Damo Gets Monaco Pole Position (Part 1)

The closest Damo will probably ever get to Pole Position!!! :-)

Publishing this in multiple parts as it is going to be huge....

We both have fairly returned recently from the Monaco F1. What a sensational weekend. We departed London on Thursday afternoon, and it was bliss to actually be on a REAL airline again instead of all the low cost ones. Allocated seating really is excellent. The biggest drama was the fact that we had a 2 hr delay when we were ready for departure from Heathrow, and unfortunately we were already on the plane when this happened, so we remained on the tarmac at Heathrow for the whole time - thankfully the seat pitch on BA is a lot better than the cheapy airlines, so it wasn't that bad - and they started serving the free grog too, so we were all happy!!!

As we landed in Nice, France and we were waiting to clear immigration, there was some bloke behind us on his mobile phone talking about how he was trying to get special permission for a helicopter to take off from Nice to fly to Monaco after 7pm as he wanted to get to the yacht before Beyonce got there.... heh heh. We noticed he was wearing a Kingfisher Airlines polo shirt, and since getting back we've found out that Kingfisher Airlines is the biggest low-cost carrier in India, and there is also a beer called Kingfisher Beer, and they are a major sponsor of Toyota F1.

We got out of the airport and jumped on the local bus as apparently there was a bus stop fairly close to our hotel near the Promenade des Anglais. We were absolutely gob-smacked by how beautiful the Mediterranean Sea was - neither of us had ever seen anything like it.

We made our way to the hotel (Hotel Dante), and checked in, and boy were we in for a shock - the place was an ABSOLUTE dump! We were sure that backpackers would have been much better than this place. Not only was it dirty (filthy actually), but the worst part about the place was the traffic noise. Which wouldn't have been so bad if it were air-conditioned - which it wasn't. So we had the choice while sleeping of a) Having the window opened so we didn't melt but not being able to sleep because of the noise or b) Closing the window so the noise wasn't that bad, but not being able to sleep because of the heat.... Great choice. And we were paying €150 a night for this...??? Damo decided that he was definitely going to review this on Tripadvisor when he got back....

Anyway, obviously considering that the F1 was on (and also the Cannes film festival - little did we realise...), we had no hope in hell of finding anything else, so we didn't even bother - just tried to make the best of a terrible situation.

Even though our hotel was very iffy, Nice itself was awesome - we both want to go back - it was so beautiful. We went out to try and find somewhere to eat dinner, but by this time it was pretty late. We ended up finding an Italian place (in France...) and had dinner there. It was really nice just to be strolling around Nice in the dusk (at about 10pm - LOVE European Summers...) and just soaking up the atmosphere. After this we went back to the hotel and endured the annoyance of our first night in the hotel from hell.

On the Friday we woke up and went and had a leisurely breakfast and then went and had a stroll along the Promenade des Anglais and sat in the sun for a while. It was amazing, and the coastline of Nice was absolutely stunning. We just sat on a bench on the Promenade and looked at the beach and ocean and just soaked up the sun's rays. It was brilliant. We did this for about a couple of hours, then we decided that we'd go for a walk through Nice itself to check out some of the shops, then head to Monaco at about lunchtime to check out the track on the open day.

WOW! Monaco is a cool place during the Grand Prix weekend - If the race wasn't on, it would still be cool, but nothing like this.

At least Damo made the most of his new camera in Monaco - over 3000 photos!!!!! Here are just some of them from the Friday....

It was fairly unanimous even with the crowd that this was one of the most impressive street cars in Monaco during the GP weekend.

Some Ferrari Pit Crew we saw wandering around....

3 time F1 World Champion, Sir Jackie Stewart on his mobile phone....

Jean Todt, Ferrari Team Principal, and Michelle Yeoh about to board the AMD yacht.

Ayrton Senna's Helmet on display in a shop in Monaco...

E-type Jag on track...

Pitlane

More Ferrari Crew (Apparently some bloke was telling us they were famous, but Damo didn't know them....)

Scuderia Toro Rosso Tyre Warmers

Red Bull Tyre Engineer checking tyre pressures

Red Bull Front Wing assembly, and side pods!!!! :-)

Raikkonnen's tyres!

Ferrari's Hospitality Suite

An idea of how big some of these yachts are - that's a full size F1 car parked on the back of the Steinmetz Diamond yacht.... And this yacht looked like a dinghy compared to this one:

The Indian Empress - owned by Dr Vijay Mallya, owner of Kingfisher Airlines and Kingfisher Beer (Kingfisher Airlines is the largest low-cost airline in India). This yacht is 95m long...

One of the hottest cars in the place.... Porsche Carrera GT!!! Note the Bentley Continental behind it - it has 24" rims apparently!!!!!!

An F430 being parked by the Concierge at Casino Square on Friday open day... These have the same engine as an Enzo!

Old Skool! Ferrari F40!

Welsh Sheep Shaggers....

So we packed up our gear, rented a little Nissan Micra for about £75 for the weekend, got ourselves a SatNav (which we nick-named Ursula Ursula as it's real name was Tom Tom only it had a female voice so we thought we'd better rechristen it...), and headed off for Wales on the first Bank Holiday weekend during May.

The same as our Micra - we didn't get any pics of it....

We picked up Mel at about 5:30am on Saturday and proceeded to make our way out of London in our hot little car.

We had a heap of CD's, a full tank of gas, nibblies, and we were Road-trippin'. We were all in fairly high spirits, only Mel was feeling a little crook. Never mind, we made our way out of England, and had to cross a bloody huge bridge to get into Wales. A £5 toll paid, and we were on our way. We had made it!!!!

The Huge Bridge

We made it!!!!!

We arrived at Cardiff at around 8am and tried to find somewhere to have breakfast. Nothing appeared to be opened, which was a shame. We asked Ursula to find us a shopping centre nearby, and we went to the city centre and found a BHS (sort of like a Target store, except with an eatery) and got ourselves a massive Full English for £2.69 each - absolute BARGAIN!!!!! (It had Damo thinking of The Streets 'Don't Mug Yourself') :-)

We checked out Cardiff quickly, but it didn't really seem like there was much to look at around there, so we decided we'd head off for the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range about 3/4 hr drive from Cardiff. On our trip there, Mel had been getting a bit worse, illness-wise, so by the time we got there we saw a nice hiking track up the side of one of the larger mountains. Nikki was tired and Mel wasn't feeling up for it either, so they decided that they'd just go and lay in one of the fields on a blanket, while Damo decided he wanted to climb the mountain and take some pics.

*Damo* The view from the top was amazing, but I wanted to keep walking up a bit further as there was a really cool looking tableland, but I was a bit conscious of how long the girls were waiting down the bottom. Awesome hike, and I'd love to get back to Wales a bit more regularly to do a bit of hiking. *end Damo*

The view from about a quarter of the way up Pen-y-fan (Tallest mountain in Southern UK)

Where Damo wanted to walk up to.....

After we'd finished here we decided that we'd make our way to Swansea from Brecon Beacons to check in to our accommodation and have a bit of a look around Swansea. On the way we saw some lambs crossing the road in front of us, so we pulled over as Nikki had never patted one and wanted to, so we chased after them in a field, but couldn't catch them - it was quite hilarious, though you did have to be there.

The lambs Nikki tried to pat.....

We continued driving to our accommodation in Swansea which turned out to be perfect for what we were after, and it only cost us £44 total split between the 3 of us for the night - it was quite nice, though it was a little bit out of the centre of Swansea, but it was only about a £3 taxi fare. Checked in, and decided that we'd go and find somewhere for lunch. We drove down the coast a bit further and found a place that had a sensational view over the water, quite near a suburb called Mumbles.

After this, Mel decided that she was feeling a bit iffy, so we decided that we'd drop her back at the hotel, and we'd both go for a drive and have a look around the area near Swansea. The coast wasn't too bad, but we were surprised to see people waterskiing as it was still fairly cold, but suppose, they see a sunny day and that probably equals warm to them....

The Mumbles coastline....

We had a little bit of a tool around Mumbles and we went and got an icecream at an awesome 60's inspired icecreamery called 'Joes'. It was great. We then went for a walk along the waterfront, and just sat and admired the view and chilled out for a while. Before we knew it, it was time for us to go back to the hotel to pick up Mel to go out to dinner. We were going to head into the middle of Swansea and see what we could find. We got back to the room to find Mel half shot!!!! Hilarious.... We all got ready, went down to the foyer, ordered a drink from the lobby bar and had the concierge dial a taxi for us. Headed into central Swansea and decided to go to La Tasca which is a Spanish Tapas Bar chain.

We had dinner there, and were going to head out afterwards, but Mel was feeling crook again after dinner, so she got a taxi home. We both decided to stay out and we went for a bit of a look around Swansea, and it was really starting to happen - there were people everywhere. We noticed something strange though. People were in fancy dress. We considered that perhaps there were a lot of Hen's and Buck's parties going on or something, so we asked some people.

"Nope!", came the response. "They just do this for something to do...."

Ooooookkkkaaaayyyy then.... We saw a Snow White, several Fred Flintstones, a Wilma, and absolutely countless other people dressed up in crazy attire.

For example:

This bloke was standing here like this for about half an hour...

We went into a club called Lava Lounge which was a strange place. We met a couple of fellas from a small town about 12 miles (yes, yes, what's a mile?) from Swansea who were telling us how their town was the murder capital of the UK for 3 years running. Only the week previous, they had one bloke who was a regular at their pub arrested for murder after he strangled his wife, drove his car up a mountain road, crashed it into a tree and then put her behind the wheel. Apparently he didn't think that they might see the bruise marks around her throat... Also, one of the blokes that was there was telling us how his neice who was 16 was arrested for murder about 2 weeks ago - apparently she'd stabbed some bloke in the back with a 5-bladed knife. Sounds like a cool town...

It was an interesting night anyway. We ended up getting a cab back to the hotel at about 1am. We woke up the next morning at about 7.30 and got ready and checked out of the hotel and set off again. This day we were intending to drive around the Gower Peninsula which we were told was extremely beautiful, and as it turned out to be. The only problem that we had here was that Mel was very crook again. We continued to check out the coast a bit further, and it was positively stunning. However, Mel was really crook, so we decided that the best course of action would be to take Mel back to London to see a doctor.

So that was our trip cut short and done.

So we've both decided that we're going to have to go back to Wales soon!!!!!! It was a pretty country, but at least we know a little more what to expect next time, so we're going to be taking our hiking boots and our canoe paddles and look for more outdoor adventure.