Monte Carlo Casino, Other Stuff, and Some Failures

In this morning’s post on my day trip from Nice to Monte Carlo, Monaco, I left you with a cliffhanger. I said that I had planned to visit another sight before lunch, but…

I didn’t finish that thought in this morning’s entry because I didn’t see the sight before lunch. Well, technically I did, but lunch tomorrow, because I didn’t have lunch per se today. Why? Well, let me tell you.

You know that song, “Into every life some rain must fall?” Well, it didn’t literally rain at all today. In fact, no clouds so much as dotted the sky. But metaphorically, I encountered some showers and a little heavy rain.

I have a mostly great cellphone plan. It comes with something called “Roam Beyond.” That allows me, as part of my monthly fee, which is not high compared to plans from other Canadian cellphone providers, to roam in, currently, 120 countries, with free local calling, free calls to Canada, free incoming calls, free texts, and 10 free gigabytes of data per billing cycle.

Before leaving for this trip, I checked France, where I’m spending most of my time, and Italy, where I’ll spend a few days at the end of this trip. Both are included in Roam Beyond. I didn’t have any definite plans to go to Monaco before yesterday, and only the vaguest of notions anytime before that. What’s more, Monaco’s borders are embedded in France and only a short distance from the Italian border. So, it never occurred to me to check if Monaco is included in Roam Beyond.

You can guess where I’m going with this. As I was walking to my planned pre-lunch destination, I got a text from my cellphone provider telling me that I was nearing my $100 (Canadian) data cap. And it said that if I didn’t log into my account before I reached it and either raised the cap or eliminated it, my data would stop. Thinking I was on Roam Beyond, this made no sense to me.

When I looked at my text messages, I saw that I’d missed one from my cellphone provider that came in when it switched me to a Monaco cellphone provider from the French one. That message showed me the rates for talk, text and data in Monaco.

By the time I stopped to try to do anything about it, I’d gone over my data cap, and I no longer had access to the internet to check on my account.

I considered this catastrophic. I thoroughly depend on mapping apps to get around while travelling. Thoroughly. I can’t state that strongly enough. Thoroughly. I should try to remember to download offline maps for everywhere I go while I’m still on wifi. Both Google and Apple Maps offer this these days. The offline maps don’t have full functionality, but at least you won’t get completely lost.

I wandered around looking for someplace I might be able to get some wifi. I spotted a McDonald’s. I had no intention of eating there, but I guiltily admit that I made use of its wifi.

I looked at my cellphone account and saw that, no, Monaco is not included in Roam Beyond and, yes, I was a couple of cents over my cap. I don’t know if that’s $100 of data or the amount of data that brought my total monthly bill to $100 with the roaming data. In either case, my monthly fee is far enough below $100 that the data fee meter must have been turning over at a hellish rate.

This day trip is going to cost me a lot more than I thought.

I decided I didn’t want to raise the cap and take out a mortgage on my condo. Instead, I used the McDonald’s wifi to fire up the app from an eSIM company that I used to use for travel before I got Roam Beyond.

I searched for a Monaco eSIM. The search returned a French eSIM that used a different local provider than my cellphone company uses. I figured that, because it was returned in a search for “Monaco,” that one probably included Monaco with its French coverage.

The eSIM cost only $6 for one gig of data, which was well more than I needed for the rest of the day. So I bought it.

I installed it, and the eSIM settings on my phone said “Activating.” Five minutes later, it still said “Activating.”

Then I remembered that I’d downloaded the Monaco guide for my walking tour app. That includes a downloaded map and routing information that I can use offline.

The routing isn’t great. It will only plot routes to attractions listed in the guide, not anywhere else. The train station, for example, isn’t listed in the guide. And it doesn’t seem to know about shortcut paths and stairs that both Google and Apple Maps know about. But it will get me to attractions.

I used that to get me to the sight I planned to see before lunch.

By the way, the eSIM did eventually activate. But to say the coverage was spotty would be giving it too much credit. I had a signal far, far less than I didn’t have one. Maybe it needed to wait for a signal to waft in from nearby France.

Oh, also by the way, about lunch. I didn’t have any. I wasn’t going to eat at McDonald’s. I didn’t see any restaurants on the way from there to, or at, my first destination. And without data, I couldn’t ask Google Maps to find me a restaurant.

On the way from my first to second destination, I did see some restaurants that appeared unappetizing to me. That, and it was starting to get too late for lunch without spoiling my dinner.

Needless to say, it was a tad frustrating, and the metaphorical rain dampened my afternoon somewhat. Nevertheless, I persisted and went on to my first sight of the afternoon.

Princess Grace Rose Garden

By now, you’ve read the subtitle for this section and are thinking, “Joel, I knew you were an idiot, but I didn’t know how big an idiot. Were you really expecting to see roses in February?”

Sure, you say that, but you weren’t in Monte Carlo today. This morning, in my wanderings, I saw lots of flowers in full bloom. And elsewhere on this trip, I forgot where, I saw flowering roses. I remember because after I passed the rose bed, I saw a couple. The woman was holding a single rose on its stem, which I think she cut from the rose bushes. I thought that was a tad rude, so I remembered. And that was a little earlier in February.

Be that as it may, you were right. There was nary a rose flower in the Princess Grace Rose Garden. There were lots of bare rose bushes. And several daffodils were blooming between the bushes, but there were no rose flowers.

Monte Carlo Casino

I decided it was time to move on to the heavy hitter of Monte Carlo, what it’s probably most famous for, the Monte Carlo Casino.

At that point, I didn’t have data on my phone. So I used my walking tour app to plot the route. It was a bit of a schlep, but not bad. And it was made a little shorter when, a couple of times, I spied with my little eye a set of stairs and/or a path that allowed me to cut across the hairpin of the hairpin road that my walking tour app wanted me to follow.

The front facade of the Monte Carlo Casino is probably very opulent. I say that based solely on the trompe l’oeil that was hanging from the scaffolding that obscured all of the front of the building except for a portion of the entrance.

There’s a large plaza in front of the casino. The Café de Paris sits on one side of the plaza, kitty-corner to the casino. It has a restaurant and bar. I took an outdoor table at the bar and had an over-priced glass of wine (which I, at first, unintentionally typed as “whine” before I caught it and corrected) and a small bowl of nuts to fill the gap that my lack of lunch left and to try to calm my nerves as a result of the previously mentioned metaphorical rain. (The lack of roses in the garden and the trompe l’oeil blocking a view of the casino were the showers, not the heavy rain of my data problems.)

After finishing my wine—and my whine (“whine” was intentional this time)—I went into the casino, but only into the lobby. Anyone with a passport and not wearing shorts or ripped jeans (I met those requirements) can go past the lobby and tour the gaming rooms, but only after paying €20. If you gamble, that gets you a €10 credit. If you don’t gamble, it’s entirely an entrance fee.

I’m not a gambler, and I didn’t feel like paying the €20 after all of the money I’d already wasted today on my phone and the overpriced wine (but well worth it for a whine).

The lobby is lavishly appointed, with variegated, cylindrical columns topped by ornate capitals, paintings, and a patterned stained glass ceiling.

But that’s all I saw of the Monte Carlo Casino before moving on.

Monte Carlo Opera

The Monte Carlo Opera is immediately behind and physically attached to the Monte Carlo Casino. I looked at this building solely from the outside because I think the only way to get inside is to attend a concert.

One of the side walls, a wall that continues from the side wall of the Monte Carlo Casino, is in, I want to say, a Baroque style, but only because it has a lot of stuff going on. I’m probably wrong about it being faux-Baroque, but it has a statue in front of the side entrance, statues on the wall, columns, a staircase leading up to the side entrance, and lots of various gewgaws on the walls.

The front of the Monte Carlo Opera isn’t plain either, but it’s more austerely ornate, if that makes any sense. I don’t think it makes the least bit of sense. So you should probably just look at the picture.

Japanese Garden of Monaco

I took in one more sight this afternoon, the Japanese Garden of Monaco. It’s a small, typical Japanese garden with an irregularly shaped pond with koi in it, big rocks in the pond, two or three bridges crossing the pond, a topiary tree, and a Japanese-style building overlooking the pond.

The Japanese Garden isn’t big, but it is pleasant.

With that, not wanting to risk any more frustrations, I decided it was time to head back to Nice.

Fortunately, I had a data signal at the Japanese Garden. So, I was able to get Google Maps to plot me a route to the station. With Google Maps, and I think Apple Maps too, once you get it to plot a route, it saves the map and the routing information on your phone, so it’s there even if you lose the data signal on the way. Plus, GPS doesn’t depend on a data signal to work, so it can still show you where you are if you lose the signal.

That was a good thing, because I lost the signal most of the way.

Close to the Monaco Monte Carlo train station, I saw I had data, so I opened up the SNCF (the French railway system) app to buy a ticket. I lost the signal before I could complete the transaction. But then I looked up and saw before me a sign. It said “Novotel.”

Novotel is one of the brands in the Accor hotel family. I have status at Accor hotels, and I can often log into their wifi using my Accor account email and password when I’m staying at one of their hotels. I had the Novotel wifi signal on the sidewalk, and the login worked. So I bought my ticket, proceeded to the station and boarded a train back to Nice.

This afternoon was more than a little frustrating, but Monte Carlo, Monaco, is beautiful and worth a visit. There’s more I could have done here if I hadn’t wasted so much time with technology and become so frustrated. And, for all that, as I walked around, I had some amazing views of Monte Carlo, the hills and mountains, and the sea. It’s quite stunning. It’s a shame about the cellphone coverage, though.