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By the time we finally rolled out
of bed, stopped for coffee and a bite to eat, and made
our way to the train station, a huge crowd had gathered
in the lobby. We spotted a sign directing all passengers
to Monaco to a certain track, a sign which, uncannily
enough, was just above the enormous throng slowly pushing
its way through the ticket checkpoint.
We got in line and shoved our own way up
as quickly as we could, showed the girl our Eurial
pass, and headed for the track, which was quite as
full of people as the lobby had been.
The next train for Monaco arrived
and we pushed our way through the crowd to find some
fold down seats, then stared grimly at our surroundings
for a half-hour or so during the ride. Every so often,
we'd twitch a little.
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Once
in Monaco, we followed the crowd off the train
and down the hill into the city, where we grabbed
a map at a map stand, known only as "that
map stand with the cute chick."
Then we noticed we were
losing ground on the crowd and hurried to catch
up as they climbed the hill towards the palace.
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It rapidly grew clear that the increase in height from
climbing the hill correlated with an increase in visibility
of the center of town. Who knew? But what a smart crowd!
You might think we'd have already been tired of climbing
hills at this point, we being quite lazy on the whole,
but this would actually turn out to be a mere speed
hump compared to future hills on this trip. Especially
a little bit later in Monaco.
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We
found a good place to stop, a decision based mainly
on whether or not we thought the wave of people
behind us would trample us if we got in their
way and went all stationary. However, there was
a break in the treeline where we could move off
to the side a little bit and get a nice view of
the bit of track near the pit.
Thus, we observed a bit
of the practice and also observed how hard it
was to take good pictures of little tiny cars
moving at great rates of speed. For all their
minute size, those cars were incredibly loud,
though. You could hear them thundering around
from anywhere in the city. Well, they actually
sounded a little bit more like runaway chainsaws
from the distance, but they were the loudest goddamn
chainsaws I've ever heard.
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There
was a wicked corner right over by the entrance
to the pits, and those guys were still driving
so fast, it took about fifteen tries to get a
picture with a car still somewhere in the frame
instead of a mile away already.
After we had about as much
pathetic excuse for success as we thought we might
get, we headed further up (yes, up!) the hill
to see if we could find a better vantage point.
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