Casino Royale

Just a four hundred and eighteen-mile saunter from our last European microstate and we were in another: Monaco. Although calling her a microstate is being extremely generous given that she’s more than two hundred times smaller than Andorra and only four times larger than the world’s smallest nation: Vatican City. Despite her diminutive stature, Monaco has a rich and storied history that centres around countless invasions and plea deals with the French to retain her sovereignty – usually by offering a piece of her ever-decreasing landmass (which, counterintuitively, has actually grown by 20% since 1861 due to extensive land reclamation projects). Despite this, quite staggeringly, the entire country remains smaller than New York’s Central Park.

Being as petite as she is, attempting to park a six-metre monolith within her narrow borders was a stretch too far this time, even with Park4Night’s limitless car-camping knowledge. Instead, we were forced to settle on an extremely sloping spot on the French side of a mountain overlooking the opulent principality far below. Despite a spectacular view of her glitzy hotels and superyacht saturated harbour, our towering location meant a forty-five-minute march to her centre. Which wasn’t too much of an issue on the way down…

We arrived late in the evening but couldn’t resist a first, late-night wander around Monte Carlo and, more specifically, its eponymous, infamous, outrageous grand casino. With knees creaking and foreheads dripping after descending several thousand uneven slabs, we crossed the border into our final nation of this trip without even realising that we had. Indeed, a thorough inspection of Google Maps was required to confirm that, after traversing an extremely nondescript zebra crossing, we were in a completely different sovereign nation – no border checks, COVID inspections, or even a ‘Welcome to Monaco’ sign to greet us. However, it did not take long before flashbacks of watching the Grand Prix on an old, crackling television during the late nineties flickered before my eyes as we criss-crossed the red and white sausage-kerbed roads, passing the legendary Fairmont Hairpin and the treacherous tunnel section in the process. This was a real delight for me, although I feel that Lowri may have wanted to jump headfirst into Monaco Harbour after being subjected to her twentieth ‘famous corner’.

Before reaching the casino, we took a detour through a winter market along the waterfront and instantly regretted purchasing a pair of vegan bratwursts. Not because vegan bratwursts are an awful idea as such, although they very well may be, but because they cost us considerably more than a night in the Honeymoon Suite at the Fairmont Monte Carlo. Deciding that the best way to recoup our soy-sausage-spending was to hit the slot machines, we made a beeline towards the most glamourous casino outside of Grosvenor Stoke-on-Trent… and immediately were denied entry.

This was not, however, because we looked exactly like we had spent the last two months living in the back of a builder’s van, oh no. Much more drearily it was because we required our passports to enter. With my calves fearing a leg-burning hike back to Vishnu to retrieve them, we waited until our security guard had his back turned, begged a different one, and were, surprisingly, granted entry to the lobby. We swiftly hid amongst the maze of marble columns and betting machinery and slid our crisp currency into the nearest slot.

After tirelessly recounting the tale of my winning almost eight hundred dollars on a buffalo-themed slot machine at Caesar’s Palace many moons ago, Lowri’s expectations were high. Quite incorrectly so. Following a repeating cycle of great elation, to severe despair, and every other emotion in between, we decided – upon reaching break-even for the fortieth time – to cut our losses and run. Somewhat undesirably, we withdrew our meagre earnings and escaped out the back door, much to the chagrin of security guard number one. With Bublé’s greatest Christmas hits emanating from inside a nearby Nordmann fir, we took a moment to wallow in our outrageous, opulent surroundings and, for the first time in weeks, forgot the fact we regularly defecate in a plastic box. At least until the unceremonious return of our meat-free bratwursts several hours later… On to day two.

J