Introduction to Monaco

We touched down in Monaco at 10:30, got through customs at 11:15, and it was noon before we accepted the fact that Amanda's checked bag wasn't going to emerge from the magic chute. At the baggage service area we tried to explain the situation to the baggage handlers but it was difficult to communicate. Ja didn't have a working phone and we didn't have his address so we couldn't give the agent a place to forward the bags.

Ja expected to meet us at 10:30 but neither of us anticipated a 45 minute delay in customs. Even worse, the baggage area was separated from the street by a set of one-way doors made of clouded glass. I couldn't tell if he was out there waiting for us and I was reluctant to go through the one-way doors and split our party into three. So I settled for loitering by the exit doors, hoping to see him every time someone opened the door to leave.

Eventually Amanda came back with some airline contact numbers and news that it was possible to get buzzed back in around the one-way doors. Still we were almost two hours late by the time time we stepped through the doors onto the street and Ja was nowhere to be seen.

We were still sitting the lobby trying to figure out our next course of action when Ja came in. He said he was wondering where we were and the officials he asked were vague about the arrival time of our flight. Armed with someone who knew the address where we would be staying and a little French we went back through the clouded glass doors to talk to the baggage guy again. We left Ja's address with him and a phone number where he could reach us.

Amanda's checked backpack contained all of her clothing, climbing gear, sleeping bag and pad, toiletries, sunscreen, and medication. The sleeping bag was brand new and the medication was critical.

It was our first introduction to the French attitude towards attention to details and labor. No French person was concerned about being late, when official signs were misleading, or when technology was broken. It may have been an attitude unique to the South of France but everyone just shrugged at every little inefficiency, vague promise, or misleading instruction. It could be because the French people find delight in making American or German tourists crazy.

Ja had mentioned that getting from the airport to the train station was not easy which was why he offered to meet us in the lobby. When we didn't show up at the scheduled time he wandered outside to see if we'd tried to find the train station. On this walk he had to point several people in the right direction. There were few signs and they seemed to disappear the farther you hiked from the airport. The train station is two miles away, crosses several roads, and goes under a highway.

On the walk to the station we got our first taste of how traffic works in France. There isn't much room in the cities along the southern coast and parking is very difficult. Monaco is technically it's own country surrounded by France and the sea, and Ja typically parks in Cap-d'Ail and walks across the border into Monaco from another country. Because space is at a premium, the cars are small and traffic laws are flexible. We saw a man stop his car in the middle of the road, blocking one lane of a two lane street so he could run into the bank, and from there, into a boulangerie.

Motor scooters made up 30% of all traffic and the riders operated outside all traffic laws, weaving between cars in traffic and up on the sidewalks. They were parked everywhere, blocking sidewalks or driven out onto the narrow paths leading to the beach.

On the way to the station, we had to pass under a raised highway, and use a crosswalk to cross four lanes of traffic with a center island. A guy driving a scooter veered in front of us while we used the crosswalk, drove up onto the concrete median between lanes, onto the next crosswalk, and then changed his mind and tried to do a u-turn in the middle of the sidewalk almost running us over in the process. I've drawn a picture to illustrate the insanity. The green line is our path, the red is the moped.

The tiny train station was a bleached and abandoned building crowded up close to the tracks heavy with the fragrant smell of tar. There were no ticket agents so we had to resort to the ticket machines. The first ticket machine was broken and the second refused to recognize our American credit cards.

In Europe all their credit cards have an integrated security chip but at that point in time very few of the American credit card companies had moved to this technology. Most shops and restaurants we visited frowned when we pulled out a card without this embedded chip because it made their job harder but we had no other option when using automated kiosks. I had my visa card, and Amanda had a debit card and two credit cards. Between us, the only card with a security chip was from her Idaho bank. She rarely used that account and wasn't sure how much money was in it so every time we bought something it was a gamble whether we could cover it.

The ticket machine at the Nice train station was an abomination of user interface design. Though there were only three people ahead of us in line, we waited for 15min while they cursed, cancelled, and retried their transactions over and over. You interacted with the machine using a circular dial with a non-responsive button and all the instructions were in French.

After purchasing your ticket, you have to take it to another machine to get it stamped with the current date and time. This wasn't explained anywhere and while our tickets were never checked Ja told us stories of people getting fines for not having their ticket stamped.

The train arrived and we jumped in and rode East along the coast to the next station where it stopped and the voice over the speaker announced something I couldn't translate. Ja informed us that they'd just decided to retire this train, we'd have to get off and catch the next one going in the same direction. He checked several times to ensure we were on the right platform.

During this ride he told stories about all the theft in the area. We should never use the overhead storage for our luggage or leave stuff out of sight. He said he once parked his bike partially obscured at the end of the car and discovered when he went to get off the train that someone had crouched down and stripped it of a bunch of hardware. He said it was a good idea to keep your doors locked when you drove because thieves would open doors and take bags out of your back seat before speeding away on a moped.

Also Ja walks everywhere at 30mph. Try to keep this in mind as we travel up and down the cliffs of Monaco in ninety degree heat and ninety percent humidity.

The second train took us all the way into Monaco and we jumped out and chased Ja down a steep ravine spanned by several bridges, past a small stone church, and down into an underground tunnel that crossed a busy street.

Monaco is pretty. The water is blue and filled with fish and multi-million dollar yachts. The architecture is French-Mediterranean, and the apartment blocks are painted in pastel colors with wooden shutters. The streets are filled with sports cars, mopeds, and half-dressed women. Most of the people in Monaco were young, rich, and fashionably bored.

We stopped by Ja's office to cool down, drop off our bags, and give Amanda a chance to send an email to her mom from his standing desk. After a short break to catch our breath we ran out and up the hill towards the grocery store which is, for some reason, in an underground cave beneath the royal palace.

All navigation through the city was done at a run and Ja rarely stopped or slowed down for traffic when crossing the street. We kept up with him as best we could as he turned into an opening set in cliff face of the rocky outcrop that supports the museum, cathedral, and palace. A set of elevators took us down into a rough stone corridor and around a corner into an underground shopping mall.

We bought 3 apples, 2 Jars of Rillettes de canard (shredded duck meat in duck fat), a loaf of bread, a bag of peanuts, a wheel of brie, two red peppers, and three bottles of wine for 48€ and took it back to his office to eat. After our quick lunch we went back out and around the corner where he pointed out a rocky beach where we could swim.

He had made plans to go wake boarding that evening at 5:30 with some friends and said we could wander the city while he was away. We still didn't have any way of contacting one another so we made plans to meet in front of his office building afterwards. He said they were going to go wake boarding "until the sun went down". I said "But that could be 9-10pm!" "No, no, it will probably be more like 8pm."

We went to the beach (Amanda couldn't swim because her swimsuit was in the missing luggage), and did a little wandering before returning to his office a little before 8 to wait for him to arrive. The door was locked so we sat on the dirty sidewalk for an hour before moving to a wooden bench by the harbor. We'd resisted sitting there earlier because it was directly across from a outdoor bar called the "Stars and Stripes" which was blasting shitty techno music.

I will quote from what I wrote in my notebook at the time.

"It's going on 10pm now. We've been up for over 30 hours. He hasn't shown up. Amanda's mood is swinging between depression and rage. Some rich guy just climbed out of his yacht and threw out two large bouquets of flowers. Amanda fished them out of the dumpster and is arranging the best ones."

Ja showed up at 10. His mates had gotten wasted and spent a lot of time farting around after wake boarding. He let us back into his office to get our stuff and we ran up the hill and out of the country to his parked car.

It was a 20-30min ride up the hill to his house in the foothills above Menton.