The French Riviera

The other day I was reading a pithy comment about men in speedos over at Geese Aplenty and it reminded me of a trip our family took to the French Riviera, specifically Cannes, in May of 2001. We were on a pretty tight budget and therefore drove over from where we were living in Pordenone, Italy. It was about a 7 or 8 hour drive, through Verona, Milano, Genova, Monocco, Nice, etc. Our hotel was several blocks from the beach, very reasonably priced. The parking for the hotel was at the train station, several blocks in the other direction.



Our room was so small... Imagine me laughing here. We had a double bed and a roll away single bed these two beds took up the entire room, with about a foot at the bottom of the beds where we could walk sideways. So it went: wall, double bed, single bed, wall all squeezed in and right up against one another. The wall beside the single bed was actually a window. The window was just about as big as the entire wall. There was no air conditioning and this being May it was a little warm. So the first thing we did was open the window. Right across the street, there were three naked women getting ready in their own room. We tried not to look. Poor Jeff was in the restroom and missed the naked women.

We spent a lot of time roaming around. This vacation happen the weekend after the film festival and we were hoping to run into a celebrity. No such luck. We walked the streets, saw the churches and strolled along the beach. When we arrived at the harbor I insisted we stroll along the docks to look at all the beautiful yachts.

As we came to the end of a dock or pier I am not sure of the correct terminology here, Jeff and Mandy were yelling for me to turn around and go back. I was thinking why would I turn around, I am almost at the end. I was looking forward to sitting at the end of the dock, watching the tides. Just as I came the the last yacht, I noticed a very tanned, very old (over 90) man in a tiny black g-string, he said hello, I said hello. Jeff and Mandy were gone by then. Jeff was so horrified to have been that close to a very old man in a g-string - a g-string so small you could see some hair and maybe a little ... not that I looked - that to this day we tease poor Jeff about it. If you tell him there is a guy in a g-string behind him, he gets the heevie-geevies.

Ah, the beauty of France.