I Started the Year on the Casino Balcony in Monaco

Martinis, Millionaires and One Very Drunk Brit at Breakfast

At midnight, fireworks opened above the palm trees of Monte Carlo.

I was standing on the balcony of the Casino de Monte-Carlo with a drink in my hand. Behind me, people were gambling sums that could have financed my entire trip. In front of me, flashes of colour reflected from the surrounding façades while smoke drifted between some of the most expensive buildings in Europe.

For a few seconds, I stopped looking through my camera.

Then the full absurdity of the moment reached me.

Bloody hell. I am starting the year on the casino balcony in Monaco.

It was unnecessary, indulgent and completely worth it.

An excellent excuse for bad financial judgment

I had been staying in Nice and could easily have welcomed the new year there.

Nice was larger, livelier and considerably more forgiving to an ordinary travel budget. There was no sensible reason to move to Monaco for a single night.

Fortunately, I was not looking for a sensible reason.

While browsing the old Starwood Preferred Guest website, I found an unusually attractive offer at Le Méridien Beach Plaza. A night in Monaco suddenly became affordable enough to transform a ridiculous idea into a booking.

The plan required little refinement.

I would take the train from Nice, stay one night in the principality, dress properly, visit the Casino de Monte-Carlo and order something close enough to a martini to support a modest James Bond delusion.

I was travelling alone, which improved the concept rather than diminishing it. Bond rarely enters a casino with a tour group, matching lanyards and someone announcing the time of the return bus.

A room in the circular tower

Le Méridien Beach Plaza stood beside the Mediterranean at the eastern end of Monaco, slightly removed from the concentrated theatre of Casino Square.

At reception, I received an excellent upgrade to a room in the hotel’s circular tower.

The view made the entire scheme look more rational than it actually was.

Below me were the hotel beach and coastline. Beyond them, the Mediterranean filled the horizon. Monaco’s towers rose from the narrow strip between the mountain and the sea, packed together as if the principality had run out of space several decades earlier but had refused to stop building.

The hotel was infrastructurally very good: comfortable, polished and equipped with everything expected at that level. It was not magical, but the room and view came close enough.

More importantly, I was staying inside Monaco.

I would not have to rush for the final train to Nice after midnight. For one night, I could walk back to my room and wake up in the principality rather than merely visit it.

Trying not to look like a tourist

That evening, I made my way to the Casino de Monte-Carlo.

The building is theatrical even before one enters. Its Belle Époque façade, illuminated square and procession of expensive cars turn arrival into part of the performance.

I had expected New Year’s Eve crowds.

Instead, the casino was surprisingly calm.

There were wealthy people, or at least people who had spent a great deal of money perfecting that appearance, but relatively few obvious tourists. I therefore tried not to reveal that I had arrived by train from Nice after finding a discounted hotel rate online.

At the entrance, I had to present my passport.

Nothing interrupts a secret-agent fantasy quite as efficiently as standing beneath bright lights while an employee checks your date of birth.

After that, however, the process was simple. I paid the entrance fee, bought a drink and entered the gaming rooms.

No private invitation. No elaborate ritual. No tuxedoed gatekeeper deciding whether I possessed sufficient international intrigue.

Just a passport, a ticket and money for a drink.

Losing ten thousand euros without blinking

Casinos are excellent places for observing people because everyone pretends to be watching only the table.

One woman nearby had clearly invested heavily in her resistance to ageing. Her companion appeared perhaps fifty years younger.

During the period in which I watched them, she lost approximately ten thousand euros.

She showed no visible reaction.

Then again, her face had been tightened so comprehensively that blinking may no longer have been a reliable emotional indicator.

Another bet followed. The dealer moved the chips. More money disappeared.

There was no argument, hesitation or whispered discussion with the young man beside her. She accepted the loss with the mild indifference most people reserve for an unexpectedly expensive coffee.

That was the evening’s clearest demonstration of real wealth.

The jewellery and designer clothes were predictable. The impressive part was treating ten thousand euros as a disposable component of the night’s entertainment.

I did not attempt to imitate her.

My purpose was not to finance Monaco through gambling losses. I wanted the atmosphere, the drink and the temporary sensation of belonging to a world in which I was quite obviously an impostor.

As long as I did not announce it, nobody seemed particularly concerned.

Midnight above Monte Carlo

As midnight approached, people moved onto the casino balcony.

Even then, there was no unpleasant crush. I found a good position without pushing through a wall of phones or fighting for a view.

Below us stood the palm trees and illuminated buildings of Monte Carlo. Beyond them, the principality climbed into the darkness, a dense stack of roads, terraces and apartments pressed between rock and sea.

Then the fireworks began.

From the balcony, they felt woven into the city rather than placed above it. Light flashed across the windows. Smoke moved between the buildings. Glasses rose around me.

I had come alone, and at that moment it was an advantage.

There was no need to negotiate where to stand, whether to leave or how long to remain outside. I could simply enter the scene and enjoy its cinematic stupidity.

Bond normally enters the casino alone. For one night, I was willing to consider that sufficient justification.

I stood there with my drink, watching fireworks above the palms and thinking that the entire situation should have been impossible.

Not because Monaco was inaccessible. It was only a train ride from Nice.

It felt impossible because the evening belonged to a version of myself I had decided to play for a few hours.

At midnight, the role worked.

Glamour meets breakfast

Every sophisticated evening eventually encounters the breakfast buffet.

The following morning, I entered the restaurant at Le Méridien expecting a quiet meal before exploring Monaco.

Instead, I found a catastrophically drunk British guest harassing everyone around him.

He was not mildly hungover, amusingly tipsy or simply speaking too loudly. He was completely destroyed: aggressive, intrusive and determined to drag the entire restaurant into the final stages of his New Year’s celebration.

He bothered nearby tables. He bothered the staff. He bothered me.

The hotel’s response was remarkable.

Rather than removing the person causing the disturbance, the staff moved the other guests into a separate room. There, they began serving us breakfast à la carte while the drunken idiot remained in the main restaurant.

They relocated the victims and left the problem in possession of the buffet.

I still do not understand the reasoning.

The improvised service in the second room was slow, and I barely managed to eat. The immediate nuisance had been separated from us, but the hotel had resolved the situation in the least convincing way possible.

A few hours earlier, I had been drinking on the casino balcony beneath fireworks.

Now I was hiding from a drunken Brit in an overflow breakfast room.

The transition from fantasy to reality was impressively efficient.

Monaco from the upper deck

After breakfast, I set out to explore the principality.

At that period of my life, I was extremely obese. Walking long distances was difficult, and Monaco’s steep streets, tunnels, stairs and constant changes in elevation made spontaneous exploration particularly demanding.

The sightseeing bus was not merely convenient. It was the realistic option.

From its upper deck, Monaco appeared as a triumph of urban compression.

Apartment towers rose above yacht-filled harbours. Roads disappeared into tunnels and emerged several levels higher. Gardens occupied whatever fragments of land had escaped construction. Almost every view contained either a cliff, a luxury building or both.

I visited the Prince’s Palace and the streets of Monaco-Ville. I saw the cathedral, the harbour and the major locations visible in my photographs. I returned to the casino district in daylight and looked across Port Hercule from above.

The grey New Year’s morning made the principality appear subdued.

After the controlled spectacle of the night before, Monaco seemed older and quieter than expected.

Less Bond, more retirement plan

Before arriving, I had expected Monaco to feel more exciting.

The visible evidence of wealth was everywhere: immaculate buildings, expensive cars, grand hotels, enormous yachts and residents whose battles with the ageing process had clearly involved specialist intervention.

But the principality itself had little sense of danger or mystery.

It felt slightly pensioner-like.

The luxury was real, yet the pulse beneath it was surprisingly slow. Monaco had money, order and polished surfaces, but not much of the energy I had associated with it.

The Bond atmosphere existed only in fragments.

It appeared at the casino entrance, beside the gaming tables and on the balcony at midnight. It appeared in the woman losing ten thousand euros and in the martini I had ordered primarily because the setting demanded one.

Outside those moments, Monaco felt controlled, clean and mildly sleepy.

That did not ruin the experience.

I had not come searching for profound authenticity or the hidden soul of the principality. I had come to indulge a very specific idea.

For one night, Monaco cooperated.

The place became ordinary. The night did not.

I have returned to Monaco several times since then, perhaps four or five in total.

The first visit remained the most exciting.

On every return, the principality felt slightly more ordinary. The casino was still beautiful. The yachts remained enormous. The cars remained expensive, and the buildings still climbed the hills in improbable layers.

But familiarity removed the tension.

Places often appear extraordinary because of what we bring with us on the first visit: anticipation, projection and a willingness to believe in the version we imagined before arriving.

That New Year’s Eve contained all three.

It contained a discounted hotel offer transformed into an act of hedonism, an unexpected room upgrade, a passport check, a martini, a woman losing ten thousand euros and fireworks above the balcony of one of the world’s most famous casinos.

It also contained a drunken British man destroying breakfast, because even the best luxury story needs somebody behaving disgracefully before coffee.

Later visits showed me Monaco more clearly.

It is wealthy, visually dramatic and undeniably unusual. It is not magical.

The magic came from that particular night and from my willingness to play a role in it.

Monaco eventually became ordinary.

That midnight never did.

Photography note: The New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day photographs were taken during my stay in Monaco in 2012–2013. A small number of daytime images were taken during later visits and are used to illustrate locations mentioned in the story.