Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is a city in Monaco and Monaco is a very small country. One of the smallest in the world. The dark line in the picture below is the boundary and the distance from end to end would be less than 2 kilometers.
When I think of Monte Carlo I always think of the old James Bond movies - the ones with Sean Connery mainly and the scenes at the casino. That's it below.
There is also a single public beach which was very busy the days we were there as the temperature was very high.
This was one view from our room - there is a huge construction project going on in the bay that, when completed, will totally mess up the view from this side of the hotel. Presently they are drilling piles into the seafloor to support a huge new residential area. Luckily there was little noise.
Shown below are a couple renderings of the finished project. The area circled in red is the Fairmont Hotel so it's clear to see the view from the one side of the hotel will be
Here's a link to an interesting article on the CNN website about this project.
The Fairmont is an extremely expensive hotel and I don't know what we were thinking when we booked two nights there.
A beer in the lounge was 10 euros or just over $15 Canadian dollars. Just a normal Heineken beer! A glass of wine was 15 euros or almost $23. We need to get our heads examined.
The outdoor restaurant was nice with a great ocean view.
This is what I had...some sort of veal turds with a few potatoes.
And look what it cost...42 freaking euros or almost $64 Canadian. You can believe we ate somewhere else the second night. Anyway we won't be staying at any more Fairmonts. They are highly overrated IMO.
Real estate is also VERRRY expensive in Monaco.
Check out the prices below.
2.7 million Euros gets you a 49 square meter studio apartment with 11.2 square meter balcony. So that 527 square feet for the studio and about 120 square feet for the balcony. BARGAIN!
344 square feet for 1.35 million euros - that's over 2 million CAD
The one above is a pretty good size - 1,507 square feet with a 258 sq ft balcony. 2 parking spaces....wooohooo. For only $22,431,309.00 CAD but it does have a view of the sea.
I don't think we're moving to Monte Carlo any time soon.
The second day was a busy day. We visited the medieval town of Eze and went for a helicopter ride up and down the French Riviera.
Below is the ancient town of Eze (pronounced EZ). It's very close to Monte Carlo - only 10 km but it still costs 45 euros by taxi and takes half an hour. The roads are very congested here in the summer.
Eze is very touristy village. We arrived early and it wasn't too bad but after an hour there were so many people you could hardly move.
The Chateau de la Chevre d'Or is a famous hotel in Eze. We should have stayed there rather than the Fairmont. Next time.
Just a few shots of the streets of Eze.
A shot of the coast line.
On the very top of the hill is the Exotic Garden of Eze.
This touristing is thirsty business and we are finally rewarded.
In the afternoon we took a half hour helicopter ride up and down the French Riviera. All the way to Nice and then back and over the Italian border. It was quite expensive but WTF - you only live once - right?
Our pilot didn't speak very good english.
Just some shots from the air.
The port of Nice.
There are some fantastically expensive houses along the Riviera.
The next three shots are of the village of Eze that we visited this morning. Just different angles and zoom.
And shot of Monte Carlo from the air. The red arrow shows the location of our hotel.
A shot looking toward Italy.
From the air we could see many expensive yachts. The one below was the most beautiful. The yacht is the Jubilee. 360 feet long.
Here's another shot I scooped from the internet.
Apparently it's for sale and, for anyone interested, here's the web page.
Below a short video of the helicopter ride.
After the helicopter ride we went to see where the Royal Family lives in the old part of Monte Carlo.
This is their house. It's certainly not Buckingham Palace.
Stopped at this place for a bite and a drink. Ordered two beer and a pizza to share. They said it would be 5 additional euros for the second plate. Told them we didn't need a second plate - we'd just eat the pizza off the plate it came on. They said they still would charge 5 additional euros to share the meal. Told them to go f#@k themselves and went to another restaurant.
Just some additional views of Monte Carlo going down the hill on the way back to our hotel.
The Hotel de Paris next door to the casino. Very expensive.
In the evening, after our considerably less expensive meal, we wandered by the casino and the Hotel de Paris again.
It seems like all the show-offs in Monte Carlo bring their expensive cars here in the evening and park them outside the casino for all us riff-raff to oooohh and aaahhh over.
The Bugatti below probably costs around $3 million.
The Porsche 918 Spyder below probably costs about a million bucks.
And a lot of these cars had pates from Arab countries. Fuckers!
And the last pic - our very expensive hotel room at the Fairmont Monte Carlo. I won't say what it cost here in this blog. Ask me face-to-face and I'll tell you.
