Nice but more Monaco

On the way to Nice after Pisa we travelled along the French Riviera. This is a massively long route that runs along the east coast of Italy into France. The scenery was quite amazing looking at the nice blue ocean disappear into the horizon through large hills and mountains. The roads along the way are well built for the journey. We travelled over so many massively tall bridges linking one large mountain to another and went through many tunnels cutting through the inside of the mountains. It was easily the most amazing scenery we’ve seen on a bus so far.

Monaco

Just thirty minutes from Nice we started to head into Monaco. The land of the rich, famous and loads of hot super cars. On the way there, three red hot Ferraris blasted past us making a lot of noise. I was excited already. We were in the mountains creeping up to Monaco and popped out looking down on to the major port of Monaco. Wow oh wow. What a fantastic place. The view on top of the Monaco mountains looking down into the main port is just unreal. Amazingly blue water into a port full of huge cruise liners and tall apartment buildings. All on a very steep hill. I should note that the picture in no way does it’s justice at we were far from the port and I was on the bus when this was taken. I’d love to live there if it didn’t cost 1,000,000 euro non refundable application fee for residency. Madonna and Michael Jackson were refused residency and lost there one million euro application fee. Ouch.

Ferrari Garage

Monaco was easily the place that excited me the most of any of the places we have been too. Just the view of it passing it by was enough for me. It is definitely on the list of places I want to go back to and have a large weekend. To every one back home and in London, all I can say is start saving! 🙂

We didn’t stop in Monaco so I was destined to head there. As some of you may know the Monaco F1 Grand Prix was on for the weekend we were in Nice and Monaco is a short train trip to Monaco. As Nice has an airport it was the one of the main destinations for people heading to the Monaco F1. I just wish we knew the F1 was on earlier. I would of got tickets for sure.

On the first day in the afternoon (F1 qualifying) we headed out to Monaco to have a look. Maybe it was just me but I thought there was an amazing atmosphere in the air. Obviously because of the destination and as well as the prestige event that was on. There were tons of people everywhere and the mood was fun. We walked around a few streets going through the bar and club areas as well as going passed the F1 souvenir shops. Loads of cool toy car stores too. The Michellin Porsche cup was also on at the time so we could here the roar of the Porsches. We didn’t have a map so we didn’t see much of Monaco and ended the day at that.

F1

On the second day (F1 race day) I headed into Monaco by myself with the hope of getting a ticket from scalpers. The scalpers were selling tickets for over 360 euros, even after the race had started. I walked passed the Ferrari Garage which was cool. It had a number of Ferraris including their newish FFX car based on the Enzo.

Loving cars as most of you know, when the F1s started for the warm up lap the screaming sound of their engines brought tingles to me and big grins all round. Of course just the idea of being in Monaco on the other side of the world hearing the F1s roar was more than enough for me. The noise these machines make is only believable in person. I was about two metres away from the pit area and hearing the noises of the rattle guns, the F1 engines roaring at idle and all the other pit noises was just fantastic.

Monaco Track

There were heaps of people without tickets all trying to get a piece of the action. I headed to look for a good free view point. After a bit of walking around I managed to find a bridge with no one around and I just sat and watched a small strip of one of the bends for the entire race. The corner also had the pit exit so I could see who was going out of the pit area. I got out the lap timer on my phone and was able to get some idea of what was happening. With the lap timer it was easy to see cars that were falling back, making quicker lap times as well as dropping off into the pits. It was interesting watching how much quicker the fast cars were just after pitting when they weren’t in a pack of cars. Without the lap timer I wouldn’t of stayed the entire race. I only wish I had my headphones for my FM radio so I could listen to some commentary.

I had a great time just watching from the bridge and I’m glad I went. I’ve been looking at the rest of the F1 calendar and now with all of Europe within my reach I’ll definitely be looking at going to another F1 but this time with tickets. (Mr Hoyle, save up your dough and come to one with me 🙂 or any one else…. Please!)

As for Nice, I’ll leave that up to Rach as I didn’t do anything in Nice apart from eat and wash my clothes. One night we went for a walk into their civic area at night and walked along their pebble beach, which was nice and people were out so the atmosphere was great.