Johannesburg had been throwing things at me all day traffic, heat, the particular buzz of a city that never fully slows down and by the time I made it to Montecasino in Fourways, I was ready for whatever it was offering. What it was offering, it turned out, was an entire Italian village built indoors, a painted sky above the rooftops that shifts from day to night on a cycle, cobblestone streets lined with restaurants and bars, a theatre, a casino floor, a bird park, and enough going on in every direction that your eyes don’t know where to land first. Before I’d even stepped inside, I’d already sorted my rands through Spendin with ZAR that morning, done in seconds, no detours to a currency exchange, no waiting. The kind of thing you do once and then stop thinking about, which is exactly the point. Money sorted means the rest of the evening is just the evening.
The Tusc
