Monaco & Cap D'ail

I lost 5 euros playing a strange version of roulette, enclosed in a bubble. It looked like a bunch of adults paying a very serious game of Sorry, or Trouble. Derek hadn't gambled before so he decided to loose a few euros to the slots, and that was our experience in what we thought was the world famous Monaco casino, except it turned out later that we were in the wrong one. Monaco was too rich for my blood. Rolls Royce, Mazaratti, and so many Porsche’s they looked second-class. Meanwhile two smelly Americans catch looks at every corner from the real life James Bonds of the world. The city was setting up guardrails and such for the Formula 1 races, which we ended up watching a week later in an Austrian bar.

Getting our fill of Monaco, we caught a bus to Cap D'ail, a secluded little beach we had heard a lot about from the folks in the hostel. It took a bit to find and they weren’t kidding when they said it was secluded. There really aren’t any words I can use to describe this place, and the pictures can only do so much to recreate it. Paradise might come close. Surrounded on three sides by steep dark rock, this cove of the Mediterranean even came with a little V0 boulder problem.

After a much needed swim my tattoos earned us a seat with two curious Swedes named Friedrich and Jonas. Adult playboys with nothing better to do than ogle women on the beach all day and polish off six bottles of Rosa with two Americans. The sun and the wine teamed up to make for a warmth I'd never experienced, while Derek and I would occasionally steal looks at one another when one of these guys would blurt something silly, even for them. While with them we learned a few things about their drinking, spending, and women habits. All of these you would have to hear a real person to believe. I'll always remember their three rules concerning women.
1. Always keep pipelining
2. Women are crazy, but you have to accept that.
3. Never let her over the bridge.


With these rules sloshing around in my head, Friedrich got a call from someone they call the "Dirty President," and they were off. Dazed, grinning, and sun burnt, we stumbled out of the fairy tale cove, and back to our hostel in Nice. The Cannes film festival was going on during our stay in France, and there was no way I was going to miss it, even it I couldn't screen anything.