Yesterday was my trip to Monaco, where I’ll be working and living in less than three week! ahh! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous when I woke up…this was the day I would finally be able to meet my boss! I couldn’t help but wonder if they were going to speak to me in all French and expect me to do the same. I had a tiny little feeling that it might be like my French lunch experience the previous Sunday.
The train ride from Antibes to Monaco was about an hour. When I first left the train station I couldn’t believe how beautiful Monaco was. It is one of the most unique cities I have ever seen. It is a really mountainous place and many of the buildings look like they were just built straight into the side of the mountain. Also, because there are so many different elevation levels in the city, there are escalators and elevators all over. It’s a really a cool thing to see.
We made our way to the Riviera Marriott Hotel La Porte De Monaco. Many people don’t know this but the hotel is not technically in Monaco. It’s in a tiny town in France just on the border of Monaco. However, they can’t say the Marriott is in this town because hardly anyone has heard of it and they would never book a stay there! Instead, they put La Porte De Monaco in the name, which means at the door of Monaco so that people will recognize exactly where it is.
So anyway, we got to the Marriott and Carina Oswald (my boss) gave us a presentation on Marriott as well as a brief tour of the hotel. The Grand Prix is currently taking place in Monaco and the Marriott was completely booked. For the week of the Grand Prix is cost 10,000 euros for about four nights….that’s around 15,000 dollars.
After the presentation Meghan and I met with Carina and talked for a few hours to go over what our expectations were, what we would be doing, and to answer any questions we had. After talking to her, I felt a million times better about coming to work there, and my nerves had subsided. I will be working mainly in the restaurant, bar, and pool area. I’m really excited to get some experience in those areas! Carina told us that she doesn’t always hire people who speak French and they just pick it up once they start working in the hotel. This made me so relieved. She also said that she had just hired a new chef from America and we would mainly be working with him, and if we weren’t working with him there was always usually someone around who could translate for us. She also told us that we are the first American interns she has hired and everyone was really excited to have us. One reason being that several American tourists stay at the hotel and people love it when a worker, server, etc. is from their own country so that they can speak with them. Hearing all of this information just got me all the more excited to start working!
I will be working 35 hours a week and will receive two days off every week. This is a law for interns in France, and I have to say, I don’t hate it.
After our meeting, I walked around the city of Monaco for a little while. The very first thing I did was walk up to the top of the mountain where the palace (a.k.a my future home) was. It was beautiful and really interesting to see all of the history there. There were several little streets on the top of the mountain that had little stores, boutiques, restaurants, etc. I can’t wait to go back and explore them all! After that I just walked around the city with Meghan. I’ve never seen so many nice cars in my whole life. Hopefully I’ll be driven around in one once I meet the prince and he falls in love with me.
After getting back to Antibes that night, the whole group went out for dinner, which was so good! I had a delicious salad topped with a soft-boiled egg (the French put eggs on everything here!), followed by a delicious steak that was placed on top of a hash brown type potato and ratatouille. Delicious. Dessert was also amazing and consisted of different kinds of mousse layered on top of a wafer. Another delicious French meal. I swear, I’m coming home 20 pounds heavier.
Later that night, however, the meal turned out to be the downside of my day. I won’t go into details because I’m sure no one wants to read about that…but lets just say I think that French food poisoning it the absolute worst. So today I missed class, sat home and recovered. And now I just figured out that you can rent episodes of Glee on iTunes! We don’t get Hulu here so I’m gonna go rent a few episodes and catch up on some Glee until I feel better!
Some of the building on the mountain in Monaco
The Palace
A view of the marina
This is the pool of the Marriott where I'll be working!
Me waiting on the Prince outside the palace
Meghan and me
Everyone at dinner
The cause of my downfall
