Friday, June 02, 2006

Day 7 – Monaco / Monte Carlo
Well I feel a bit inadequate financially now.
I have never seen so much money in my life in one place. The homes, the yachts, the cars. It sure is the place to come for the rich.

We were luck enough to be able to dock right at the pier rather than tender in. This meant that we could easily get on and off the ship as we wanted. Monace is a very small city/country. The Vatican is the only place smaller. Seeing Monaco/Monte Carlo from the ship as we entered port was amazing. This town is so built up with buildings on top of buildings. Didn’t expect that but it is all on a rock basically. There isn’t much room for green space or normal homes we know them. They have apartments or villas.

Entering the yacht club where we docked was a wow experience. You could see the Royal residence up on the mountain/rock and you could see the grand casino of Monte Carlo and you could see the yachts. One yacht there was worth $350 Million. The Lady Moura owned by some son of a rich guy from Bahrain. This boat stood out. The rest of the little boats were probably only in the $50-$250 million range.

We started with a walk around old Monaco – elevators and escalators take you up to the top. Prince Albert was home by the flying of the flag. His pops died last year. We didn’t go into the palace or cemetery area – there was enough walking and hills. Walked back to the boat and dad took a break and then I got into hustle mode and ran the city for 2 hours. Covered several miles from the boat to the casino to walking way up through the neighborhoods in a series of stairs. I found a neat little Boulangerie/patisserie (bakery) where I got a drink and a quiche and got to speak French. It was all very nice and fun.

Raced back to the ship for our tour for 2:30PM. The tour bus took us up the switchback rods to the top of Monaco/Monte Carlo where we had great views of the water and Cote d’Azur. The bus then took us to Ville d’Eze which is an old town build on a mountain top hundreds of years ago. That was good. Had an ice cream and then moved on along the upper cornice on the way to Nice. Nice was great by the sea. Really want to go back there and visit and go to the beach. Nice had more big yachts and money everywhere. Elton John, Bill Gates and others have villas there. Lots of traffic in Nice – it’s an Italian holiday today and they are less than an hour away and they drive to Nice for their long weekend. I so wanted to just jump in the water – it looked so inviting.

After the tour I went out at 7PM alone and took their transit from the port for $1.50 to the Grand Casino of Monte Carlo. What an Opulent place. I dressed up in dress clothes and paid my $10 Euro to get in. Everything was extremely luxurious but from an old point of view. The ceilings were very high and the rooms cavernous. I was very surprised to see so few people inside and it was so very quiet. The main room only had about 10 tables in it and then there was the slot room with no sound. Did not sound or look like any vegas style casino. There was only about 3 of us playing slots in this massive room. I guess it’s too early in the evening. I played and was up $50 Euro but lost most of it and left with $12.50 up which covered my entrance fee and bus fare.

The cars out front were Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls Royce etc...

Didn’t eat so had to order room service to the lounge where I worked on my pictures I took of the day. Then at 11PM more food was served. Only 213 pictures taken that day.

Well it’s Friday morning now and we’re in Marseille and we’re winging it today and just see what happens as we have no tour booked. It’s a bit windy but sunny.

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