Three Days in Paradise

I have now checked off two off of the Holy Trinity as destinations for car spotters, Monaco. London was absolutely astonishing as far as the car scene, but Monaco is on another level. I was in that little country from Wednesday the 12th of April to early Saturday on the 15th. I’m not entirely sure where I should start with explaining this and I would just like to apologies ahead of time because I know for a fact that I will not truly capture the feeling you get when you are in a place like Monaco and you are seeing the things that you are seeing. I arrived in Monaco from Nice airport on that Wednesday in the early afternoon. In the short Taxi ride from the train station to the hotel I had already seen a vibrant lime green Aventador. I have to mention the name of the hotel because when we checked in and got to our room our breaths were taken away. Each room has its own balcony and all of them have an incredible view. You step outside and feel the cool breeze as the sun shines over you, your eyes don’t entirely know where to look as they scan over multi million dollar yachts in a world famous marina. Another brilliant addition is that you have a front row view of a portion of the Formula One circuit from the exit of the tunnel and all the way around the marina. If you want to see more of the views you can check out the hotel called Hotel Miramar. Our room was a little bit on the tight side, but we were able to work around that due to the fact that we were hardly ever in the room.

It is literally impossible to go 30 seconds without hearing something rev or accelerate to speeds probably over the legal limit and making your head turn. There was probably a slight influx of supercars at the time because I arrived at the same time that Top Marques would be in Monaco, an extremely luxury products exposition. It also helped that the Grand Prix was only a few weeks away. You would see all over the country scaffolding being put up either for advertising or seating. After about half an hour in the hotel room just from the balcony I had seen countless supercars ranging from an Aston Martin Cygnet to an Alfa Romeo 8C to a convoy of Ferrari’s. I had even seen a Prior Design 458, a 4x4, and probably 3 SV’s just to name some more. I would be seeing the exact same cars over and over with periods of 5-10 minutes between. It finally dawned on me that all of these supercars were driving the Grand Prix circuit themselves. We decided to leave the hotel room and explore the glorious country of Monaco.

We started with walking around the marina and stopping to have a drink. It’s not that we didn’t want to see cars, we would just let the cars come to us. You were still right by the road and every few minutes you would see something nice come around the corner. It made for a pretty majestic sight to see something like an Audi R8 or Paul Wallace’s Huracan cruise around the F1 track with massive yachts in the back and mountains in the distance. A few minutes after we had sat down I see a flash of red through a gap in the scaffolding I think it might just be one of the same 458’s that I have been seeing, but then it comes into view and I almost spit out my drink. A LaFerrari just prowls down the road and in a few seconds it’s already gone. I had only been in Monaco and I had seen one of the Holy Trinity for cars. I knew that Monaco was going to be pretty good from the start. What I didn’t know was that it would be a completely different standard from what I was expecting. After our drinks we made our way up to the Prince’s palace and the cathedral. I understand that that isn’t really car related, but in my opinion it is completely worth it for the views over Monaco and the marina. I am still in shock of all of the cars that I had seen in the past few hours and went to sleep with the sound of revving engines in my mind.

I woke up on Thursday full of anticipation. Today was the day that I would be going Top Marques. We made the walk towards the Grimaldi Forum and around the Monte Carlo Casino seeing it for the first time. There was a casual yellow SV parked outside with a R8 behind it and a GTR driving by with a GTC4 Lusso parked up as well. En route to the Grimaldi Forum we passed the Fairmont hotel, the hotel right above the famous tunnel. This was also the first time that I saw the hairpin. You can feel the special aura in Monaco because you have wires everywhere to protect bystanders in races and racing paint on the roads. I just took a quick peek and parked in front of the hotel is a different Prior Design 458 and a Speedback GT. I turn around and see a Veyron in the window of the Bugatti shop. I’m too excited to say anything and just stare. We make our way to the Forum and see a collection of super speed boats outside the building. There was also an original Lamborghini tractor. We got into the actual exhibit and looked around at watches more expensive than some of the Ferrari’s that were driving around outside. The car section of Top Marques was on the second floor so that is where I headed. Top Marques isn’t your average car show. Most of the cars on display aren’t stock. They have been taken by other companies that gives them more aggressive looks, improves the engine and also the exhaust. Some of those kinds of companies are Brabus or Hamann. A lot of the other kinds of cars consisted of brand new brands of supercars that were trying to get their names out there. The Prince of Monaco even attended. One option that you have at Top Marques is that you can basically rent some supercars that they have on offer and drive them on a portion of the F1 circuit.

After Top Marques I went car spotting and soaked up that southern France weather. We got a drink outside of the casino to do some more car spotting, just a little more laid back. That was when a Porsche 911 R drove by. Then a BMW Z8, then a Ferrari F12 N-Largo, the Shmee150 in his purple 675LT Spider and Aston Martin Vanquish. We moved location slightly after we finished our drinks. This was because Monaco has a few one way streets. Some streets are more popular than others for supercars and that combined with the one way streets means that you can basically find these “sweet spots” where you are in photographing distance of multiple streets. In this “sweet spot” that I found the supercars were coming thick and fast. If you waited 20 seconds without seeing one you would start wondering where they all went. Another great thing about Monaco is that since it’s tiny all of the cars are condensed. This makes it possible to see multiple supercars together and just get great photos of them. Just in case you needed another example of how crazy Monaco is, as we were walking back from dinner I looked to my left and parked right next to a church was a Ferrari F40. I walked back to the casino after dinner to check what had rolled up. Along with all of the other crazy cars then had come and gone that same F40 showed up.

One of the best things about Monaco’s car scene is that it always keeps you on your toes. It’s not like it is a fixed set of cars that just cycle around. You will get Bugatti’s that just appear for 5 minutes and then no one else might see them for a few weeks. You also have people bringing their cars from England and Italy and Switzerland, so there is always new content. If I had stayed an extra day I would have seen two Porsche Carrera GT’s, a Bugatti Chiron, a Mercedes AMG GTR, a LaFerrari Aperta and a satin copper LaFerrari.

On Friday I walked the Formula 1 track. It is crazy to think that once a year the likes of Lewis Hamilton are flying down those exact roads at 200+ mph. In the morning I had seen a 918 so I thought I might see one walking around the track, but I didn’t. I did see other things though. On that list are multiple SV’s, another 911 R, and countless Ferrari’s. A short break at the casino gave me the privilege to see yet another F40. At the Fairmont there were two Prior Design 458’s, a N-Largo, a 4C, a 599 GTB, a Speciale Aperta, and a custom McLaren 12C. We made it to the tunnel and right off the bat there is an Aventador SV revving its V12, this was then followed by a Bentley and a Speciale, then finally a DB11. At the end of that tunnel was the second TDF that I had seen in Monaco. We walked around the marina to get close to finishing our lap of the track and made it back to the starting line. We then went back to the Fairmont and managed to see Felipe Massa’s LaFerrari at the Metropolitan Hotel too.

We went up to Nikki’s bar which is at the very top of the Fairmont. I recommend it just for the views. From there you could see the entire hairpin, the Grimaldi Forum, the cars entering the tunnel, and the hills surrounding Monaco. From up there is where I saw an Enzo take the hairpin followed by the F40 from the church. After just enjoying the view I aimed my focus back at the roads. Almost instantly I saw the 918 from the morning appear and behind it, another 918, an SV, and two GT3RS’s. They pulled into the Fairmont so I went down there. They parked them side by side and moved Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s out of the way to clear space. There must have been at least 60 car spotters crowding the impressive sight. Another visit to the casino after that, but nothing new that I hadn’t already seen before.

This trip was only 3 days of my life, but I will never forget it.