So… I just rode in a helicopter!

Disclosure: As I mentioned in my previous post about Monaco, the Monaco Tourism board provided some items free of charge for our trip, including the cost of this helicopter transfer from Monaco back to the Nice airport.  They did not review or approve the contents of this post

Following up from my earlier post about my time in Monaco (READ: Everything’s better in….MONACO!), I wanted to mention a little bit about how we left Monaco to get back to the airport in Nice, France.  That’s possibly because it was the most awesome way to get back to the airport EVER!!! 🙂

At the conclusion of our day in Monaco, we took the bus back to the main part of Monaco, picked up our bags, and waited for Heli Air Monaco to pick us up.  Even once we got in the free shuttle bus that took us to the heliport, Carolyn still was not 100% sure where we were going (I hadn’t told her what we were doing, other than it was an awesome surprise)

Once we got to the heliport though, the jig was up 🙂

Inside the terminal building, we had to go through a modified security procedure, and they checked our reservation, passport, etc., and then took us out to the helipad.  There were a few other tourist-type people as well as some folks that looked like regular businessmen.

I joked that you could totally tell the difference between the tourists and the businessmen (pictured below) because us tourists were freaking out like “OMG IT’S A HELICOPTER!” and taking pictures of everything while the businessmen were like “yawn… another day at the office…” 🙂

Here’s a video I shot out the window as we made the ~10 minute helicopter ride from Monaco to the Nice airport.

Cost of a helicopter transfer from Monaco to the Nice, France airport

As I mentioned before, the Monaco Tourism board paid for my helicopter ride, and if you can get a free helicopter ride somewhere, I heartily endorse it!  But is it something that would be worth doing even if you had to pay for it?

Looking at the HeliAir Monaco site, a one-way helicopter transfer from Monaco to the Nice airport is 138 Euros / person (about USD$150 at current exchange rates), which is a lot.  But it’s not a TON more than a taxi ride (around 80 Euros according to the official Nice Airport site, though some other online reports seemed to indicate it was a little higher than that).  And a lot more awesome, obviously (and significantly faster as well).  Though of course the more people you have going, the more that tips the cost factor towards a taxi.

Public transportation is an option as well and much cheaper.  But, you’d need to take the train into Nice and then a bus from the Nice train station out to the airport, hauling your bags with you (depending on how many bags you had).  Personally, if it were on my own dime, I probably would have taken the train / bus, but I’m glad I got the chance to take the helicopter – it made for an unforgettable memory!

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