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Published: June 24th 2008
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So we decided to cancel our second night in Nice and try to move onwards to Avignon. On the way, we saw the most densely populated country in the world, and also one of the smallest—Monaco.
This is the second microcountry I’ve seen on this trip, and is of course very different than the Vatican. The entire thing is secluded from the world, with mountains around two-thirds of it and the other third on the Mediterranean. And about two thirds of it is hotels, if not more. High-end cars, yachts, etc. are in higher concentration here than anywhere else I’ve seen, and possibly the world.
We started by trying to find a place to store our luggage, since Monaco is all about the vertical thing and would thus be unfun to traverse with our bags. Unfortunately, the one train station in the country has only two information/tourism officers, none of which knew where to store bags. And of course there were no lockers at the station. We ended up finding a hotel that would store them for us after about an hour, thank goodness.
We spent a bit of time on the docks admiring the moneyful boats and
cars before heading on up to the rock in the middle of the towns. Monaco/Monte Carlo is situated in a crescent shape with a large rock jutting out in the middle, sort of forming a big letter “E”. On the middle rock is the “world-famous” aquarium and the Princely palace. We visited the aquarium first, and while it was interesting and had a large variety in a small area, it was still quite small compared to what I’m used to in the USA. I did enjoy the bright colors of the fish as well as how they sometimes had hundreds of the same fish in one tank, which you don’t see often in the US.
We then headed on through to the palace/castle, and while we barely missed the changing of the guard (darn), we still got to see the evidence of this country’s relatively huge wealth for their size. Including, again, the array of vehicles parked out front. Bentleys and Ferraris are quite standard fare here. We saw a Smart car with a ticket on its windshield and joked half-seriously that it was ticketed for not being good enough car to be parked in Monaco. The palace afforded
some nice views of the bay and other area surrounding where we came in, as well as some fun touristy shops where I bought an Azure Coast shirt to commemorate the few days before and after Monaco.
We then headed onwards, mostly upwards, to the heralded Jardin Exotique, which is famous for its collection of rare cacti. Getting to the place was absolutely killer. Very up indeed. We tried in vain to find the advertised public escalators and elevators to no avail. Well, that’s not exactly true—we found the exit to an elevator at the top after climbing eleventybillion funarific stairs. Seriously, this place is so vertical and terracetastic that I’m surprised it gained resort status. I guess the rich people just stay on the shore, and the (relatively) poor workers just grow wheels instead of legs. But it’s all good. The gardens were very nice, with an amazing variety of plants I had never seen before and will probably never see again. And the view from there was by far the best we saw in Monaco. You could see the entire crescent quite easily from the gardens.
And you could get wonderfully cold water for an insanely cheap” 2 euros only (shoot me)! Deciding we had enough time left for one more attraction, we decided to visit the main cause of Monaco’s wealth—the famous Casino Monte Carlo. Walking back was easy enough, being downhill and all, and we made it in time to view a somewhat appalling crowd of tourists gawking but obviously not classy enough to actually gamble (yes, ourselves included). There was a 10 euro fee to go in, and the minimum bet for most rooms was about 50 euro, and we only had about 40 minutes to look around, so we chose wisely and decided not to go in the actual innards of the casino. We decided instead to take in the lobby grandeur, sneak a peek at the rooms where 5 hundred people watched 15 people gambling inordinate amounts of cash away, and gawk at the insane lineup of cars park in the VIP spots outside. These cars were just about the main attraction. There were multiple Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches etc., the real impressiveness of which I’m not really mentally equipped to appreciate. I still posed with ‘em though. Oh, and they did have a lobby gambling room outside of the
pay area for pathetic people like us who are only willing to gamble single-digit notes at a time. So I gambled a 5euro note on a draw poker machine and played for 15 minutes or so. And I did end up walking away with around 6.5euro. So now I can say that I gambled and won in Monte Carlo! 😉 Look for the pseudo-faux-ecstatic photo where I pose with my immense winnings.
We then headed off to Avignon, making it in time to be lost for just a bit and make it to our more than adequate hostel. This town looks amazing enough at night, with its very uniform medieval walls (I’ve not seen a town with such color uniformity in my entire trip here), so it should be even better in the daytime. And we met some awesome Floridian roommates who share our peculiar form of humor (better than the Internet baby) so it’s all good. Check for the Avignon entry as soon as I can manage!
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