What a Weekend!

Wow! After the weekend I just had, going back to work (on my long day, too) actually felt like a break!

Last Friday, we were woken up by next-door-neighbor/mother-from-hell's screaming at her children. We attempted to bang loudly on the wall, but it seems very thick and solid. She must really have a thrash-metal voice! Friday afternoon, it rained and rained and rained. It rained all day long; when I headed home at 3:00pm it hailed! Then, back at the apartment, we cleaned, since le Parisien and his girlfriend were due to arrive the next day at 9:00am. Unfortunately for them, the 14 hours of rain had flooded the airport, so they arrived late, around noon. They came back to the apartment and we ate lasagna, and then we headed out to be tourists.

We toured le Site de l'Ancien Château again, and then we visited Vieux Nice and the newer Pedestrian Zone and the main shopping street, Avenue Jean Médecin. Le Parisien loves to shop, so we went in to almost every store we saw. Then, we ate dinner in town at a Japanese Steakhouse, "Zen." It's the kind where they cook everything in front of you, and le Parisien fell in love. The cook catapulted pieces of shrimp into our mouths and cut lobster tails with such amazing dexterity that le Parisien called about five of his friends to describe the action.

Afterwards we went to a bar with live music, the Thor. It was rather smokey, and there was a drunk "dragueur" who would dance to all of the songs and play air drums in between hitting on any woman he saw who wasn't holding on to a man. I had my hand in Jube's all night, and the Lisper was pressed up tight against le Parisien to avoid his advances. We saw Oneika, who told us about her latest news, and le Parisien was very charmed--"You must have fun with a girl like that around!" was his summation.

We woke up relatively late on Sunday and went to Cannes. The weather was wonderful, but since I was still very tired and my feet were killing me from our Saturday afternoon/evening, I was in a bad mood. We had fun walking the Croisette, though, and took some photos of the Carlton Hotel (see above).

After lunch, we went to Monaco. Yes, yes, I know that I said Monaco "wasn't very charming," and I wasn't too thrilled about going, but it was le Parisien's vacation, so we went. And once we got there, we went up to the old part of town, where the palace is, and were very pleasantly surprised! It is, in fact, a cute little village, with a huge (and beautiful!) aquarium/oceanographic museum, a cathedral, and of course the Princely Palace. Le Parisien bought tons of postcards to mail them with Monegasque stamps. Jube and I were standing in the middle of the central place when an extremely short motorcade came by--one police scooter, one expensive black car, and another expensive black car following it. That's right--I saw Prince Albert!* At least, I'm pretty sure it was him . . . I saw a bald man in the back of the second car.

Le Parisien was so busy writing postcards that he didn't see the prince. He took such a long time that Jube and I were reduced to making fools of ourselves right outside of the palace, in the hopes that Albert would come out to watch. Here is a photo of Jube en train de faire le con:



You can see the lower, "uncharming" part of Monaco in the background. Then we went to the grocery store (exceptionally open on Sunday's for Christmas!) to buy shrimp for le Parisien's famous carry crevette. Yum!

*I was listening to the Riviera Radio morning show on the way to work the other day, and they had Prince Albert as a guest. I was amazed to hear that he has a perfect American accent--and then kicked myself! I mean, come on, I'm sure Princess Grace didn't speak with some weirdo European accent with her kids at home . . .