I think that I have become just a little bit too comfortable with this whole “rinse and repeat” life in the French Riviera.
We got up early again this morning and saw the sunrise. That’s 3 days in a row. Lucky the sun doesn’t rise until after 7:00 a.m.
I’m certain it won’t be happening once we get back home.
We had a bit of a conversation about breakfast. I mean, we have breakfast cereal and milk available, but MBW made a good point that we’re only here for two more days and we don’t know what they eat in Italy for breakfast.
So we had to do what we had to do. Somebody has to take one for the team.
I toddled down to the boulangerie while MBW washed her hair.
On the way to get our croissants, there was a really bad smell as I walked along the footpath.
A lot of people here in Nice have dogs, and they spend a lot of time out walking their dogs. Many of them are tiny rat-like creatures (sorry dog lovers who own a small rat-like dog), but some of them are big, hulking animals that make a big hulking mess.
I didn’t know whether something had died or whether I’d stepped in something.
There are rules here if your dog makes a mess on the footpath; you’re expected to pick up the mess, but not everybody does. I don’t think it’s very well pooliced.
Did you see what I did there? Pooliced?
But halfway to the boulangerie, I was overwhelmed with an overpowering smell of bread and croissants cooking.
Ahhh. My happy place.
Anyhow, today we were planning a trip to Monte-Carlo in Monaco, the gambling capital of the French Riveria.
So when I went to get the croissants, I was feeling a bit reckless and decided to go double or nothing. I bought four.
And once again, they were still warm.
We had our breakfast, gave the apartment a tidy, and set off on today’s adventure.
You may recall that we bought two-day passes for the buses and trams. They weren’t specifically two day passes, they were good for 48 hours from first activation, so that meant that we still had a couple of hours on our passes before they expired, just before 10 o’clock this morning.
So we set off early to have another look at the markets.
We poked around the markets for a little while and bought some nougat from a vendor.
Once we had seen everything we wanted to see at the markets, we headed off on foot to find the train station to take us to Monaco.
Monte-Carlo is not in France BTW. It’s in Monaco, which is a different country.
I made another serious tactical error today. The forecast for Nice was 20 degrees, but the forecast for Monaco was only 16. And 16 is cool enough to wear a long sleeve t-shirt and carry a jacket just in case.
But by the time we had been wandering around the markets for about 10 minutes, I was really hot and sweaty and wishing that I’d worn a short sleeved t-shirt.
We headed off to the Gare de Nice-Ville Station, which was a bit of a journey. Google Maps took us on 3 sides of a square, so we obviously went the long way.
When we got to the station, there were people gathered around everywhere, all queued up to buy tickets from machines. The app wouldn’t work for us, and their “scan me” QR codes didn’t work either.
We ended up going to the ticket office and asking the attendant for the best way to get to Monaco.
We bought two return tickets for €24.
Trains to Monaco leave every 15 minutes, so we hopped on board the very next one that was leaving.
You get an absolutely stunning view over the French Riviera coastline as you travel by train up from Nice to Monaco.
It was only a short trip on the train, about 20 minutes.
Once we were off the train in Monaco, we went in search of the tourist office. We found a very helpful lady who told us all of the key things that we should see when we only have one day there.
So the first thing that she suggested that we do was to hop on a bus and head up to the palace. The changing of the guards occurs at 11:55 every morning.
We also learned that the Monaco F1 Grand Prix is happening very soon, so they were setting up for that. Plus there is tennis on at the moment, so Monte-Carlo was super busy with the rich and famous, and the wannabes.
By this time it was getting seriously hot in the sun, and we were both regretting wearing long sleeve t-shirts. In fact, I would have been far more comfortable wearing shorts.
But we watched the changing of the guards – all pomp and ceremony – and then we went and bought tickets to see inside the Prince’s palace.
The palace is only open to visitors for 6 months of the year, but the prince must be away at the moment, and so from about the fourth of April, it’s open to the public.
Given that our personal invitations to visit the prince hadn’t arrived before we got there, we had to pay €10 each to get in and have a look around.
But it was worthwhile visiting, and we were glad that we did. Your €10 includes an audio guide that tells you about various things as you wander around the palace.
By this time it was pushing two o’clock and we were getting hungry so we found a place to buy a sandwich for lunch and then we went back by bus down to the city.
We had come this far and we were keen to visit the Casino de Monte-Carlo.
We had been warned that we weren’t appropriately dressed to enter the casino, but we thought we would just see what happened.
There is some serious wealth around Monaco. Obscenely serious weatlh.
You may recall the other day I said I’d seen two Bentleys in one day. Well today I saw three or four Bentleys, Rolls Royce’s, more Lamborghinis than I could count on one hand, Ferraris, and Porsches.
You name it. Oh plus a couple of Aston Martins.
I’m glad we didn’t bring Claude … I’d have been so embarrassed. Poor Claude.
I felt like saying to MBW that “I wonder what the poor people are doing,” but I already knew what I was doing.
There were lots of people going into the casino, so we thought we’d go and give it a try.
You get a pat down on your way in the front door by security, and they want to look at all of your bags. They probably just want to see what the poor people carry in their backpacks.
So we got into the casino and had a look around the foyer, and learned that once you show your passport to security again, you can go into the first room for free.
The first room is where all the poker machines are. Well, the cheap ones anyway.
MBW figured that as we had come this far, we should have a crack on a poker machine. Maybe we could pay for some of this holiday. Or at least lunch …
So she borrowed €5 from me and fed it into the machine.
She then proceeded to play a very high risk and high stakes game on the one cent machine. She played five lines at a time, five cents per bet.
OK, so I acknowledge that she had three wins of 25 cents each, but she then proceeded to lose the whole €5.75.
I mean, that was tomorrow’s croissant money.
If you want to go beyond the first room into the casino they charge you €20 to get in but I’ll bet that the guy who parked his Lamborghini out the front didn’t have to pay €20 to get in.
It was hardly a surprise that we lost our €5, so we headed back out of the casino again and down towards the beach to have a look.
There were lots of rich people lying on the beach, sunning themselves. The water was a beautiful crystal clear blue, and I would have loved to have taken my shoes off and had a paddle to see what it was like.
But they didn’t need a poor person like me invading their beach.
It was getting late and we needed to head back towards home.
So we did the bus ninja thing again, and caught the bus back to the train station, to then hopped on the train back to Nice.
On the bus heading back to the Monaco train station, there were 3 teenage girls who were, like, talking about, like, their lives and, like, stuff. Unfortunately, they kept switching between French and English.
One would ask a question in French, and the other would answer in English. It was pretty difficult to follow the conversation when I could only understand half of it.
And I didn’t feel this was a situation where I could comfortably say “Je ne parlez pas francais.”
We got back home to the apartment just after 5.00pm and sat down and had a cuppa and some nougat.
One of the problems with travelling for more than four weeks is that I become desperately in need of a haircut. That’s now going to have to wait until sometime when we’re in Italy. That’s another Italian phrase that I’m going to have to learn.
MBW told me today that it’s three weeks tomorrow before we fly home, and that just makes me sad.
But 3 weeks is 3 weeks, and tomorrow we head off into Italy.
After having croissants for breakfast again.
Claude has had the last few days off, so he should be well rested.
It’s a fairly long trip tomorrow – about 3.5 to 4 hours using toll roads and about eight or nine hours without using toll roads.
So we’ll be taking the toll road option.
We don’t actually have to be out of Farzad’s apartment until six o’clock tomorrow night, which is quite unusual, but we aim to be gone by about 10 o’clock so that we can get into Italy sooner rather than later.
Hopefully everyone will be in church – or still in bed – so we won’t have to battle traffic out of Nice.
It’s been another fabulous day on the French Riviera. The weather here has been fantastic; warm, sunny, beautiful.
I can see why this is the place where people come to retire.
We have some really exciting stuff planned for when we’re in Italy, and you’ll read about that in the next couple of weeks.
Ciao
#Europe2025