[Leica] IMGs: Monaco

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Interesting views, including your portrait.  Nice to meet you!

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA

On 10/20/2016 9:28 AM, Douglas Barry wrote:
> Visited Monaco briefly on Monday the 3rd Oct in the hope that it 
> wouldn't be as crowded as it can be. Sadly, it was, with crowds of 
> tourists doing awkward poses and selfies in what I now consider to be 
> one of the most over-hyped places on earth. Overbuilding and the rush 
> of money have ruined what was a pleasant spot. Many Belle Epoque 
> villas have disappeared to be replaced by mini, and indeed maxi, 
> skyscrapers to house the thousands of rich, and even vulgarly rich, 
> tax exiles who want to escape to, as Somerset Maugham put it "A sunny 
> place for shady people".
>
> I know Monaco very well, but hadn't visited it for fifteen years. I 
> used to go to meetings every year at the IAAF headquarters at Villa 
> Miraflores on the higher side of Casino Square. It was a wonderful 
> building with a great view looking down across the Casino Square 
> gardens to the Casino and the Hotel de Paris, and had been taken over 
> by Hermann Goering - a man who, shall we say, knew what he liked - for 
> his personal use during the Nazi era.
>
> The Villa Miraflores is still there, but the view is gone. Most of the 
> Casino Square gardens are now covered in the lamentable Pavilions 
> Monte Carlo while work is progressing on ripping out (modernising) the 
> pleasant Avenue des Beaux Arts which is now hidden behind huge 
> building hoardings as monsterous cranes dominate the skies. The 
> cacophony of drills, hammers, dust etc., must be a nightmare for 
> guests at the seriously expensive Hotel de Paris.  If I had won the 
> Euromillions lottery and treated the family to a week in the Hotel de 
> Paris, I'd be very disappointed. I presume the oligarchs are staying 
> in their yachts.
>
> Anyway, here are six pictures that in their own way reflect the place. 
> I include one of myself sitting in front of the statue of William 
> Grover aka Williams in his Bugatti at the first corner of the GP 
> circuit - an interesting man and his Wikipedia entry is worth a look. 
> We also met a lot of Chinese tourists and saw some expensive 
> machinery. Give the place a miss until the works are finished.
>
> Start here and click to the right.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/France/Cote+dAzur+2016/Monaco+1+Lalique.jpg.html
>  
>
>
> All pictures can be enlarged for detail.
>
> Douglas
>
>
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