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What a day........
we had intentions of cramming in a lot of sight seeing today but that didn't
exactly work out as planned...... read on to find out why.
In our earlier blogs we explained that we'd made a cracking purchase of a
nice shiny new roof box........ today it became our Nemesis :-(
We planned to drive into Nice, park, have a look around, move onto Monaco,
park, have a look around, then see what we had time left to do. So off we
went, down to the main strip in Nice, through some manic and unforgiving
traffic, onto the seafront to find....... no car parking spaces! In fact not
only were there no car parking spaces but there were cars parked everywhere,
absolutely unbelieveable...... we've never seen parking like it. Anyway, no
problem there are several big(ish) underground car parks so we headed to them
BUT they all had height restrictions which were abnormally low (1.9m) and we
already know by trial and error that 1.95m is too low for us (we scrap the
roof ox if we go under that height) but 2.0m is fine. suffice to say that no
amount of driving around Nice yielded a parking spot and we weren't willing
to play 1 in 1 out at the port car park with the queue or 40 or so cars in
front of us :-( Ah well, nothing lost, it only looked like Bornemouth with a
bit more sun anyway and didn't have a fantastic feel to it (Claire disagrees
with me on that bit, she liked the look of it)! So we drove to Monaco, now
that was superb, totally different and what an atmosphere, it oozed class and
not just surface wealth either..... Everything about the Principality was
nice, not to mention the number of fantastic Yachts in the harbour (one had
it's own heli pad on the back and a Gazelle wrapped up in it's own dust
cover, another had a Jacuzzi/Spa on the deck at the back). The cars around
the casino went something like Bently, Bently, Rolls, Merc, Merc, Masarati,
Lambo, Ferrari, Bently, Audi, Audi, Audi (not sure why the Audis were all
clustered together at one end :-) Inside the Casino is something else, very,
very plush, like a palace, although we were asked to leave once they
ascertained that we were from Yorkshire :-)
There is nothing fake about Monaco, there are gazillionaires wandering about
all over the place...... we walked past the Hermitage (a pretty famous and
swish hotel) to see a number of body guards checking the street, cars, etc.
Then one guy went past with an entourage of five bodyguards...... didn't
recognise him but he must have been a) fairly important and b) very wealthy
(just to pay the salary bill!). We ahd a wander around a couple of the
shopping centres (not a Meadowhell you understand, just small centres with
circa 20 shops in them), if you ever want to buy expensive goods - Monaco is
the place! We just looked :-), well, we are both unemployed :-)
Then we drove back past Nice to Cannes (which had a similar parking problem)
but it really just looks like a wannabe type of place, not at all like
Monaco! The shops were trying too hard to be up market and we thought
failing..... It's probably perfect for the film festival though :-)
Then we drove East down the coast road, which was beautiful, back towards
Nice. By far the best place we drove through was Antibes which looks to have
a great mixture of history and culture. Same parking problem - very
frustrating!
We ended the day with a dinner on the seafront and then safely back to camp
for sleep before tomorrows push into Italy (it's not an invasion campaign -
it's a holiday!)
Later,
Ian and Claire.
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