Monte Carlo & Nice

We had a free night’s stay at any Starwood Resort property that was going to expire December 21^st if not used, so Mo did a little detective work to find out that there was a Starwood Resort property in Monte Carlo and we could get a cheap flight via Easy Jet to Nice which is about a 20 minute bus ride from Monte Carlo.

Mo’s detective work consisted of doing a flight search on www.skyscanner.net.  This website is a great tool for determining the cheapest flight from any of the London airports to anywhere that you can fly on a given weekend or other range of dates.  We routinely use it during the week to determine if there are any deals on destinations that we may want to visit for weekends when we don’t have other commitments.  So far we haven’t actually done a trip that last minute, but it’s only a matter of time, I hope!

As with most Easy Jet flights, the cheapest ones are either first thing in the morning or late at night so we decided to book for first thing Saturday morning.  Our flight was at 7:20 AM which meant we arrived in Nice around 9:30 which was 10:30 local time.  After taking a bus to Monte Carlo, we checked in to our hotel.  We were upgraded to an ocean side room which is a nice perk of being gold status with Starwood. 

We didn’t waste much time. After dropping our bags and picking up a map from the front desk, we began a leisurely walk towards the city center.  Our hotel was on a beach just outside of town, but Monte Carlo is not large (about 3 kilometers) so we were able to cover all of the areas of interest on foot.  Our first stop, and not too far from our hotel were  several fancy car showrooms including McLaren, Ferrari and Bentley.  After gawking at the fancy cars and taking a few touristy photos, we continued our walk. 

The next site worth noting was the McDonald’s Restaurant, which I have bestowed with the award for the McDonald’s with the best view.  Imagine looking out over the Mediterranean while you chow down on a Big Mac and fries...does it seem as funny to you as it did to me?  Needless to say this was one McDonald’s we had to visit during our short stay in Monte Carlo, so we had breakfast on the rooftop terrace overlooking the Mediterranean on Sunday morning.

Next we walked through the Christmas markets and began the steep climb (via very pedestrian friendly staircases built into the cliff) up to the Old Town where The Prince’s palace is located.  We wandered the quaint, winding, stone streets for about an hour or so and had lunch at one of several cafes.  We made our descent down a different pathway for variety and ended up by the Monte Carlo Yacht club.  I’ve never seen so many superyachts in one place.  We wandered a bit more including walking by the famous Monte Carlo Casino as well as the high-end retail district and made our way back to the hotel for a short, afternoon nap.

After our naps, we got ready for dinner.  We chose a place that the hotel recommended.  Both our dinner and the restaurant were very nice.  It was located across from the Art Center so they had a fair number of patrons having dinner before the night’s performance.  After dinner we walked back over to the Monte Carlo Casino to check it out.  They observe a dress code, which we knew, and since we were dressed for dinner we knew that we would not be refused entry.  But we were wrong!  We needed our passports in order to enter and had left those in our in-room safe at the hotel.  It was okay though because we debated whether or not to go in since the tables were likely to have high minimum bets and it was 10 Euro per person just to walk in and look around.

Instead we stood outside the front doors of the casino and took in the Christmas decorations and the fine automobiles that filled the casino’s parking area. 

Sunday morning, as I mentioned, we went to McDonald’s for breakfast.  After we got ready, packed up and checked out of the hotel, we decided to walk to the train station.  I was not at all prepared for the stairs.  We went up too many steep staircases to count and though it was a nice cool 60 degrees or so I was sweating profusely by the time we made it to the train station.  We took at train from Monte Carlo to Nice and the views were amazing.  On the train ride, we decided that we needed to come back and rent a villa for a week at some point.

Our time in Nice was really uneventful.  We had about 4-5 hours before we needed to be at the airport to catch our flight back to London. We stored our bags in luggage lockers at the train station and set out.  We had lunch and did a little window shopping.  There were lots of people shopping.  Besides being the weekend there were only about two weeks left until Christmas so that should explain the crowds.  We walked along the Mediterranean where there were Christmas trees for sale.  We had a coffee at one of the cafes directly across the street from the Mediterranean around sunset.    I have to say that thought both Monte Carlo and Nice have similar natural surroundings, I prefer Monte Carlo.  It seems more secluded, is cleaner and calmer. What a beautiful part of the world.  Too bad you have to be a millionaire many times over to be able to afford to live there.  It reminded me of the best parts of California and Florida combined and now I dream of retiring there!