And then we stumbled upon the Grand Prix in Monaco...

At this point in the trip we were all looking at each other like "What's the catch?!"

We'd had perfect weather, seen the Cannes film festival accidentally, and now we were in Monaco for the Grand Prix (unplanned!).

Talk about some amazing luck!

Monaco is the neatest country. Oh my goodness. 

(also I'll just embarrass myself here and throw out there that I definitely thought Monaco was a city in France before this trip... Turns out Monte Carlo is the city and Monaco is the country soo... I'm not really earning any geography points at this point in my life haha)

It's nestled between 2 mountains and is packed full of million/billionaires so everywhere you look there are Ferrari's and Maserati's and Rolls Royces (at one point JP turned to us and said "I think I've seen 10 Rolls Royces in my life and 9 of them were tonight." haha!)

Due to some bad-turned-out-to-be-good luck (we weren't planning on going to Monaco until the day of the race but jumped on the wrong train coming home from Cannes and whizzed right past our train station stop in Villefranche and ended up in Monaco at 10:30 PM the night before the race haha) we found ourselves (with about half of Europe) on the streets on Monaco and the entire city had become a massive party. 

We got to walk on the race track, see row upon row of super yachts bigger than my house and private parties and body guards everywhere with DJ's playing music and dance parties galore. 

It was nuts! I just kept thinking "is this how people actually live?!"

It was so entertaining and so much fun to be a part of. We ended up hanging out in Monaco until about midnight when we finally caught the train back to Villefranche and collapsed into our beds. 

The next morning was the actual Grand Prix race so we jumped on the train again (it was so easy - Monaco was a 10 minute train ride away from Villefranche!) and got to hear the race and see a little bit of it by peering through cracks and over bushes (tickets were 400 euros each and the city officials had put up barricades around places where you could catch a glimpse of the race for free so we had to get creative!)

The atmosphere was incredible and we settled ourselves down at this fantastic french bistro that had a widescreen TV so we would eat and watch the race while still hearing the cars zoom past and bystanders cheering in real life!