Money, money, money…

must be funny, in a rich man’s world!

One square kilometre of opulence

And where else can you find such a concentration of millionaires, billionaires, and gazillionaires except in Monaco where there is no income tax! Famous residents include people such as Shirley Bassey, Ringo Starr and more recently Novak Djokovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Jenson Button amongst others. Nonetheless, you don’t have to have a million bucks to enjoy Monaco as some things in life are indeed free.

First, each car park in Monte Carlo offers free parking for one hour. So being typically Singaporean, we ended up moving our car amongst the various car parks to enjoy this privilege. Its not as bad as it sounds as we managed to go to quite a few different spots and admire the sea view from there.

Rich cars, fast cars, nowhere to drive...

Next while you do have to pay 10 euros to enter the Monte Carlo Casino, you can wander at least as far as the grand foyer to take a look. No photos are allowed but you can always watch Never Say Never Again  (the one with Sean Connery) as the casino is featured. Unless you are there to gamble, I think its actually a lot more fun to be outside the casino where all the expensive cars are parked and just people watch. We saw some seriously weird cars like a chrome Bugatti Veyron and the 4 door Porsche but without door handles. For the truly rich, it seems a simple Ferrari or Lamborghini will no longer do, and they have to up the stakes to find a car that stands out amongst all the rest.

Monte Carlo Casino

Finally, the various churches as well as the beach are free as well! We went into Saint Nicholas Cathedral, where many of the Grimaldis (the ruling family of Monaco) were buried, including Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer III. We also popped into Saint Charles Church, where the bell tower is 108 feet above sea level.

We did pay to enter the State Apartments and it was honestly quite disappointing and totally not worth the money spent. All in all, Monte Carlo was quite an eye-opener and definitely worth a visit.

Roland Garros Preview

We set off bright and early forthe Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters. One of the plans for the trip was to attend major tennis tournaments and Monte Carlo was a perfect place to get our tennis-fix going. Interestingly enough, the tennis centre is actually on French soil, but considering Monaco is only one square kilometer in size, space is hard to come by.

Beautiful day for some good tennis

Both the French and the Monaco government cleverly put tolls on the road leading into Monaco and I’m sure they make a fair amount of money just on that tiny piece of tarmac. Other than the tolls, the view was beautiful and we were set for some great tennis. The winding roads of Monaco are exactly what you see on television during F1, a network of roads of compressed twists and turns such that your GPS is guaranteed to lose its bearings.

We do have to say that the tournament was well organized with the city rerouting traffic to ease the flow and numerous car parks offering ticket holders cheap parking. Parking was a breeze and we reached there early enough to have a walk around the grounds. This was our first clay court and Masters 1000 experience so we were pretty excited just walking into the grounds. We had bought the quarterfinals and since it was a men’s only tournament, it assured us of a full day of top mens action. The only disappointment was that Djokovic had pulled out citing injury only a few days before tournament started. He was on a winning streak and it would have been great to see him at his best. The line up was: Federer vs Melzer, Murray vs Gil, Nadal vs Ljubicic, Troicki vs Ferrer which wasn’t too bad actually. We are both Nadal fans and it was a treat to finally watch him play after a few missed opportunities in previous tournaments. Here are pictures from the matches.

Federer taking his serve

Nadal lining up his devastating forehand return

None of the matches were particularly outstanding but the company made up for it. We mixed up our seat numbers and sat on a German retiree’s seat by mistake. We ended up talking to him throughout the day about Germany and Singapore, as he had traveled to Singapore before for work. We talked about mooncakes, durians etc, lol… Apparently, he has a home in Nice and comes to Monte Carlo for tennis as well as F1, definitely living the high life. We also ended up talking to an old Italian man who drove from Genoa together with his son. English wasn’t his strong point but we managed to have some good laughs.

View from Prince Albert's seat

All in all, it was a pretty good day. It was our first day seated on one spot since being on the road for more than 2 months, so definitely a good break. Next, lets see if Nice is indeed nice.