CAP D'AIL & MONACO

If we were excited on the train arriving at Antibes, then our excitement arriving in Cap d'Ail must have almost blown the train roof off!

Cap d'Ail enjoys a privileged position on the Cote d'Azur, located at the gateway to Monaco and Monte-Carlo and only 20 minutes from Nice.  Rocky peaks rising up from the beaches and peaceful bays, huge old expensive villa's and a great coastal walking/running track make it a real dream spot.

Lonely Planet really came through with goods on it's hostel suggestion, as for just 18 euro each a night, we were staying literally on the rocks in a beautiful old villa, 300m from the Cap d'Ail train station and about 3km from Monaco.

"Villa Thalassa" was bought and transformed in 1952 by the CLAJ-Youth-Camping Group and since then it has provided a cheap but amazing option for budget travellers.

Villa Thalassa - the tall building in the middle with the arched terrace to the left

As was the case with the previous hostel (owned buy the same group), the reception was closed from 10am to 5pm, so we had about 2 hours to kill before we could check into our room.  This time we were prepared and literally only had to walk down a small set of stairs and there we were, standing on one of the most beautiful coastlines I have ever seen.                                     

We went for a walk along the coastal track until we found a great little beach with a few restaurants.  Our stomachs were in such a dire need for food that we didn't even care how expensive the prices were and both ordered massive salads accordingly.

The rest of the afternoon we spent on the rocks in front of the villa sunning ourselves and snorkelling with the many fish that were swimming around the rocks.

It was slightly dangerous because you literally had to walk out into the water along the rocks before it was deep enough for you to jump in, but it was a lot of fun once we worked out the best spot to enter.  

As the shade crept up to the point where there was no longer any sun on the water, it started to get a little chilly and also a little scary as the waves grew in size and started to hit the rocks with a fair bit of force.  We decided to call it a day and go and organise our check in and then had a few beers on the terrace with the most amazing views.

view from our dorm room window as the sun went down

view from the huge terrace of the villa

That night we took the 15 minute walk uphill into the town of Cap d'Ail with Delila, a lady from Italy who we had met at the previous hostel in Antibes (I think she followed us because we are so cool).

It was a pretty average meal, especially my pizza with spaghetti, peas and goats cheese...what an error! However, the limoncello at the end of the meal made me feel like I hadn't eaten at all!

It was a beautiful night and as we walked back down the hill to our villa/hostel, the moon was shining so brightly that street lights weren't even needed!

one of the many huge villa's surrounding ours

The next morning Anna and I were both up quite early to do our own form of exercise.  Anna went for a great run all the way along the coastal track to the France/Monaco border (about 6km), whilst I went for a short jog and then did some crossfit by the water.

After our exercise, we had breakfast, got showered and changed and caught the train into Monaco for a really great day.

Monaco, the world's second smallest state (behind the Vatican), has long been a favourite haunt of the super rich and famous, high rolling gamblers and tax exiles.  It is so expensive in Monaco that even the price of a morning coffee made our hearts sink, but it was well worth it for a look at the legendary casino, sparkling harbour and more amazing luxury yachts.

We hopped off the train and had no idea which exit to take (there are so many exits taking you to different parts of the small city), so we just picked one and ended up high on the hill, with a stunning view.

Not realising that Monaco was really hilly, we started walking until we caught on that we were much better off getting a bus down into the hustle and bustle of this rich wonderland.

I was in one of my super excited eager moods and within 30 minutes of us walking along the shops, I had dropped 275 euro on a Ralph Lauren jumper/cardigan that was right up my alley.  Anna gets really jealous whenever I buy something and she doesn't, so we looked around the shops for her, but she wasn't getting much love.

Next stop was the harbour and more of the huge yachts that we have taken such a fancy to.  Clearly our favourite for both its name and its look, Sea Force One was an absolute beauty!!

We walked along the road where the Monte Carlo (a district of Monaco) Grand Prix is raced, which gave us a real insight into how tricky that course really is and how crazy those drivers are.  Also worth noting is that literally every couple of minutes, somewhere in the city there was a huge roar as another rich bloke in his Ferrari/Lamborghini/Maserati/etc. revved his engine as he slowly showed off his car driving it down the street, it was incredible.

Speaking of super expensive cars, the place to see the most of them was outside the famous Monte Carlo Casino.  We had heard a lot about it from different sources, but nothing can describe it quite like being there to witness the amount of money that is on show in the car park, its truly amazing, but not sup rising considering the amount of money that is on show in the harbour!

We hovered around drooling in the casino car park for ages, taking photos of all our favourite cars and marvelling at the prices on the menu of the restaurant at the nearby Hotel Paris, just a lazy 255 euro for the caviar!

Our mouths were pretty dry after all this drooling, so we popped into the Haagen Dazs in the gardens to buy two bottles of water and walked out almost 8 euro poorer, what a rip-off!!
We then went into the shopping mall around the corner, hoping to find some sort of food court that might have slightly more cheaper food and were pretty lucky to find a great sandwich cafe.

We had covered a fair bit of territory and as per usual it was really hot, so we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach.  After a swim and a read of the local real estate magazine (wowee there were some awesome places for sale!)  we had both fallen asleep and woke up an hour or so later to find it almost 5pm.

We had to be back at our hostel before 7pm to put our names down for dinner so we decided it was time to pack up and leave this magical place.  

yellow Bentley.....nice!!

More super expensive cars appeared as we walked to the bus stop, even a yellow Bentley and some other sick car that I hadn't never even seen before, so nice.

Not even sure what type of car this is.........but nice!!

waiting at Monaco's impressive train station

With the amazing views on offer at the hostel, it was hard to argue against having a night in with a meal cooked by the resident chef (who would have been lucky to be 20 years old).

For 11 euro we got a pretty decent salad for entree and then a really nice pork dish with mash potato and an excellent sauce, followed by a magnum ice-cream and all washed down with some really cheap rose.

The next morning we aimed to get up early enough to go for a long walk before the sun came out, but the sun beat us to it, 9am and it was already scorching!  Nevertheless we put the runners on and headed east towards Monaco.

Along the way we came to an area that I had been told was an excellent spot for cliff jumping and I couldn't resist checking it out!

Anna scoping out the jump sight

The jump was about 12m and completely safe as the water below was plenty deep enough.  The only problem was working out how to get back out of the water, but we found a spot where I was able to climb up.

Sooooooo much fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After two jumps and unsuccessfully trying to convoke Anna to jump as well, we continued on walking, but stopped many times as there were just so many amazing photo opportunities!

pointing back to the cliff I jumped off

In many places the water looked stunning

not everything we saw along the way was beautiful - this guy is either a bum, drunk or just enjoying the morning sun

We arrived in Monaco with the plan of finding a supermarket and buying items for lunch for the next few days and after being distracted by more amazing cars, we finally found one, bought all the stuff we needed and then walked back to our villa (sounds better than saying hostel!).

After a hectic day in Monaco the day before, it was nice just to chill on the rocks and do what we do best, tan up!  We read books, played cards, snorkelled with the fish and then had the perfect lunch.

After our perfect lunch, it was back to the rocks for more of the same, only this time there may have been a bit of napping in there as well, definitely on Anna's behalf anyway!

Anna's hair is getting so long, it's starting to annoy her a bit, but I love it!

Anna was pretty sick of the sun by about 4pm, so we decided to go up and wash some clothes and have a rest before going into Monaco that night.  Unfortunately we forgot about the stupid lockout from 10am-5pm, so we had to wait around for an hour until we could get into our room.  It didn't bother me so much as it meant another hour of sun!

another shitty view from our dorm-room

We were pretty excited to go into Monaco at night and had a lot of fun pretending to be rich dogs.  We got dressed up in the best clothes we had with us and on the train ride in, I got Anna up to speed on how the roulette table works.

Living out your James Bond fantasies doesn't get any better than a visit to Monte Carlo's monumental, richly decorated showstopping casino.  The meticulous art-deco architecture has made it a landmark of Monaco and Monte Carlo and with its unassailable air of grace, combined with the allure of exclusivity and extravagance, it was a super exciting place to be.

Hotel Paris, across the road from the casino was an equally beautiful building with an equally, if not greater awe of exclusivity about it.  The menu out the front had some frightening prices on it, but the caviar for 255 euro took the cake.

We decided that if we could win more than 100 euro, then we would treat ourselves to what we expected would be a pretty amazing meal.

Unfortunately there were no photo's allowed inside the casino and even my stealthy abilities weren't able to sneak a photo as they made me leave my camera in the clone room.  It is just how you would imagine it though; beautiful old carpeted floors, gigantic grand chandeliers, marble and gold and bronze everywhere and a drinks menu that would burn a hole in the wallet of most, pure opulence!!

We walked around the floor for a while, checking out what all of the beautiful people were wearing (which included looking in the mirror hah!), and gawking at all of the amazing decorations.  Anna had never been to a casino before, so she was pretty amazed, but I had to tell her that this one was pretty special and nothing like the one in Melbourne.

Most of the roulette tables were busy, but we managed to sneak onto the end of one and watch for a little while so that Anna could get the hang of how it worked.  Some old lady pushed her way through next to us and without hesitation, put a swag of chips down on the number 32 and yep you guessed it, 32 came up.  But what was more ridiculous was that, she then proceeded to put even more chips on the same number 32 and oh my freaking god on the very next roll the number 32 came up again!!

Anna was now completely hooked and had to give it a try.  We couldn't afford to lose too much money so we decided to buy 20 euro worth of chips each and see what we could do with it.  We won the first few times, just picking between black and red, but in the end we lost about 25 euro.  It was worth every cent though as we had heaps of fun and its not every day you get to gamble in the worlds most famous casino!

Walking out the door and down the steps of the casino, we looked to our left at what could have been the meal of a lifetime (Hotel Paris), but instead we were now on the lookout for the cheapest meal in Monaco haha!

The most amazing ferrari zoomed past us as we walked up the boulevard and I had to run back and take a few snaps of what looked like a yellow mini bat-mobile, it was the coolest car I had ever seen and the noise coming from it made the mountains in the background tremble, awesome stuff!

We were lucky enough to find a restaurant in a nice area that we had walked through the day before and both had pretty good salads for less than 20 euro each, which was pretty good seeing as we were anticipating paying a lot more than that.  We treated ourselves to maple syrup crepes for desert and then had to make our way towards the train station to get the last train of the night back to Cap d'Ail.

In the end, we actually had a bit of time up our sleeves, so we popped past the harbour again to look at the boats all lit up.  Sea Force One must have been draining half of Monaco's power supply with the amount of lights it had on, but damn it looked good!

a real old school James Bond style car, pretty cool

Mucking around with the camera whilst waiting for the train to leave, we pondered what might have been if we'd just picked black over red that time, or red over black that time and vice-versa and vice-versa haha.  What must go through people's minds that have real gambling problems is horrible to think, they must lose so much sleep thinking about what could have been.  Best just to spend your money on something that you love or something that tastes good!

It was a really nice day again the next day.  I got up reasonably early and ran uphill into the town of Cap d'Ail to fetch some bread for our lunch, and then came back down to the water to do some more exercise, whilst Anna lazied about on the terrace talking to Clayton and Delila and a few other people who we had become friendly with during our stay.

We spent the rest of the morning on the rocks, lapping up as much sun as we could, as it was basically the last day we would have by the water for the rest of our European adventure.  We made some sandwiches and then I ducked down to the beach for one last swim, before we headed for our next destination.

after 3 months of tanning, it was time to focus on other things!

Anna's suitcase is pushing 30kg's (as is mine) and I dread every time we come to a flight of stairs, because not only do I have to carry my suitcase, but I have to carry Anna's as well, it's just too heavy for her.

The stairs below are about the last 10m of a solid 100m flight of stairs.  This time it nearly broke me, but Des and Troy were able to push through the pain and heat barrier and get to the top, it was a real Rocky Balboa moment haha.