Living La Vida Lopez might seem like an impossible LA dream, but if your idea of Hollywood glamour is more Grace Kelly than Lindsay Lohan then a few hours in Monaco can let you slip into a glitzy old school world of deck shoes and champagne cocktails - and so long as your sunglasses are big enough, no one's going to burst your bubble. You just can't tell which scruff is a multi-millionaire yacht owner or unwashed racing driver round here. And that's the charm of the place.

The first thing that surprises you about Monaco is just how tiny it is - and the second thing is how much they've managed to pack into it. (The third surprising thing is that many of the shops have a picture of Prince Albert in the window, and he makes Prince Edward look like, well, George Clooney.) The marina houses some of the world's most expensive yachts, all jostled up together in a picturesque white collage of masts and lights, and the tall apartments that stack up the precipitous hillside are similarly extortionate. Every inch of available land has been built on, and extensive reclamation projects grabbed a significant area back from the sea. Around all this high-rise glamour twists the one main road through the town, and it's on this course that the insane Monaco Grand Prix takes place - look at those hairpins and FEAR.

And yet it's not all high-octane spendiness. Hidden behind the Hermes and Cartier shops (seriously, the main shopping street could have been town-planned by Jackie Onassis) are a few surprisingly ordinary shops. Not many, granted, but enough to find a newsagent or a supermarket to equip your DIY picnic hamper with bread, cheese, tomatoes and chocolate: OK, so we didn't attempt to eat our homemade baguettes IN MONTE CARLO - that would have been a bit caravanette - but a short drive along the pretty coast road leads to some smaller, more low-key villages, with sea-view benches and easy parking. Monaco is on the border with France and Italy, set in the middle of some thrilling mountain roads, so keen drivers will want to head up through Menton or down towards Nice, especially if you like listening to your car roar through tunnels. (The good weather, smart restaurants, dramatic scenery and exhilarating roads make Monaco a favourite spot for car launches, so watch out for swarms of identical cars driven by UK hacks pretending they're in the Italian Job and/or escaping some James Bond baddie on the rock-faced roads...)

There's also a Zara amidst the Cacherel and Chanel boutiques, so you can avail yourself of a perfect catwalk-knockoff dress that you can forever refer to as 'a little something I found in Monte Carlo'. (Although be warned: the sizes seem even smaller than they do in the UK, and you will be the only person not cooing with delight over the gold lame hotpants and fur gilets. Unless you too are there with your big Russian oligearch boyfriend.) And you'll find a Sephora in the useful little shopping mall, as well as one of those amazing French chemists that sells nineteen different types of cellulite tablets and cheap Vichy tinted moisturiser. By the looks of the bronzed-to-handbag-texture locals, they don't have much call for suncream above a Factor 4, so take your own.

The most delightful bargain of all, in Monaco, is that the town centre parking costs about two euros an hour, which would get you roughly seven minutes in the equivalent NCP off Bond Street. And since it's a tiny place, you can stroll around admiring the decorations, pretty gardens and shop windows in a few hours, including the obligatory ice cream stop, and still be out of there with change for a headscarf.

But back to being a film star. It's easy here, since really nothing much has changed since Monaco's 50s heyday: this is the natural home of that capri pants/roadster/red lipstick look that never dates. Pick up your huge sunglasses in Duty Free on the way over - you need big ones here, not just for the sun, but for the gleam of money coming off those yachts. Then head for the Casino or the Hotel de Paris in the centre, where a cappuccino (am) or a glass of champagne (pm) might cost as much as a small meal, but will give you access to some of the most gorgeous interiors in a town that often seems designed around an ice cream sundae, as well as ample people-watching opportunities. And thirdly, don't be seen to gawp at anyone, while turning your own head camera-shyly. That's where the sunglasses come in, darling...