Russian Church in Nice

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Me and my coworker Oleg

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“Piece of Beef”

The Grimaldi Palace in Monaco

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The building where Matisse lived is the yellow on in the back of the pic.

The Promenade in Nice.

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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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My 6km taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was 33 euro. A bit more expensive per kilometer than Bulgaria … or anywhere I’ve ever traveled. Before our retreat we were given a packet saying the taxi ride would probably cost about 30 euro so I was prepared. Luckily I could expense it.

The retreat officially started with a cocktail hour and dinner starting at 7pm so I had plenty of time to kill. I killed it by sleeping. I checked around 11am and took a nap until mid-afternoon. I then went up to the roof (where they had a pool, deck chairs and a bar) and took another nap until I woke up for dinner. I don’t sleep very well on planes – probably because I’m 6’1″ and always riding in coach. Plus, on international flights they keep coming by with drinks, food, drinks again, more food, water and coffee, dessert, etc. You can’t go more than an hour without someone trying to offer you something to eat or drink. It’s the opposite extreme from domestic flights where 2-3 people a year probably die of starvation from some NYC to LA flight that gets delayed for 6 hours on the tarmac.

At 7pm I went down to dinner and mingled with some of my coworkers. I had met some of them in December when I was traveling around to different projects, but the retreat included our Russian projects and I had only met one of those guys. The retreat also included spouses – of which I have none (still dodging that bullet), but I was able to meet everyone else’s. I’d guess there were about 40 of us total on the retreat.

Bright and early Thursday morning we woke up to get our picture taken while looking directly into the sun. I could only keep one eye open and have a very pronounced squint in the picture.

Next was a walking tour of Nice by a local guide. We got to see the old town, the hilltop ruins above the old town and a small palace of a former wealthy Niçoise family.

Later that afternoon we had a wine tasting at “the oldest wine cellar in Nice.” It was good. I still don’t know why they had a Maryland license plate among the cellar decorations, but the wine was quite good. I don’t remember what we were drinking as French wines are a complete mystery to me. Rather than label the wines with the grape as many other countries do, the French like to distinguish their wines by region, town, village, house, bathroom, floor tile and any other diminutive designation to make it as hard as possible for the layman to know what he/she is drinking. That’s why the French have over 230,000 different wineries. Marketer’s hell is where they are told they have to market French wine to the relatively uneducated (in wine, that is) Americans.

For dinner we split our large group up into several smaller groups so we would be able to have some more intimate discussions and get to know each other better. Our companies’ consultants are spread all over the world so these retreats are really the only way to keep our “corporate culture.” Our group was assigned (we drew out of a hat) to dinner at a very nice seafood restaurant. It would have been good if I liked seafood. It would have been better if the partner’s wife liked seafood. As it was, neither of us liked seafood. Luckily, one of my Russian coworkers would eat anything – and a lot of it, so he made up for our disinterest in the bowls full of snails, crabs and squishy things. The menu did contain one beef dish – labeled as “Piece of Beef.” Most interesting indeed. I wonder what part of the cow is used to make the “Piece of Beef.” I asked.

“What kind of beef is used in Piece of Beef?”

A: (in a French accent) “Piece of Beef.”

There you have it. A piece of beef is used in the Piece of Beef dish. It was too tempting to not order it. As it turns out, Piece of Beef is actually several small strips of quite raw, very fatty, and very plain (unseasoned) beef. Outback Steakhouse would go out of business tomorrow if they served this beef.

On Friday we all got together in a conference room at the hotel for some corporate presentations. One of our partners, concerned about the fire escape procedures, wanted to make sure everyone knew where the fire exit was. He wasn’t sure so he called in one of the hotel staff. The conversation went something like this.

“Can you show us the escape procedure in case of a fire?”

“No.”

“No? How do we get out of the hotel in case of a fire?”

“I will come and get you.”

There you have it. “I will come and get you.” Why even bother having exit signs? I’ll tell you how this story would end up. A fire would start at the main entrance – probably started by an American pissed off that they paid 300 euro – that’s $408 – for a room that didn’t have their American-hotel-standard ultra thick pillow-top mattress topped with 97 pillows of different fluffiness. Upon seeing the fire, the conference room attendant and his minimum wage salary would be hauling ass the other direction – any promises made to “come get someone” would be long forgotten. So, our partner took it on himself to find an alternate exit to the front door. He finally found one and we all did a test exit. The building we were in was split into two separate hotels. The only way out of the Le Meridian was to go down a back stairway, through a construction area somewhere in the middle of the building, through the other hotel’s lunch room, and out through the lobby of the other hotel. We got some very odd looks from the other hotel’s staff watching 25 or so people wander through their hotel.

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It all began Tuesday afternoon on my JetBlue flight from Charlotte to JFK. About an hour out of Charlotte there was a medical emergency on board. Apparently a woman was having problems breathing. She was several rows behind me so I couldn’t see exactly what was going on. Because of this the flight turned back to Charlotte. We get halfway back to Charlotte and they decide the woman is doing ok so they turn the plane around to head back to JFK. We’re heading to JFK for another 15 minutes or so before we turn back around to Charlotte – apparently we had lost our landing spot. We’re now heading back to Charlotte again when after 15 minutes the plane heads back towards JFK – we got a new landing spot. Of course, none of this information was relayed to us until afterwards, so all I saw was the plane flying in circles on the seatback GPS map. Thank goodness I had a 3 hour layover in JFK or I would have missed my connecting flight.

We finally get to JFK. This was my first trip to JFK and I hope it will be my last. JFK now ranks as my second least favorite airport – bested only by Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. JetBlue I think is in one of the original JFK terminals. You can tell the terminal’s age by the narrow board indentations used to hold the walls while the concrete dried. Unfortunately the Delta terminal is a couple stops away via the airport train. I get off at the Delta terminal and find out that you have to walk about 500m and cross two streets (well, actually the same street twice – which is an even worse design than crossing two different streets). I get up to the terminal and the line is out the door, down the street and around the corner. If it had been raining everyone would have been screwed. Luckily is was only sunny and hot so we were all stinky and sweaty instead. There was an old Italian woman behind me who decided she had had enough. She walked up to the door and tried to talk her way in … to no avail. If the crotchety old Italian grandma can’t get in fast – no one can.

The line worried me a bit – with my JetBlue delays I now only had about 90 minutes before my flight to Nice took off. After about 60 minutes of waiting outside I finally made it inside – only to see the line continue. Crappity. At this point my flight left in 30 minutes and I didn’t even have a boarding pass. Then I spotted them – the check-in kiosks. I didn’t think you could check in internationally with the kiosks, but a few questions to the Delta staff guarding the main door, confirmed that I could as long as I wasn’t checking any baggage. I wasn’t.

I managed to pack all belongings for this week long trip into a daypack. Even I was impressed with my packing ability. Although, when you’re going to a beach resort you don’t need many bulky clothes – shorts and polo shirts don’t take up much room.

Anyway, back to Delta check-in. I go up to the kiosk and try to check in. Well, as it turns out, you can’t check in at a kiosk if your flight leaves within 30 minutes. Super. I flag down one of the Delta staff and explain my problem – trying to be as calm as possible for a person whose flight was leaving within 30 minutes. She tried to check me in and got the same error. Luckily there was a special desk set up just for people who were having problems with the check-in kiosks (if you need a special desk to service people with kiosk check-in errors – and there were only 2 kiosks – it seems to me there is something wrong with you kiosk check-in system, but I wasn’t complaining). I managed to talk my way past the two people ahead of me at the kiosk service line (their flights didn’t leave until 5 minutes after mine). I got my boarding pass and breezed through security (probably since everyone was still waiting in the check-in line). I briskly walked down to my gate and was able to get on my flight with no problems. As it was the flight was delayed 15 minutes (not that there were any notification boards out in the street where everyone was standing waiting to check in – so had no way of knowing the stasis of the flights).

After everyone had boarded they made an announcement asking for volunteers to give up their seat for a $600 flight voucher plus hotel stay near the airport. I told the flight attendant I would take the offer if they could get me to Nice before 7pm the next day (when our retreat officially started), but either someone took the money before me or they couldn’t get me to Nice before 7pm the next day because I didn’t get the offer.

The flight to Nice was uneventful. As usual they showed a string of crappy movies that I didn’t watch. Stay tuned for the rest of the story ….

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