Three days in Monaco (part 2)
Have you rented the latest Renault model with French numbers? Respect does not wait, it’s better to walk. However, walking here is not dangerous: cameras are installed on the streets of Monte Carlo – police officers are watching day and night for every corner of the tiny state.
Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo So that every defenseless lady in her luxurious fur coat and impossible diamonds can easily walk from the casino to her hotel, carrying a big win in her purse. (Although, as practice shows, even ubiquitous cameras do not save from apartment thefts. However, this is the scourge of the entire Cote d’Azur.) Previously, Russians valued Monaco primarily for Monte Carlo street, where the casino is located. In the casino, one of the few in Europe at the end of the 19th century, everyone rushed, starting with Chekhov and Prince Sumbatov, better known as the actor and playwright Yuzhin. Mayakovsky, Kuprin, Adamovich … who just did not play here to smithereens! It was not just chic, but a whole worldview. No wonder on the eve of the premiere of “Three Sisters” the same Chekhov threatened in one of the letters: here, they say, the play will fail, so I’m going to play in Monte Carlo.
Since fashion in Monaco arose only in the last century, our culture here flourished slowly, but steadily. It all started, of course, with Chaliapin’s tour, then Diaghilev arrived with his dancers (by the way, a bust of Diaghilev was installed on one of the casino’s terraces), and in 1932 the Russian Monte Carlo Ballet was founded, which presented the world with two ingenious choreographers – Balanchine and Myasin. But still the stars of the Russian performing school delight eminent music lovers. And the stars of banking and business are fascinated by local tax authorities.
Therms
To conscientiously carry out the tourist program in Monte Carlo, you should spend three hours a day in baths (as the thalasso spa is called here) – this is from the list of habits necessary in life. Guests at Hotel de Paris or Hermitage Hotel just have to wrap themselves in a bathrobe, take the elevator, walk past the gallery of jewelry boutiques and gentlemen in tailcoats, picking up their ties and cufflinks, and follow the marble corridor following the arrows of Les Thermes Marins. Obviously something is wrong with Madame, who is following me in the dressing gown … And, besides the dressing gown, royal posture and swimsuit, she also has a thick gold necklace with diamonds, a ring and earrings. Now it’s clear where the photo guru and happy local resident Helmut Newton takes paradoxical fashion ideas.
“Where does she think she is going?” – in the hammam they said quietly in French about this lady. The stinging remained unidentified due to dense steam. And the phrase itself is a quote from the story of Frank Sinatra and Countess Lopez, popular on the beaches of Monaco. Once on the beach, Sinatra uttered this phrase in a theatrical whisper after the countess Lopez passing by, whose bathing suit was complemented by large jewelry worth her own luxury yacht moored in a nearby marina. “Explicitly at the underwater ball!” – pleased with the fun in the eyes of the surrounding beach people, Sinatra continued.
So the terms. The water filling the local pool is incredibly useful, it is extracted into the sea at a depth of several tens of meters, therefore it nourishes the skin with mineral substances and salt and charges the body with negative ions. Goodbye, toxins and general anxiety of the body.
Useful dating in the restaurant Le Grill
The Formula 1 Grand Prix passes through the streets of Monte Carlo. Dinner in the most famous Louis XV restaurant of Monaco should be booked for two months in good, but it’s easier for me, the commercial director of the Sea Bathing Society, Monsieur Mercadal, took care of me. Our simple meal was not held there, but in the restaurant Le Grill, on the top floor of the Hotel de Paris, with six quality meals in one star of the Michelin guide. Monsieur turned out to be a joker.
– Will you come to Formula 1? This is a great holiday for us. But we always try to leave Monaco during the race: noisy.
“Is it true that Russians always eat caviar?” The old valet at Hotel de Paris told me that Diaghilev simply did not recognize breakfast without caviar.
“By the way, Mireillea is a Monegasque, and there are few of them even in the Sea Bathing Society,” said Monsieur Mercadal about my roommate, PR director of the company. At this phrase, the gentleman carefully froze at the next table. Here everyone wants to marry Monegasques, and there are few Monegasques – only six thousand people, thirteen percent of the entire population of Monaco. And they do not pay taxes. Absolutely.
