We weren’t sure about Monaco – even though it’s a measly 3.80€ train trip from Nice, we knew that was going to be the last of the inexpensive options for the overnight stay we had planned on having.
“It’s only money” we told ourselves along with, “we can always earn more” followed by “how often are we going to be in perhaps the wealthiest place in the world?”. So with that, the credit card was truly awakened!
Sadly the weather sucked. Hard. It hasn’t stopped raining for 2 days straight. Thankfully we had our rain jackets and we braved the elements to venture out and see the sights. For somewhere as small as this, it’s packed full of places to see.
We had already caught a bus around the streets so we kind of had our bearings a bit. We hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, so we thought we’d try a late lunch in the well known, very upmarket and rather pricey Cafe de Paris, right next to the Monaco Grand Casino.
Every man and his dog, literally, were there. And they were wealthy, very wealthy. It’s certainly the place to be seen and live it up. We had 2 choices – go cheap and order the 15€ ham & cheese sandwich or do it properly. We did it properly. Prawn cocktail & French Onion soup for our entree, expensive bottle of red wine, tuna salad & prawn ceasar salad for mains along with coffees and vanilla slice for dessert. 2hour lunch and loved every minute and every bite! Great way to see how the locals live.
Afterwards, it was the perfect time to have a look at the most opulent casino in the world. We were told we wouldn’t be allowed in without a shirt, tie, jacket and dress shoes along with the equivalent for Deb. We tried our luck, thankfully Deb was wearing some nice gear and I hid behind her as we paid our 10€ each to get in. The place is magnificent. I think the Vatican museum took notes for some of their stuff. Given it’s almost winter and early evening, not many were playing. We passed up the additional entry fee areas where the true high rollers were playing, instead settled in to watch 200€ minimum bets on Black Jack.
We had a flutter on roulette, bloody Wesley Snipes leading us astray as we did indeed bet on black, but red came up both times and 2 wasn’t Deb’s lucky number that night. 20€ gone but who cares, it’s all about the experience!
We walked the city for ages, taking in the sights before crashing at our very nice Novotel hotel. A great night!
An early start and checkout meant we had a heap of time to see more of the amazing city where crime doesn’t exist the police reckon. I’d believe it too – cameras everywhere, heaps of police and not a single hint of graffiti or vandalism to be seen. Impressive.
We caught the bus up to the palace and timed it nicely to see the changing of the guard. No prince though sadly. Did see a Mercedes SLS – their new gullwing door model – never seen one on the road before. Kind of got used to the Porsches and Ferraris everywhere. Plenty of Bentleys, Rolls, Jags and a few Maseratis too. Lots of Minis and Fiat 500s aswell, as apparently the only thing harder than affording a property here is finding somewhere to park your car! So small cars certainly are in abundance.
From there, another bus ride to where the Grand Prix circuit loops around the city. I was reading that during the GP, if you have a balcony residence on the course, you can command up to 140,000€ for the 4 days! Anywhere in Monaco will get you 4,000€! If you think the track looks tight on TV, it’s insanely tight just walking it. If a bus has to go around one of the hairpins, cars coming the other way have to wait. It’s also very steep in and around the huge tunnel section so with those 2 factors, it’s of little wonder that there’s very little wonder as to why there’s barely any overtaking. Awesome course and great to walk around it! Especially cool to hear the sounds of 4 Mitsubishi Evos accelerate in unison in the tunnel with the reverberation & noise cascading out.
We had some time to kill and we were pretty much soaked through, even after trying to use a lovely broken purple umbrella, so we headed back to our hotel for a delicious lunch, then onto the train station to book our tickets to Paris on the 200mph train. We could only get seats together in 1st class, very Monaco of us, and this is where we sit writing this blog post.
Highly, highly recommend Monaco. The boats, the cars, the houses/apartments and of course the restaurants all add up to a totally different lifestyle unimaginable to most of us. Great to be there for a few days to at least pretend it’s your day-to-day life!
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