So one of the best things about going to Monaco was that we were doing it as a proper holiday.
As mentioned the other day, Friday is a racing day, but it has no Formula 1 action. Plus, the Monday was a bank holiday in the UK, so the cost of flights was artificially elevated, so the travel company we went with did it so that the flights were on Tuesday. We therefore also had Monday as a free day.
On the Friday we decided to pay a visit to Cannes.
For many years I've often wondered why random Hollywood celebrities turn up at the Monaco Grand Prix, being interviewed on the start. Now you do occasionally get celebs at other GPs of course, but the frequency and calibre at Monaco always seemed unusual.
Well it turns out that the Cannes film festival basically runs at a similar time as the Monaco GP. The main activity of Cannes is normally over by the time Monaco rolls around, but you can imagine that the celebs are kicking about doing nothing when an invite turns up from Monaco and off they trot.
Anyway, so we thought we'd have a butchers at Cannes on Friday. That meant a short train journey down the coast.
We actually missed the train we were supposed to go on as they changed the platform and didn't properly announce it (more on such things at a later date). However, we got the next train and ended up where we were supposed to.
To be perfectly frank, Cannes is distinctly unimpressive.
It's kinda obvious that they created the film festival in order to attract people to an otherwise fairly standard French seaside town.
The actual film festival is held at a Casino close to the coast. It's probably the most ugly building I've ever seen.
Nothing was really happening, but the red carpets were there and bouncers were milling about on doorways.
Most of the seafront was blocked off mainly by tent-like things, some of which sold horribly over-priced merchandise. However, the harbour was accessible, so we had a wander around that. A bit like Monaco there were some staggeringly big and expensive-looking yachts. Some appeared to be hosting lunch parties and on one there was clearly someone that other people recognised.
We didn't know who it was so we guessed it was maybe a local French celebrity.
Oh, and while we were having lunch some bikini-clad girls turned up with some guys with cameras. Now, because of how it worked out I never really got a proper look at the girls, which when I think back on it is bizarre, because they came and sat right behind me. One of the girls must literally have been 6 inches away.
Now if you know anything about me the one thing you can be assured of is that I'm not a prude. However, one thing that's probably not apparent is that I find it... I dunno, confusing I suppose, as to whether I'm allowed to look, well, look at girls.
It's like I don't want to leer at them. It's such a typical reaction and I'm always unsure whether a girl finds it to be uncomfortable or not, even when she's clearly putting everything on display, as it were.
I also sort of hate the power it has over me. It's like the old cliché that men will do anything for a pretty girl. I hate that, but equally I know that in the same situation if a pretty girl asked me to do something I almost certainly would.
I'm not sure I'm explaining this properly - but the basic point is that these scantily clad girls were cavorting around on the grass behind me and I didn't have a look.
But then there is a caveat to that - the blokes with them were photographers and they were taking pictures. Very quickly a huge crowd formed of random people taking pictures and so I was basically buried in a scrum of sweaty blokes.
If there's one thing I hate it's the invasion of my personal space in such a fashion, which pretty much explains why I didn't look and high-tailed it out of there.
After the harbour we sat and had an ice-cream and then went for a wander around Cannes. If you're female and shoes and expensive designer clothes are your thing then Cannes's shops are probably heaven.
Oh and oddly there's a large Boulez (French Bowls) pitch in Cannes. There were quite a few playing as well.
So that was Cannes - colour me unimpressed.
On Monday we did two things.
In the morning we went into Nice, which is where we stayed.
If I'm honest I was totally shattered, so wasn't in much of a 'doing stuff' mood, but it seemed like quite a nice place. We had a pleasant lunch and sat next to a big fountain they have. It was in the middle of a gigantic plaza/square thing. It was so big I think you could have put the entirety of Farnham town centre in there and still had room to spare.
Nice is a big place. This was emphasised on a touristy train ride thing we did. It was a car thing that was made up to look like a train with carriages behind. We were going to do the same basic thing in Cannes, but it would have taken too long. This one lasted about 45 minutes or so with a 15 minute break in the middle.
It went past some sites and went up onto a big hill thing towards the edge of Nice and it was there we really got to see Nice - it's a huge place that would take you hours to walk end-to-end.
The train-ride was good actually - it was a bit touristy but took you to historical places you would not have known were there unless you spent hours wandering around.
We then went on the Tram. Public transport is not my idea of heaven, but my Dad likes that sort of stuff so he wanted to ride the tram.
We then headed back for a nap before we headed out that evening for a trip to the casino in Monaco.
Well that was the plan anyway.
In an attempt to find out what the weather was doing my Dad occasionally put the French news on in the morning. Now rolling along the bottom that morning I'd seen "SNCF" something-something that was too quick for me to really pay attention too.
It turned out that the something-something should have been translated as "bloody communist French rail workers are going on poxing strike yet again."
The strike started at 8pm (we basically arrived at the station at 8pm :/) Monday evening and went on until 8am on Wednesday morning.
This buggered us right up as you can imagine. We had to wait for a train that was running at Nice and then it threw into total confusion what time we would be getting back.
We'd planned to get the second-to-last train back, but it wasn't at all clear what trains would be running. We therefore only had a very short time in the Casinos because it would have been a nightmare missing the train.
The worst thing about that was that in actuality we could have spent hour in the Casino. The boards that were up that claimed the last train would run at 11:05 were clearly a total fabrication, because the train didn't actually turn up until way-past midnight.
For me this didn't matter so much, because I don't like Casinos. They make you feel like a criminal because all the staff are watching you. Plus they have loads of CCTV cameras.
And then on top of that most gambling games are complicated. Well, sometimes they're not that complicated as games as such, but they often have little rules you don't appreciate. Plus there's always etiquette and ways of behaving that no-one tells you about until you do the wrong thing, like betting too little on.
Plus even your bog-standard slot machines have become horribly complicated electronic devices. Long-gone are the days of things physically rotating to show you three cherries and oodles of coins falling out - it's all done with screens and credit slips.
On top of that I'm an appallingly unlucky gambler - I never win at pure-chance gambling.
Take for example the national lottery - I've been playing one set of numbers in each main draw using the online system for 6 months now and haven't won so much as a tenner.
Anyway - the casino thing wasn't for my benefit, it was for my sister who seemed really keen on the idea. Hopefully she had a good time, even if it was a lot shorter than expected.
In the end we didn't go in the Casino de Monte Carlo proper, but went in a Casino next to it. This casino you could wear anything in, but we didn't know that and so had gotten done up in all the clobber.
The net result was the three of us were up on the night, though. I lost a tenner, but my sister gained about £1.50 on a slot machine and my Dad and Sister had a win on the roulette wheel. A single number win pays out at 35-to-1 (minimum bet was £2) and they'd only spent £20 (I'm using pounds for convenience because the Euro exchange rate is piss poor at about 1:1) so they were up.
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