Ryan Goes to Cote d’Azure (Part III)

Friday afternoon we took a bus tour to the mountain village of Eze and then on to Monaco (which is only 15km or so from Nice). Eze is basically a tourist trap with a bunch of shops. Shopping tourist traps do not trap me as I have little interest in shopping and, even if I did, I didn’t have the bags to bring the crap home. Supposedly there is a great view from Eze, but you have to pay 5 euro to see it. Pass. My Lyford cheapskate blood will not allow me to pay such a fee.

We were in Eze for a couple hours then hopped back on the bus to continue the trip to Monaco. You know when you have crossed from France into Monaco because all the buildings are much higher and everything looks much more expensive. There is no shortage of money in Monaco. The bus dropped us off and I headed for the Grimaldi family’s palace. The Grimaldi family has had sovereignty over Monaco since the 1200’s. I was happy to see the Palace had my new favorite museum component – the audio tour. This one happened to be a bit cheesy, but served its purpose to educate me on the Grimaldi family and the palace grounds. However, I didn’t make it to see the Prince’s car collection – of which he has something like 100 cars. Well, you have to leave something for next time.

Next, a few of us headed to the famous Casino Monte Carlo. The parking area in front of the casino is a car show – Bentley’s, Roll Royce’s, Ferrari’s, etc. The two high end Mercedes parked there looked like cheap toys next to some of the other cars.

It costs 10 euro just to get in the casino and there is a dress code. In fact, there are some rooms you need a jacket to enter (I didn’t have a jacket, however). The inside is very ornate, although it was a bit smaller than I expected. I guess after spending time in the giant Las Vegas and Connecticut casinos everything else seems small. I couldn’t leave without saying I had played at the casino so I plopped down 100 euro on the roulette table. It took me about 10 minutes to “donate” my 100 euro. Well 95 euro – I kept a 5 euro chip as proof of my endeavor. However, the chips are cheap plastic – not the heavier chips I’m used to in US casinos.

After the casino we met up with everyone else at a nearby restaurant for dinner where I had more unappetizing French food. They had lamb there that was so fatty you would have though it was fed McDonalds its whole life.

After dinner I had a couple more hours before our bus was to take us back to Nice so I headed down to the Marina to check out some of the yachts. There yachts in Monaco’s harbor are pretty darn nice. One of them, Lady Moura, is the 11th largest private yacht in the world. It is owned by a Saudi Arabian businessman. Next to it was another huge yacht with a Miami Dolphins helicopter on the back of it.

On the far side of the marina there was a horse jumping contest going on. I managed to easily sneak into the VIP area and check out the scene. Unfortunately I caught the jumping between “acts” so there wasn’t much going on. I had to leave before they started the next round of competition.

On Saturday night we took a dinner cruise from Nice to Monaco and back. I say dinner cruise, but it was really a booze cruise because the ratio of booze to food was probably about 10:1. During the trip the captain pointed out to us the houses of Bill Gates, the Grimadi family and the Rothschilds. The boat stopped at a small village just outside Nice where we could eat dinner without being tossed around.

On the dinner cruise we presented the company administrator responsible for organizing the whole trip with a nice painting purchased in Nice. Vic and I got to carry it back from the marina to the hotel. The idea was that she would be able to ship the painting back to Canada from the hotel. Guess again. This is the Le Meridian in Nice France – a mere 4 star luxury hotel. They don’t go out of their way to do anything. They refused to ship the painting for her or to even coordinate the shipping. They also refused to hold the painting for her for two days until she was to fly back to Canada. Our company booked about 20 rooms for 4 nights at about 280 euro/room. For those of you bad at math, that is about 22,400 euro and that doesn’t even include the conference space we used. You would think that they would bend over backwards to do anything for the conference organizer, but nope. Ritz Carlton price, Motel 6 service.

Saturday was the last official day of the retreat so many of our group were heading back early the next morning. Vic’s bus to the airport left at 5am the next morning so a couple of us had him convinced it was best to just stay up all night and sleep on the plane. The evening was basically bar hopping. At the first bar we talked to a couple of Scots from Glasgow. At the next bar we “rescued” a French/Lebanese girl from some overly aggressive guy. It was obvious she was trying to get rid of the guy so we stepped in to say she was with us. She was thankful and we had a pretty good conversation. Vic is Canadian, the other guy I was with was Russian so between us we had four nationalities and some pretty good conversation.

When this bar closed at 2am we tried to get into a late night bar, but weren’t successful. They would only let groups in if they had women with them. It was a rather odd system as it appeared you only needed one women with you regardless of how many guys there were. It soon became apparent that it was much more fun to stand outside. There was a very drunk American college kid in the bar who kept popping in and out the front door. There was a coke addict Irish girl outside trying to find someone to sell her coke. It was all quite a show when watched from a distance.

Although the company retreat ended Sunday morning, I stuck around until Wednesday to take full advantage of my time in Nice. Since Saturday night was my last night in the company paid room at the Le Meridien, I switched to a budget 2-star hotel a couple blocks away for the next three nights. Let us compare the 4-star Le Meridien with the 2-star budget hotel:

5-Star 2-Star
Poor A/C Fully functional A/C
Stuffy room Not stuffy
20 euro/hour internet Free internet
On main Blvd with lots of traffic noise On quiet street
Small TV Big TV
6 pillows (# used: 1) 2 pillows (# used: 1)
280 euro/night 69 euro/night

Which one would you pick?

Our retreat included a walking tour around the old town, but I hadn’t yet seen much of the rest of Nice. To resolve that, on Monday I bought a ticket for a tour bus that drives around the city and stops at various tourist spots. I stopped to see the Matisse Museum, the Beaux-Arts museum (but it was closed on Monday) and the Russian Church (one of the largest outside Russia).

On Tuesday I took the train to Cannes (about a 30 min. trip) and roamed around there for most of the day. Where Nice has pebbles on their beaches, Cannes has sand beaches. There was a fashion art show taking place along the beach promenade. I then roamed around the city up to a small castle overlooking the harbor.

Wednesday morning I headed to the airport to fly home. I thought I was in America with all the airport security. First I had to wait in an ICTS security line, then the ticket line, then the regular security line before finally the line to board my plane. Whew! Next to our flight was the line for a TunisAir flight that was twice as long as our line yet left at the same time as our flight. If they got everyone through that line onto the flight in time it would have been a miracle.

The movies on the plane were crap – as all airplane moves are. Why do they always pick the worst movies for airplanes? Why do they even show movies at all? If they feel they can only pick crap, just show a whole bunch of TV shows. They won’t lose any business – it’s not like people pick their airline based on the quality of the in-flight economy class movie.

The flight staff were all in a pissy mood on the flight back. Then again, if I was flying into JFK, I would be in a pissy mood as well. They ran out of the pasta dish for dinner. Despite being July 4th, they still had the June in-flight magazine. Not that I look forward to reading the in-flight magazine, but I still like to know what crappy movies they plan to play so I can not watch them.

The rest of the flight back to Charlotte was uneventful.

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