Eurotrip 3.0 : Monaco & Cannes!!

As we, the weary travelers, drove out of Pisa and by & through the Cinque Terre, the Italian & French Riviera, we were treated to some of the best views in any stretch of road in the world. So good in fact, that we were re-energized for the chequered flag of our journey, the last 3 days in Monaco, Cannes & finally in Milan.

We arrived in the evening in Beausoleil, France. The town is on a hill with Monaco down below, by the sea. One can literally take an elevator from France to the Principality of Monaco!  Our apartment-hotel (the Odalys Les Jardins d’Elisa) was a superb one with a well set up apartment overlooking the sea & the country-city of Monaco below.

Shyam stepped out to get wine & groceries for the evening and I was busy readying the pasta with Hari. The night views from the apartment were stunning and I managed to click some good long-exposure shots.

After filling our tummies with some more pasta and wine, we veritably crashed in our beds! The next day was going to be a drive down to Cannes, the red carpet & more!

With the season over, Cannes was almost a ghost town, as if people had simply run away. The drive into Cannes was an uneventful one and we reached there right in the middle of the day. Parking was not to difficult to find and was surprisingly inexpensive given it was Cannes! Certainly way cheaper than London, Hari confirmed.

We took a walk by the beach and ended up at a really nice restaurant in one of the by-lanes. Lunch was the ever-dependable  pizza. A good 25% more expensive than at most other places on our trip, but quite good! We drove up then, to the Church of Notre-Dame which gave some great views out to sea. The Church itself was quaint and simple, with not much to do.

As evening approached, we drifted towards the famed Cannes Red Carpet and did our customary Bond snaps and such. It felt quite weird, re ‘normal’, without all the celebrities and paparazzi… All in all, it was a nice, relaxed day, as was needed as our (in hindsight) grueling trip wound down to its last 48 hours. We had a quick bite at a McDonald’s and headed back to our apart-hotel overlooking Monaco.

At night, Hari, Vidya & I suited up to go spend some time at the Grand Casino of Monte Carlo, Monaco. The place was fairly deserted but it still had a slew of Ferrari’s, Benz’s & Porsche’s waiting outside – the owners and staff perhaps? My time spent studying at the casino in Kranjska-Gora earlier on in the trip came in handy as we won some money at the roulette table – something like a net gain of 100 euros. It was fun, but I was getting really sleepy by the end of it, as the clock sped well past midnight!

We returned to a good night’s sleep followed by a relatively early morning for checkout! The next few hours were spent driving up to the Oceanographic Museum, followed by the Prince’s Palace. While we didn’t go inside, the stunning beauty of the land standing tall against the sea kept us occupied.

The streets leading up to the palace were dotted with little clothes-shops and lovely eateries and and we had a nice lunch in one of them. As afternoon was turning to evening, we bade goodbye to Monaco to drive onwards to Milan (in pouring rain!). But not before we did two laps of the famed Circuit de Monte Carlo - an unforgettable experience taking me back to my days of being a formula 1 addict (doing more laps on the  computer game than I had watched in my lifetime)!