Sunday, August 06, 2006
Part V
We arrived in Nice early in the morning and walked around looking for a hotel. We probably weren’t too much over or under budget at this point, we had spent zero in Figueres and had caught some trains at night which had saved on hotels. So we ended up staying at the nicest place we would the whole trip: The Ambassador Hotel, only a block off the beach. Current reviews are pretty poor but it was nice in 1992 and the location was great. I won’t get into any names but us Massillon boys don’t see too many bidets in Tigertown and our rooms had them at the Ambassador. One of the guys didn’t know what it was and ended using it as toilet. That’s about the furthest I’ll go here, ask me for specifics sometime and I’ll share.
We hit the beach after check-in. Nice has a great beach for everything except the actual beach. There is no sand; it’s all flat rocks that people just lay on. But it is topless, so you have that going for you. We enjoyed the sites and sounds and BG actually met a girl who was a flight attendant for Air Canada and she agreed to go out to dinner with us. She joined us for dinner in Nice then went over on the train with us to Monte Carlo. We had all brought along some “nice” clothes for the casino. They have at least two casinos in Monaco, the famous Monte Carlo Casino and the one we went to. Which was fine for us, they had all the games we wanted. I remember that the minimum bet was around $25 and that was a lot for us then (see my story below about New Orleans to see how things change) but we played a little blackjack. Shep sat down at some horse racing game I believe and ended up winning a bunch of money but not knowing it because it was in whatever currency they have in Monaco. At the end of the evening when we were anxious to leave, he bet crazy and lost it all. Seems to me he had around $300 or so before losing it. BG’s girl was nice, she actually took a bit of a liking to Horner but Mike didn’t take advantage. There is a code, you know.
Somehow we got separated when we got back to Nice and Horner and I were together. We found out they had a casino near our hotel and went in there and I sat down to play blackjack. Now in Europe you can actually stand behind someone and bet on his hand. Maybe I wasn’t playing well or maybe the guy behind me just didn’t like my luck but he was yelling at me for doing different things wrong in his opinion. I felt like punching him; I wasn’t forcing him to bet on my hand.
The next morning BG had a hilarious story. He took this girl down to the beach and was apparently trying to kiss her. She pushed him away and said something to the effect of “Why are you so threatening to me? Why can’t you be more like your friends?”. Of course, he exploded at the thought that we would have been any different.
We may have hit the beach again the next day but I know we walked around old town for a bit. We were ready to move on. We had a big discussion about where we were going to go, to Italy or Germany and ended up deciding to head to Munich.
We arrived in Nice early in the morning and walked around looking for a hotel. We probably weren’t too much over or under budget at this point, we had spent zero in Figueres and had caught some trains at night which had saved on hotels. So we ended up staying at the nicest place we would the whole trip: The Ambassador Hotel, only a block off the beach. Current reviews are pretty poor but it was nice in 1992 and the location was great. I won’t get into any names but us Massillon boys don’t see too many bidets in Tigertown and our rooms had them at the Ambassador. One of the guys didn’t know what it was and ended using it as toilet. That’s about the furthest I’ll go here, ask me for specifics sometime and I’ll share.
We hit the beach after check-in. Nice has a great beach for everything except the actual beach. There is no sand; it’s all flat rocks that people just lay on. But it is topless, so you have that going for you. We enjoyed the sites and sounds and BG actually met a girl who was a flight attendant for Air Canada and she agreed to go out to dinner with us. She joined us for dinner in Nice then went over on the train with us to Monte Carlo. We had all brought along some “nice” clothes for the casino. They have at least two casinos in Monaco, the famous Monte Carlo Casino and the one we went to. Which was fine for us, they had all the games we wanted. I remember that the minimum bet was around $25 and that was a lot for us then (see my story below about New Orleans to see how things change) but we played a little blackjack. Shep sat down at some horse racing game I believe and ended up winning a bunch of money but not knowing it because it was in whatever currency they have in Monaco. At the end of the evening when we were anxious to leave, he bet crazy and lost it all. Seems to me he had around $300 or so before losing it. BG’s girl was nice, she actually took a bit of a liking to Horner but Mike didn’t take advantage. There is a code, you know.
Somehow we got separated when we got back to Nice and Horner and I were together. We found out they had a casino near our hotel and went in there and I sat down to play blackjack. Now in Europe you can actually stand behind someone and bet on his hand. Maybe I wasn’t playing well or maybe the guy behind me just didn’t like my luck but he was yelling at me for doing different things wrong in his opinion. I felt like punching him; I wasn’t forcing him to bet on my hand.
The next morning BG had a hilarious story. He took this girl down to the beach and was apparently trying to kiss her. She pushed him away and said something to the effect of “Why are you so threatening to me? Why can’t you be more like your friends?”. Of course, he exploded at the thought that we would have been any different.
We may have hit the beach again the next day but I know we walked around old town for a bit. We were ready to move on. We had a big discussion about where we were going to go, to Italy or Germany and ended up deciding to head to Munich.
