Re: Lifestyle change
Ah yes, if the weather is nice, it's a nice flight.
I once got sent there by the boss to help an old friend of his with some networking and stuff. It was a lot less glamorous than it sounds - sleeping on an inflatable bed, never left the apartment between being dropped off by the taxi and being picked up again for the flights back, and walking what seemed like bloomin miles through Nice's large terminal building. On that latter point, the checkin desks are at one end of the building, the helicopter part of the terminal is at the other end, as is the bit used by the cheap airline I'd been booked on - result, have to walk almost the full length of the building to get to the checkin desks, then walk all the way back again to the departure lounge :-( But I digress.
When we went out to the heli, I deliberately went for the front passenger seat - and it seemed no-one else wanted it. IIRC same on the way back. You get a much better view, although in the event of it all going titsup you are closer to the crash.
I was supposed to be getting the bus back, but my host decided to pay the extra for the heli back and get a few more hours work out of me.
Monte Carlo is quite an eye opener for someone not used to buildings on such steep ground. My host's apartment was on the 6th floor from street level - but looking out that side across the street was a school playground, which was on street level on it's other side ! Looking over the balcony railings on the seaward side was a different game altogether - it was a looooong way down.
Oh yes, an IT angle ? The number of WiFi SSIDs was incredible - I couldn't count them as the list would refresh long before I got anywhere near the middle let alone the end. IIRC it was something in the order of 50 or 60+ - that's a heck of a lot of contention given this was the days when only the 2.4G spectrum was commonly used.
And my laptop broke down during the trip :-(
Biting the hand that feeds IT
