Riviera Diaries: Formula One and fruit machines

A morning in Monaco

I haven’t been on many day trips to other countries, but then I haven’t been to many countries as tiny as Monaco. When I was younger I asked a teacher why tiny countries like Monaco and Andorra were happy being tiny countries. Why didn’t they want more land? More people? More, well, country? I was obviously unaware of quite what an enormous geopolitical question I’d just asked, but my point holds water when it comes to Monaco, which by any country’s standards is tiny.

It’s so tiny it’s often called a microstate. It’s ruled by a prince who’s sort of in charge, sort of not, and the prime minister can be Monegasque or French. If the most important politician in your country doesn’t have to be from your country I’d say you’re on shaky ground, nationhood-wise.

We pitch up by train from Nice and walk down a long old tunnel and suddenly we’re there, right in the thick of things. Monaco is famous for Formula One, the French Riviera, and all its residents having absolutely shedloads of cash, and all of these things are immediately apparent.

That’s mainly because of the yachts, which are visible from pretty much anywhere in the country, because they’re massive. A lot of habits of the superrich don’t make much sense to me. I don’t want to spend my time making my body biologically twenty years younger but not really living any kind of life. And I don’t, like some, have any desire to get involved with elections in countries I wasn’t actually born in. But their habit of buying yachts is one I could, as they say, get on board with.

Who doesn’t want a yacht? Everyone does. If someone says they don’t want a yacht, they’re lying. Sure, I’m sure they’re disasters, environmentally speaking. But ignoring that existential shadow for a second, they’re yachts. Fancy houses that float. Fancy houses that usually spend most of their time floating in marinas in warm, sunny, beautiful places. Yes, if I were rich I’d buy a yacht, and then just stay on it, floating from one beautiful sunny place to another.

Speaking of rich people’s funny habits, Formula One. The Monaco Grand Prix is the most prestigious, most glorious Formula One race. Every race in the season may be worth the same when it comes to world championship points, but they are not worth the same when it comes to prestige. Monaco is synonymous with Formula One and Formula One is synonymous with Monaco. Everyone wants to win a little bit more than they want to win in Hungary or Canada.

Given what we have already mentioned about Monaco’s size, or lack of it, it’s unsurprising to hear the grand prix takes place right on the city streets. As we walk up the hill to the casino I realise the road is really quite familiar. That’s right, it’s part of the racetrack. I point this out to L. who doesn’t even feign interest. There’s not a Formula One race happening now, after all.

Later we go to see the Fairmont Hairpin, which like a lot of the racetrack, still has its apex corners, those red and white bands you don’t usually find on your local roundabout. We stand on a set of steps above it and join the crowds of tourists photographing a bit of road. We are not here on a grand prix weekend - only the superrich or Formula One super-fans would be silly enough to do that - and yet there are people standing and looking at the corner, waiting for something to happen.

What happens is a bus lumbers around the corner, making about as much work of it as the fat, heavy Formula One cars do these days. The track, if you’ll allow me a brief detour into motorsport, isn’t big enough for the current cars, which means almost every year the race is a boring, staid affair. It looks less like a race than a procession of the world’s best engineering. So, some fans want Monaco ditched. It’s had its time in the Riviera sun, but it’s time to move on.

Should Formula One ever do so I wonder if they’ll keep the apexes on the corners. Perhaps the bus drivers will be the only ones to hug them as they swing around their incredibly expensive streets.

Another hobby that’s viewed as a preserve of the rich is gambling. Though this probably isn’t true. Rich people are quite good at looking after their pennies, as a rule, so they’re hardly going to be frittering away thousands of pounds at blackjack tables. But they’re the sort of clientele the casino in Monte Carlo clearly wants to attract.

Only the foreign kind of rich people, though. If you’re Monegasque you can’t go into the casino. Therefore, you can’t gamble. You can’t even work there. Temptation in this case is kept behind firmly closed and vociferously bouncer-ed doors. The casino is for foreigners. In Monaco the idea is to hold onto your wealth. Let the outsiders piss it away, you’ll be keeping yours.

It’s a ridiculously opulent building, and I’m only talking about the lobby. I’m only talking about the lobby because it costs money just to enter the parts of the building where the gambling takes place. You don’t actually need a tuxedo, you’re not in a Bond film, but you do need your passport. You don’t need your passport to cross the border from France, but here at the casino it’s as if the whole principality has just realised they haven’t given you a stamp and that they should at least make a show of keeping tabs on you.

So, we make the most of all the free parts of the building. We look in on the restaurant, we wander around all the golden statues and ornaments. We snap a few pictures. We make a visit to the toilet, because, well, we’ve come this far. We might as well. They aren’t as snazzy as you’d hope, like most toilets in incredibly fancy places.

Then we sneak a look at what you can see of the gambling rooms. They’re not what we expect. Instead of fancy poker tables and croupiers in bow ties, there are fruit machines. They don’t even look like high-end fruit machines. They look like the sort you can find mouldering along any seafront in England.

“I didn’t expect to see fruit machines,” says L.

“That’s just what I was about to say.”

We leave the casino, I stewing about the fact that L. said the best line of the whole day. I’m the one with the travel blog and yet here she is, stealing my metaphorical thunder. But fruit machines, really?

After another amble down by the yachts we decide to leave Monaco and make for the border. This doesn’t take long, a train pulls up, we hop in and within minutes we’re back in France. Later on we’ll pull into Monaco again, on the way back towards Nice from Menton. Then just as quickly as we arrive, we leave. In and out of the country within about five minutes.

After all, Monaco is tiny. And they seem happy with that.

---

Thank you so much for reading. If you liked this post please do consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Tom Fish Is Away. Paid subscriptions are just £3.99 a month or £29.99 a year and get you an extra travel diary each month. Or get 75% off your first year by using the button below.