Nikki and Damo's Travel Shenanigans: 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...