Hanging out with Djokovic – Day 22 Part 1

Day 22 Part 1 – Hanging out with Djokovic
18 April 2015
Monte Carlo

Well we didn’t really hang out with him, unless bumping into him while he was jogging on the streets of Monte Carlo and exchanging hellos considered as hanging out? ;). More on this story later :).

It all started in our hotel back in Nice. Another jam-packed day was ahead of us and we planned to visit Monte Carlo in Monaco in the morning and Nice city centre in the afternoon. It was a decent walk from the hotel to the train station Nice St Augustin which was 15 mins away. Once we got there, we were hoping to see a ticket booth with someone who could speak English at least. We only found an electronic ticket booth – in French :S. At first we got quite worried that we would end up buying the wrong tickets but eventually some of the French word made some sense and so we bought two one-way tickets to Monte Carlo. I don’t remember how much the tickets were but they were cheap. The train was quite old, not very clean. The view made up for it. The train line to Monte Carlo was close to the coast and so got to see a glimpse of what the French Riviera was all about.

Monte Carlo station was also quite far from the city centre but we didn’t mind the walk. Walking by the harbour we saw some super yachts docked in the water, looking very expensive. We wondered who owned these fancy transportation. As we got closer to the city we could see the many hotels on the mountain side, below was a stretch of beach. There were only a few people on the beach since it was still early in the morning, plus it was quite chilly around that time. I could imagine this beach full of people during the summer time. We walked down the beach, it wasn’t sand but tiny smooth pebbles covered the shoreline.

I wonder what kind of fish you could catch here... — I wonder what kind of fish you could catch here…

You had to walk up the mountain side, two or three levels up to see the stores and other buildings, plus a nice view of the water. We also saw some expensive cars on display. This place was certainly the playground for the rich and the famous. Speaking of famous, as tiring as it was, the walk was worth it when out of the blue we bumped into Novak Djokovic! We were walking on the side road and saw a man jogging towards us. He was wearing a hat and so we only noticed it was Novak when he was only two metres away. I spotted him first and said “Hey! It’s Novak!”. Wifey then sees him and shouts “Hi Novak!”. He then said “Hello” while he jogged. By the time I even thought of taking a photo of him, he was already metres away and so I could only take a shot of his back. Wifey could not believe our luck, he was her favourite tennis player. You could tell from her face that she was really happy. I had never seen her like that before, kidding! :). She was blushing with happiness. We were told that he lived in Monte Carlo plus the Rolex Masters were on during that time and that afternoon, the same day we saw him jogging, Djokovic beat Nadal to win the semi-finals. I’m sure we had something to do with that win 🙂 he was motivated by our positive attitude towards him.