Monaco — Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous
Being the second smallest country in the world (after Vatican City), Monaco is about as tiny as it gets. This territory is located along the Southern French coast along the Côte d’Azur reserved for only the wealthiest. In fact, Monaco has the highest number of millionaires and billionaires per capita in the world. This trip was planned on the fly the night before as a single day trip. We left Marseille at 6:30 a.m. and went straight to Monaco via train with only one layover in Nice, France. We just barely made the train that morning but luck was on our side and we managed to hop on — and good thing too because the next train wasn’t until noon!
The moment you enter the country, the level of affluence hits you. Clean streets, expensive vehicles, rows of yachts and a panoramic view of the sea — and that’s just the beginning.
The mountains that surround Monaco form a steep gradient to the country, with many of the finest attractions at the lowest elevation. The closer to the water you get, the more luxurious everything becomes. Visualize an amphitheatre with the casino as the centre stage and the levels of seating being the slope down to the sea. This makes for a beautiful cascade of buildings when you look from the bottom up.
As you begin your decent, you’ll be enveloped by the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Beautiful hotels, beautiful cars, beautiful location — it’s where you move to when you retire. If we were to look at the purchasing power of the people that live in Monaco, this country is one of the wealthiest on the planet with the lowest poverty rate in the world and an unemployment rate of 0%.
So naturally, we made a point to see the biggest attractions in Monaco — the famous Monte Carlo casino being the first.
While most casinos are extravagant from the outside and have a few nice cars parked around it, when outside the front of Monte Carlo, I felt like I was at an exotic car show. Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porches, Audis, BMWs, Maseratis, Aston Martins… you name it! Just a magnet for 6-digit priced vehicles.
For the time being, we only passed by the casino and vowed we’d return in the evening once we saw most of Monaco in the daylight. We walked along the back route of the casino and looked over the Mediterranean. You can easily tell why the rich love to come here.
As you walk around Monaco, finding luxurious vehicles is not tricky. We passed by a dealership on the way to the next attraction and stopped to pose with the million dollar cars on display. When I see such a concentration of high-class vehicles, I think back to my visits of the Toronto Auto Show with my best friend and how we paid entry to see exotic cars like these. And here in this country, it was free — just another day in Monaco.
The next destination was Prince’s Palace, which is still to this day the residence of Monaco’s prince! It’s one of only three states in Europe where the monarch still plays an active role in daily politics. Arriving at the Palace, you are rewarded with some historical buildings as well as one of the best views of the city, errr, country. This is certainly one of the best attractions when visiting Monaco simply because of how great the sweeping view is. We were also fortunate to have fantastic weather the entire day, which made the view that much better.
The Palace itself is also quite an excellent landmark in Monaco. Built in 1191, this building has faced a long history of destruction, bombardment and recapture. With a country this small and beautiful, it’s no wonder why other nations want it as their own.
We later visited the Oceanographic Museum & Aquarium, which is also rated as one of the best destinations in Monaco. The aquarium was nice, don’t get me wrong, but for Monaco I was expecting something more extravagant. In all honesty, the aquarium was quite small but still worth the visit. It’s a bit pricey to get in though, so have your student card ready (if you have one) for a discount to make it more affordable.
I also found Nemo… hundreds of them.
Once it became dark, we headed back to the Monte Carlo casino. Not gonna lie — it felt pretty awesome to just casually walk through the doors as if I’m “one of them”. The casino looks as great inside as it does from the outside, but I wasn’t allowed to take pictures indoors to show you guys (sad face). Same story as the aquarium though; the inside was much smaller than I was expecting. Just a few tables and slot machines and at the time we arrived, there were less than a dozen people there. Strange! We didn’t gamble, just took a look but even if we wanted to, there wouldn’t be many people to play against! Really quite a surprise given that the Monte Carlo is one of the most famous casinos on the planet! Still awesome to say I stepped inside though!
And that was the last thing we did; we headed back to the train station afterward and went back home. On the way back to Marseille, during the layover between trains, I had the chance to walk around the city of Nice, France. It wasn’t the typical trip most people go to Nice for (since everyone heads to the coast during the day) but it was “nice” to see the city lit up with holiday spirit.
So what are my final thoughts of Monaco? The place is perfect — almost too perfect! It’s a great one day trip and you feel really cool walking through the streets. You’ll constantly be amazed by the lavish lifestyle that the residents here consider normal. It’s actually so wealthy that by the end of the trip, you actually feel kind of crappy about yourself! Monaco makes it abundantly clear that its borders are an exclusive club for the rich, and a few times I felt like I didn’t belong (although that feeling can be turned around to be motivational). Regardless, it was a fascinating experience and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a taste of the millionaire life.
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This blog entry is part of the publication Robert Cekan Travels & was originally written on December 15, 2012
Robert Cekan is a young entrepreneur and proud Hamiltonian. He is the founder of the Hamilton discovery website True Resident, as well as Cekan Group, a property management group. He is also a Hamilton REALTOR® with Ambitious Realty Advisors Inc., Brokerage and an active blogger.
For all of Robert’s projects, please visit robertcekan.com
