Travelling Light

Southland Times, Issue 21578, 16 December 1931, Page 9

Travelling Light

5 Gambolling with Money. £

£ To Europe and Back on J £ Two Hundred. £

(By

H.K.S.).

ARTICLE XXXIV. HOME AGAIN. The cost of living is very low in Monaco and hotels, except the luxurious few round the Casino, are very reasonable. They are also very numerous. . Within two minutes walk of the station there are at least a dozen. Soon we were installed in one and were dining at a table on the boulevard. Every now and again a squat little tramcar left its terminus opposite our hotel for the Casino. We wondered if the people we saw getting into the tramcar were going to try their luck at roulette; they looked anything but sporting. Close on half a million pounds was spent this year on improving the beach at Monte Carlo. Not only are there wonderful esplanades, promenades, swimming baths, bathing pavilions and coloured light systems but an artificial island has been constructed and floats out in the sea wherever the Prince of Monaco and his ministers decree. To all appearances it is a real island. It is amazing what human ingenuity can do; but I wonder what the unemployed think about such lavish expenditure. We beheld these wonders in an afterdinner stroll. So warm was it that people were still bathing. In the little harbour there were magnificent steam yachts—the sort of craft one reads about but never sees. The Cau'no. Daylight was just fading when we reached the Casino grounds and saw before us the world’s greatest gambling resort. It is certainly a regal building and has the advantage of a magnificent situation. As we sat on a seat in the pretty grounds a man with a long pole passed us. To our astonishment he proceeded to use the pole to light enormous gas-lamps which stood in front of the Casino. It seemed extraordinary that, when all along the waterfront and in the town electric lights were blazing, gas should still be in use at the Casino. It is, however, only these big lights in front of the building that are gas. Inside are costly electric light fittings. At nine o’clock the rotunda in front of the Casino began to show signs of life and by 9.15 an orchestra of thirty, under a conductor who I believe is very famous, began to play music with much light and shade. “Shall we go into the Casino and have one bet of 10 francs just for fun?” I asked my wife, knowing full well that her answer would be “Yes.” A couple of minutes later we were being asked for our passport and were then ushered into the “Kitchen,” as the habitues term the outer gambling rooms, as opposed to the private rooms where the stakes are higher. According to novelists we should have been overcome with the stuffiness of the atmosphere, we should have had to wait hours to obtain a seat at the tables, we should have seen “haggard faces ravaged with a dozen emotions of eager cupidity” and—most important of all—we should have had the invariable beginner’s luck and won a thousand francs. But that evening, at any rate, the novelists were refuted. The air was fresh, there were plenty of vacant seats, the people were rather unexciting and ordinary—and number 27, on which I put my 10-franc chip, did not attract the ivory ball. A Souvenir. I did, however, obtain an interesting tsouvenir of our visit to the Casino. This was a little book of rules and regulations from which I feel constrained to quote the following extracts exactly as they appeared: The Casino is open from 10 a.m. to until 2 a.m. The Casino is not a public place, the Administration reserving to herself the right to grant or refuse admission to visitors applying for. It is required that visitors should be correctly dressed to be admitted into the Rooms, the access of which is not granted to workmen and servants. Smoking and loud conversation are not allowed either in the gaming or in the reading rooms. Admission to the rooms is strictly and absolutely refused to: public notaries, public officers, collectors of taxes, bank clerks, all persons dealing with public and private funds, paymasters, ladies’ companions, attendants, servants and generally to all those who are not of independent means. Were the management to enforce th® last clause I wonder who would be allowed into the Casino. It is a mere blind, however. They are so keen to get people inside the rooms that they don’t worry much about their means of livelihood. Nor is there any longer an insistence on evening dress. This was so before the war, but any old thing does now, though the women seemed for the most part to be in evening dress.

Nice. Next morning we caught a train for Nice —a very simple matter, for there are scores of trains running along the Riviera, and whether they come from Paris or Rome they stop at all these seaside resorts. Nice, we had been told by a Belgian artist at our hotel, was the holiday resort of the multitude, Cannes of the aristocrats and the rich, Beaulieu of the very aristocratic and very rich and Mentone of winter pleasure seekers. We found Nice a most attractive town and the “multitude” pleasant and pretty. The Riviera was still living up to "its reputation in the matter of weather, for th» sun blazed down from a cloudless sky and the Mediterranean was its own inimitable blue. The beach—a shingle one, alas—wag lined for a mile with giant parasols. Men and women sun-bathed with very little on. Another long line of parasols stood on the wide white promenade above the beach and under their shade ice-creams were being devoured. The glare of the sun on the white buildings and white paths Is very trying on the eyes and for this reason almost everyone wears smoked glasses. Fully half the girls in the streets were clad in beach pyjamas. Somehow, though, I don’t think women were intended by Nature to wear long trousers and short jackets. Their figure ... Perhaps I had better not pursue the subject. I am a poor judge of such matters. Good-bye to Europe. Thursday dawned and with it our goodbye to Europe. Past many more Riviera towns, including fashionable Cannes with its sandy beach, the train bore us over barren rocky country with stunted vines to Toulon where a crowd of French sailors got on, through gorges and valleys until we reached Marseilles. There we bade farewell to French chefs by eating a wonderful meal which consisted of an omelette piled round with beans, peas, tomatoes and potatoes cooked as only the French can cook. Round the waterfront we strolled and wondered how we had ever thought Marseilles a clean city. At 3 p.m. a taxi took us to Mole C and there we beheld for the first time the Mongolia, the ,17,000 ton liner which was to bear us over nearly as many thousands of miles of ocean. To the tune of Tosti’s Good-bye played by half a dozen bedraggled French violinists we drew away from the wharf. I showered my last sous on the musicians, evoking applause by landing one coin in an outstretched hat. Past the Chateau d’lf we

steamed until France faded out of sight and the glamorous darkness of a Mediterranean night enshrouded us. The Homeward Voyage. At Port Said we again ran the gauntlet of beggars and hawkers. We were lucky enough to call also at Port Sudan and Aden. At Port Sudan scarcely a white man was' to be seen. Fuzzy-wuzzies appeared to be the chief inhabitants. I was reminded of the nursery rhyme, “Two little nigger boys sitting in the sun, one got frizzled up . . .” Nearly all the natives were so thin that they made me feel plump—which is saying something. Tire sun must frizzle up every ounce of superfluous flesh of these Sudanese gentlemen; but it doesn’t spoil their hair. The head-dresses were amazing; golliwogs are not in it with them. In the sea near the boat I saw beautiful tropical fishes of all the colours of the rainbow plus a good many more. They were swimming together like a large and happy family but they refused to be tempted with bait. Aden consisted of rocks and oil tanks. As school I used to be taught that not a blade of grass grew in Aden. It is just about true. A fall of rain in Aden is rarer than an eclipse of the moon; and fifty times as welcome. In Colombo we refrained from shattering by day our illusions regarding the glamour of the native quarter which on our way over we had seen under the magic eyes of night. We took train to Mount Lavinia, saw a deaf and dumb native climb a cocoa-nut tree and saw little girls making lace by means of reels of cotton and an array of pins. • In Australia we renewed acquaintance with Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney and found them just as pleasant as before and considerably more prosperous. To New Zealand we travelled on the little Maunganui, heard a tale of depression and woe on arrival in Wellington, but forgot all about it when we saw children’s arms outstretched to welcome home their wandering, venturesome, satisfied parents. A Word in Farewell. And now a word of farewell to those who have followed us in our hurried but happy travels. It is true that we made the trip at a cost of £396, or less than £2OO each; it is equally true that anyone of similar tastes can accomplish what we did for the same sum of money. There is no catch in it. Perhaps it may be worth while here to analyse briefly the expenditure of our trip. The total boat fare, plus exchange, was £205. We incurred £lO extra expense by getting off at Marseilles and travelling overland to London. Our three weeks in London cost us £4O; our, motor tour £52 (including the net price of the car); our continental sight-seeing £3B. On the two sea voyages we spent £25 at ports, on board ship and in tips. The balance, £26, went in incidental expenses. With the utmost confidence I can assert that for the foregoing expenditure one can see in reasonable comfort much of the old world and the new. Can there be any better investment for one’s money? Does it not seem ridiculous that so much hardearned money vanishes into the air in the form of tobacco smoke, vapourizes in alcohol to give fleeting joy or sorrow, or is carried round a racecourse by the wrong horse? Dull must he be of soul who can be reconciled to live and die in this far corner of the earth without once beholding the glories that lie beyond the horizon. If these ephemeral, rambling jottings of mine induce others to travel Home I shall feel richly rewarded—and they will bless my name for evermore!