Monte Carlo (Monaco)

Our next stop on our road trip was Monte Carlo. Last Christmas, my mom gave me her favorite book, Rebecca, to read, and in it they talk about driving up the winding roads above Monaco. Ever since reading it, I have wanted to go there. The book was not exaggerating. The city is literally built into the cliffs rising above the ocean. We stayed in a hotel way above the town (appropriately named Vista Palace) and from my balcony you could only see hundreds and hundreds of feet below you. That first glance was sort of like the feeling I had when I looked over the 150 ft. cliff I had to repel down in Interlaken. I prayed that there would be no earthquakes that night or the hotel would fall plunging into the ocean below.

That night, it started storming and gusts of winds made the rain fall sideways. We took the hotel shuttle into town, and had to walk about six blocks to get to the restaurant at which we had dinner reservations. During the walk, up and down winding roads, the gusts of wind periodically would blow our umbrellas inside-out. Mind help up pretty well, but dad’s looked like it had been attacked by a wild beast by the time we made it to the restaurant.

After dinner, we went to the infamous Monte Carlo casino. It looks and feels like a palace, and seems kind of weird that it is a casino. There were people dressed in all different kinds of clothes, from jeans to formal gowns. We played video poker, and once I had lost all the money dad gave me, we moved onto roulette. I’m even worse at roulette than poker. After I lost all our chips, we called it a night.

The next day we went to the Royal Palace. It was another beautiful, sunny day and we had a nice walk on the cliffs above the coast, through a royal garden, to the palace. Since I have been living in Geneva the past few months, I am accustomed to hearing people speaking French or other languages I don’t understand. On the palace grounds, however, I was surprised to hear not only English but Americans. They were everywhere! It was actually really weird for me. I was a little disappointed by the tour of the palace because you only get to see about 10 rooms, but considering the royal family actually still lives there, I guess they can’t show you that much. After the palace, we walked down to the port to check out all the huge yachts. We saw one yacht whose boat boy was washing the owner’s Bentley…must be nice.

Pictures: Me on the pool deck of the Vista Palace, overlooking Monte Carlo; the casino