South of France – Part 3
Tuesday
Tuesday morning saw us get up and get on the road at a relatively early hour. It was about an hour and a half drive to Monaco. On the way there, we saw a Bugatti Veyron. I’d seen this car on Top Gear but up close it’s even nicer. I was disappointed it passed us going only 140 km/h. (That’s twice I’ve been disappointed by a super car on the highway. The first was when I passed a Lamborghini Diablo going 55 mph. C’mon, you have the money to afford the car, you can pay the speeding ticket!) After a bit of a traffic jam getting into Monaco, we were able to park down by the marina. TV just doesn’t prepare you for the amount of money on display there. Some of the yachts in the marina were small cruise ships. And you couldn’t go 100 feet without seeing a red Ferrari.
We made our way along the water front and up to the casino area. Since it didn’t open until 2pm, we decided to have lunch at the Cafe de Paris outside the casino. While we were eating lunch, the Bugatti parked in front of the hotel next to the casino. Quite a few people stopped and took pictures of it, ignoring the Rolls Royces, Ferraris (more red Ferraris) and Porsches next to it. We still had some time to kill so we checked out some shops before going into the casino. I didn’t gamble, though. You had to pay €10 to get into the gaming room and I didn’t think it was worth it just to play a couple hands of baccarat. Besides, at 2pm on a Tuesday, there wasn’t anyone in there gambling. Afterwards, we went looking for McDonald’s but didn’t want to try to find parking just for a picture.
Upon leaving Monaco, we drove to Tourette-sur-Loup on a friend’s suggestion and had a walk around the medieval town. To me, it looked the same as every other medieval town I’ve ever been to, but Christine liked it. We talked to the tourist office and they helped us find a room for the night but when we got there, we saw it was little more than a campground so we decided we’d rather spend an extra day in Cannes.
On the way to Cannes, we stopped for some more French fast food. After checking into the hotel, we walked down to the water and ate dinner on the breakers and watched the sky turn black. Then we walked along the harbor and gawked at the yachts. The we walked along the waterfront to Hotel Martinez to see the restaurant for Wednesday night.
Wednesday
Slept in until 9:45, then got up to move the car so we wouldn’t get a parking ticket (parking on the street was free overnight). We had a nice breakfast in the room and then went to a private beach club and chilled for the afternoon. It was worth the price to get in. We had our own chairs and umbrella and the beach wasn’t crowded so you could go in the water and do your thing without 500 people around you. The water was cooler than expected but nice on such a hot day. We went back to the room around five to get ready for our evening at La Palme D’Or. I was really excited about it. We decided to walk to the restaurant and we had a lovely stroll along the waterfront. Dinner was excellent (more coming in a later post) and we followed it up with a nice walk back to the hotel zig zagging down the shopping and restaurant streets.
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