier; where would one see the most fabulous cars in Monaco, and where to stay for cheap? Debating what to do.... all ideas welcome! thanks
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16893 posts
I am not aware of an overnight train on that route. Travel time by day is about 6 hours. When viewing train schedules through DB, something that might look like an overnight has two connections and you can see the timing for those when you expand the schedule (click arrow on the left).
Monte Carlo is visited by many nice yachts and cars. The prince displays his car collection. But I don't think it's worth a trip unless you have a couple of days for seeing other sites there on the French Riviera. The bigger car museum in France is up north, in Mulhouse.
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
I enjoyed seeing the Prince's car collection (they are adamant that it's not a "car museum"). But I was staying in Nice for 10 nights, and seeing the entire Riviera area from there, so Monaco was very close and cheap to get to. I agree that it's not worth an major detour. Looking at train schedules on the DB website, I see it takes 6-7 hours to get from Montpelier to Monaco - each way. Unfortunately, that's a major detour [g]. Other than the car collection, I didn't find the cars on the streets of Monaco to be any more notable than those anywhere else; while there are certainly some nice ones, it's not like every car is a Bentley or a Rolls.
Posted by
London, United Kingdom
4684 posts
For future trips, the best single area in Europe for car museums is to stay in the area where Alsace in eastern France meets Baden in south-western Germany. You have the national French car museum in Mulhouse, as stated above, which is best known for its magnificent collection of Bugattis. Stuttgart has the official museums of Daimler-Benz (Mercedes) and Porsche. There is also a private German motor museum society run by a guy who is basically the German equivalent of Jeremy Clarkson, which has two branches in the region, one at Speyer and the other at a smaller town called Sinsheim. All of these are pretty good for petrolheads.
Posted by
56 posts
I have taken the train from Arles to Nice via Marseille and it is a long train ride. Having said that, I stay in a little town 15 minutes train ride from Monaco. Standing in front of the Casino (Monte-Carlo) you can see the very highest priced cars parked there.
People stand beside these cars and have their picture taken. I like to just stand and watch the parade of cars go bye.
Guess I am a kid at heart!!!! Where to stay for cheap depends on what you mean by cheap