Côte d’ Azure
In April I headed back to France and a visit to the Côte d’Azur. I made Nice my home base and visited a great deal of the surrounding area: Monaco, Monte Carlo, Cannes, Antibes and some of the small fortress cities like Saint Paul de Vence and Éze.
I debated about renting a car but decided against it. Yes, the roads along the coast can be a lot of fun but the problem is that I would end up renting an anaemic little car and than have the hassle of trying to find a place to park it (a major headache).
I was looking forward to Monaco and Monte Carlo because of its Formula One history and because of the prospect of seeing great sports cars. You see, because of its tax laws, Monaco has an incredibly high concentration of expensive cars. Yes, there are a lot of rich people in Monaco but the other reason you see so many expensive cars in Monaco is because of the very, very low taxes. For example, a Monaco resident will pay less than $20 a year on taxes for a Rolls Royce!! (Taxes on cars in Europe are high: the larger your car’s engine, the more you will pay.) Supposedly, there are 600 Ferraris registered in the Principality of Monaco. Keep in mind that Monaco is .73 square miles or smaller than Central Park in New York (Central Park comes in at 1.32 square miles).
When you are in Monaco, you know that a Formula One race is run there because of the F1 references: Monaco F1 souvenirs are on sale everywhere, statues of race car drivers and their cars are visible and everyone is always pointing out the start/finish line that is painted on the street. (In case you did not know, the Monaco F1 is run on the closed off streets of Monaco.) Remember, this is a very small place and the streets are narrow and have many turns. Even the tunnel that we see the cars racing thru seems more narrow in person. On TV, you also don’t appreciate the elevation changes but once there, I was surprised to see how steep parts of the course are. With all this in mind, it is not surprising that you do not see much passing during this race (and the reason so many F1 fans consider this to be one of the most boring courses).
The Monte Carlo Casino was drawing huge crowds of tourists that were there (it seemed) to admire the expensive cars: Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls-Royce and high dollar Mercedes. We see enough of those cars in Houston (and I see them everyday as I drive thru my building’s garage) so I was not impressed as much by them as I was by all the people taking snapshots of them. I spent more time watching people reacting to valets parking Ferraris or watching people posing next to the Ferraris and pretending it was their car for the camera (see photo above).
What did draw my attention as I went by the Hermitage Hotel was the large number of Porsches parked in its driveway. Of special interest to me were the two or three orange 911s. I did not get a good view – could they have been a group of GT3 RS Porsches? I came back later to check them out but they were gone!!
Back in Nice, my hotel was the Promenade des Anglais. Across the street from my hotel is a little café where I enjoyed my (expensive) breakfast and sat at night with friends enjoying a nightcap. The café had excellent service by European standards and provided a great place to people watch and to watch the parade of cars and scooters drive by. I had quite a few laughs watching kids with cars that reminded me of Ford Festivas (only with less “power”) doing burnouts in their front-wheel drive cars while jamming to French hip hop. More impressive were all the Ducatis that drove by – what a sound!
