189K - 117Miles
Finally pulled out about 10:30am, the rain having stopped by that point. Easy drive down the coast, looking forward to crossing back into France. One, of all the places I've visited, I think France the prettiest, and two, in France I have a cellular connection for the iPad and can get online from wherever I wish. No more waiting to find the McDonald's.
Pulled into France and a few short miles further, Monaco. Wow, talk about a beautiful place! You can judge from the pictures. The problem is the road is way up and the Principality is way down. And I mean way down. I rode dirt bikes for a lot of years. Never was all that good at it, but learned a lot about handling a bike and taking hills, etc. But my little Can Am weighed in at about 250 lbs. Betsy is a little rotund, if you know what I mean. She comes in at a whopping 875 lbs., dry. Put my lard butt on her and you're approaching immovable force, immovable object territory. Place all that on a hairpin turn to the right (the inside track), sloping downward sharply, where you can't see if traffic is coming at you, and you have a situation I could do without. Forever. But we managed to get down the hill the slow way, contra-gravity, if you know what I mean.
At the bottom the traffic makes L.A. look like a desert ride; white-knuckle all the way. Parking spaces are, as in all these old European cities, non-existent, or not there, pick one. I wanted to stop and take some sea level pictures, perhaps find the Royal Residence, but, after a couple near misses with a few of the kamikaze drivers here I decided Betsy and I both would be better off somewhere else. So, we booked it up the hill, toward Cannes. Hope my premier is successful.
Good weather lasted until I got back on the slab. Then the rain started; a nice drizzling, soak-everything sort of rain. Didn't do the riding togs badly, they still needed a further washing, but, with the relatively warm temperatures and high humidity (doesn't get much higher than 100%, does it?), my goggles and glasses fogged up badly again. I really miss that pull down visor now that I'd gotten used to it. Gotta get that guy replaced as soon as I get back home.
I have tentative plans to meet a friend and her family in Saint-Raphael, but can find no reasonable room rates there. In fact, you can barely find unreasonable ones. So, going on line, I find a room at the Holiday Inn Garden Court for $150/night so I book it and head in out of the rain. Murphy's Law is alive and well. My GPS can't find the address so I pull out the new one and it can't find it either. I finally figure out an intersection and program that in. But, I'm not through yet, on the way the GPS is a little slow telling me which way to bear so I veer right when I should have veered left, and end up back on the toll road with 6.5 kilometers before I can turn around and ride 6.5 kilometers back all in this drenching, low visibility rain. Murphy, let go of me!
Made it in, got the room, got caught up a little on the blog, and made plans to meet Marie-Line and her family for lunch tomorrow. Altogether, a pretty good day, leaving out the rain.
Betsy, above it all...over Monte Carlo.
I mentioned it was "down," right?
This guy was so big he couldn't get into the harbor.
Really a beautiful spot. Fit for a princess...and was.
Jean d'Arc - Downtown Cannes
Cannes beach - rather early on a Sunday morning.
I really like the look of this guy. Wish I'd have been there when he left the quay.
The happiest days in a boat owner's life: The day he buys it, and the day he sells it.
Definition:
Boat - A hole in the water into which money is poured.
But if I could have one, this is much like what I'd want. Only a little bigger and more capable of handling the open sea.
Of course, this isn't bad either.
Everywhere a boat!
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