Monaco Columbus Hotel

The Columbus hotel is a chic boutique hotel in the heart of Monaco, but right on the water's edge. Superb bedrooms with some very distinctive touches, like the fig-scented heart-shaped soaps. The bed linen was changed every day. Great shower. PlayStation with the TV! The best scrambled eggs, and a very comprehensive yet personalised breakfast. We had one evening meal in the hotel, with a big party of us, and it was excellent, although we were talking so much, that one or two people's food was cleared while they were part way through. There is an excellent pool area. Gym but no spa, although lots to be found within a stone's throw, and the concierge would have booked for me. We didn't have enough time to explore properly.

The most beautiful people I have seen in one place for a while, and simply stunning boats moored in the marina.

The Columbus Hotel in Monaco is a very modern one, having apparently undergone a very expensive renovation in the last year or two. It's located away from the main centre of Monaco, but still within a stones' throw of the sea. Across the road is the Princess Grace Rose Garden, which apparently has 4,000 roses in it (we didn't count!). The park also features a lovely playground for the smaller kids and when we were there, it wasn't too crowded. For the slightly older kids, there is a skateboard park/area with ramps. The Monaco Heliport is close by the hotel, but with no night flights, there didn't seem to be a noise problem.

Although Monaco is small, parts of it are pretty hilly, fortunately there is an excellent local bus service with 6 different flat rate routes, it cost us 1.30 Euro per trip.

Monaco has lots of lovely restaurants, many of them pretty pricey, so if you are looking to bring food with you or find something more suitable for the kids, there is a large Carrefour supermarket near the hotel, there's also a McDonald's restaurant(which we didn't expect to see in Monaco) and also close to the hotel was the Louis XVI stadium, where athletics/football is staged, no events were on while we were there, so you could take a stadium tour.

While in Monaco, we'd advise you to take the tour of the Royal Palace, though the walk up the hill to the palace is tough on a hot day. The streets around the palace are full of lovely souvenir shops, but watch out for the ice-cream though, I got more than I bargained for!!!

Apart from the Palace, the oceanagraphic institute(aquarium) is well worth a look and there is a nice motorised tour that leaves from outside the aquarium every few minutes, I think it cost us 6 Euro each and it brings you down around Monaco and along many of the roads used in the grand prix. Princess's Grace's grave is found within the Cathedral which is near the aquarium and overlooks the sea. The view from the palace yard down over the harbour is fantastic and you really should go down and walk along the quayside and gaze at the huge yachts. There is also a harbour cruise in a glass bottomed boat,which lasted about 50 minutes and which I would recommend, we had a free voucher, so I don't know the cost.

We found that Monaco also made a great base for exploring the rest of the coast, (the train station is just amazing and the trains regular and pretty punctual)you can take the train eastwards towards the Italian border or westwards towards Nice or Cannes. If you enjoy markets, then a trip just across the Italian border to Ventimiglia is well worthwhile,the journey is only about 25 minutes and every Friday in Ventimiglia there is a huge open air market, we were told that it was the biggest openair market in Europe. Our advice would be to drink plenty of liquids, as Ventimiglia seemed much warmer than Monaco, though it could be the effect of the crowds.

The only negative point of our stay in Monaco was that the combination safe in our hotel room, wouldn't open on two different days. On both occasions the problem was the same, as certain numbers on the keypad wouldn't register when pressed. On the first occasion, a staff member came up after ten minutes and opened it, the second time we waited half an hour and had to go back down to reception a second time. But leaving aside our experience with the safe, I'd thoroughly recommend the Columbus Hotel and would definitely stay there again.