MONACO - MONTE CARLO and OUR WIN!

Nice
Day 60

When you're in Nice, you have to go to Monaco. And we did. And it was a good escape from stressing about the Roses of Life.

And the trip there was just as magestic as the one to Andorra. Steeper in fact. I can now see how Princess Grace was killed on of the roads going to Monaco. The cliff face is really, really steep. And she was killed on the highest road. There are three...we went on the middle road..came home on the lower road.

We arrived in a tour bus with a couple from Ireland (he was a commediene) and 3 ladies from the US. Great little group and a bus driver who'd lived in Melbourne for a year a few years ago...she was great. Had a commentary all the way there and back..

And once there...we went around the race track of the Grand Prix. Took pics. The drivers go for 17 laps and go up to 245km per hour around the track. Scary. I tell ya......there's no way i'd be wanting to do that past about 50kmh!!!

Walked to Jacques Cousteaus HUGE Aquariam..and saw his first submarine...took pics of the local real estate prices, trapsed around the harbour holding luxury launches, palace...and had dinner at Cafe De Paris after our jaunt at Monte Carlo Casino!!!

And what a jaunt.

The palace was spectacular...the houses where Caroline and Stephanie lived were just gorgeous, the jewellery shops were well...overpriced...the rolexes...geepers...overlooking the riveria but....the thing that blew us away was the cars!!!

In just one street there was a line up of Maserati, Lambourgini, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, BMW's, Porches, Ferrari's...................

Guess what happened???

We unlocked our white Lambourgini and drove out!

Nah, not really...(just pretended and took a pic of Greg next to it!)

What we did..was try our luck at the Casino...our only hope! :-)

So. We put our bags into security, no cameras or mobiles allowed, and no plastic for some reason...and charged us 10 euro each for the entrance fee.

And in we go..tried to have dinner but after he looked at shoes and watch i'm sure he just thought we were mountaineers or something...it's the first time honestly...that i actually felt embarrased about our shoes!!!!

Of course we didn't have elegants jackets so couldn't get into the international section (damn, i wanted to look at the dresses and jewells haha)..

The building was quite beautiful. Ornate rococo and the ceiling was something you could just keep looking at. Didn't look good..us staring way up there for too long tho!

So...off we go...get 20 Euros of chips...

And sit at the pokie...like an old homeless addicted person would. Well, that's what i've always thought people who play pokies look like...what a judgement, i'm sure there are other looks..

We won a few chips, lost a few, felt brain dead as we put coin in, pressed button and watched cards flutter....

THEN! 80 chips were announced!!!! We punched the eject button to get our win...and 80 coin clanging turns...and people looking at us because it was making so much noise (they were only conservative 50c chips) we proudly took our win, redeemed it, and ran!

Ate our dinner at the Cafe De Paris...and paid 55 euro for a cocktail, a cognac and two club sandwiches!!!!

The irish couple later told us they spent E183 for two mains, a bottle of wine and a bottle of water!! E11 for the bottle of Evian.

What a night!!!

What a win!

Monaco was cool :-)