Salut Family and Friends,
The past several days have been rough. Nathaniel got hit by a lightsaber in the eye when Elyse tried to throw it to him from off of the balcony. Joe has been gone most evenings working on papers for the ITER Council. Both Elyse and Nicolas had a case of "le gastro", or a stomach ailment that kept them up all night. Fortunately, in the middle of all of this, our tickets for the long awaited Monaco Historic Grand Prix arrived in the mail and gave us something to which we could look forward!
The Historic Grand Prix takes place every two years just prior to the Formula 1 race and features winning cars from the various decades since the Grand Prix began in 1929. The race takes place on the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, which goes through the middle of the city, through tunnels, and along the water front. The race is broken into several stages in which cars of like age compete. There is also a "parade". As the kids learned quickly, however, parade did not include people throwing candy, but rather showcased a procession of rare cars from around the world.
After arriving in Monaco, we were able to find parking close to the race course. Unfotunately, our garage could not have been much farther from our stands and we had to traverse up and down the various levels of Monte Carlo in order to get to our portal. After climbing hundreds of stairs and making a few wrong turns, we finally located our seats close to the track and were greeted with the overpowering smells of burning rubber and gasoline. Luckily for us, someone on Joe's team at work had provided us with earplugs, which turned out to be a neccessity. (The sound on the video is rather mild compared to being there in person!)
From our location overlooking a tight turn, we were able to witness some spins and flame outs that added another degree of excitement. Each time a car got into trouble, men in orange jumpsuits jumped out into the track and started waving yellow flags to warn the other drivers of the impending danger.
Though we had excellent seats, they were not nearly as nice as the seats of those sitting across the track from us. Between races, we watched the families and other groups sitting on deck chairs eating their brunch on the yachts that were tied up to the pier.
As part of our plans for going to the race, Joe and the kids wanted to have a contest to see who could spot the most exotic cars during our trip. That contest only lasted about five minutes as everyone got sick of counting car after car of Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Austin Martin, and Lamborgini.
Fortunately, we had a backup plan to see who could take the best car pictures during our trip. Nicolas and Elyse carefully adjusted their camera settings to the conditions to try and capture the perfect image.
One of the things that made the race so special is the opportunity to see so many different types of race cars. Nicolas loved the contemporary Formula 1 cars while Elyse favored the slightly smaller Formula 3 cars. Julie liked the pre-1961 front engine Grand Prix Cars and Joe enjoyed the pre-1953 sports cars. And of course Nathaniel liked them all!
On our way back to the car, we tried to find the exotic gardens. When learned that the trip would have required a significant hike up the mountain, we decided to return to our car instead. Happily, on our route we passed through some beautiful Japanese-style gardens that made our trip complete.
After our day at the races, we were all quite tired from all of the hiking and sun. Nevertheless, we all had a lot of fun getting to know Monaco better and learning about Formula 1 racing history. Feel free to ask Nathaniel about the parts of his custom-built Formula 1 car!
Bonne Semaine,
Joe, Julie, Nicolas, Elyse, and Nathaniel
1 comment:
After reading this post, I left the computer for a while. All of the sudden I saw Calvin staring at the monitor and exclaiming "Wow that's cool". I was sure it would be one of the fancy cars - but of course it was Nathaniel's Lego car that got the response.
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