Eventually, after a cheesy "Underwater Aquavision" tour of the harbor and some casual shopping, we moved on to Nice. Nice is a little west of Monaco, and is the largest town on the French Riviera, and the fifth largest in France. It seemed rather dingy and dirty and run-down after the artificial beauty of Monaco, but it was still quite, well, nice. We only saw a couple of Ferrari's.

We spent a leisurely few days there. We went to the english-language cinema one night, and ended up picking something called "Jeffrey" from a group of films that we had never heard of (and City of Angels, which we had no interest in - Nicolas Cage makes a great alcoholic and a good chemist, but as an action hero he is terrible and I didn't expect any better as an angel. By all reports, City of Angels is far inferior to the film of which it is a remake, Wings of Desire. End Obligatory Patri Film Commentary), which had Patrick Stewart and turned out to be a gay comedy. Not gay in the traditional sense of merry, but gay as in Patrick Stewart is in interior decorator whose HIV-positive boyfriend dances in Cats. Before the film we had a slightly disturbing incident - don't believe those who tell you the French aren't stuck up snobs. ThatUs right, its time for a "Lame Frog Anecdote."

We were waiting in the lobby for the ticket window to open, and there was a french lady, in her thirties, with a few teens and another parent. She started jabbering at us in French, and I did my "no parley francais". She said "You speak english?" I nodded. She said "What movie are you here to see?" I replied, in a standard american accent, nothing weird in my voice, "Jeffrey." She immediately turned to her group and said, in a low, gruff imitation of my voice: "Jeffrey", and they all erupted in peals of laughter. She did it a couple more times, saying "Jeffrey" in what I guess is what a fucking frog snob considers a mockery of our accent, and laughing. She briefly turned to me and said "sorry", once, insincerely, which actually made it ruder than if she had just ignored us. I mean, if she had treated us totally as nonpersons, that would have been less offensive, or if she seemed ignorant of her rudeness, but she was actually aware of what a bitch she was being and didnUt care. Twice more in the next few minutes, as other members of their group, both teens and adults, arrived, she repeated the story (in french, of course), which I could identify by the parley-vous bits, and the punchline of "Jeffrey", at which they would all laugh. Bitch. I mean, we all joke about other peoples accents, I was to spend half my time in Germany imitating the way they speak, but to specifically make fun of an individual to their face, well, thats a rudeness that crosses international lines.

I should have given her the finger, but I was too shocked at the blatant rudeness to want to be rude in return until after we had watched our movie. Unfortunately they were in a different movie, which got out at a different time, so I didn't get to be rude back. The other movie, by the way, was City of Angels - hopefully that was punishment enough.

Another notable activity was that Treasa and I rented bikes for a day, and biked west for a few miles to a random beach. There we hung out and tried sailing, renting a Hobie Cat (a little catamaran) for an hour. Neither of us had ever really sailed before, so we were pretty clueless at first, but eventually we (OK, treasa) figured out how to make it go. Sort of. We could only make it go in the two directions perpendicular to the wind, which meant that we could mostly just move back and forth along a line. By the end we were almost getting it tho, and it was starting to become fun for me. Treasa was having a blast the whole time, since she was willing to just play with ropes and see what happened, whereas I, for some reason, wanted to understand the theory of what I was supposed to be trying to do before I tried.

Treasa's flight home on sunday morning was from London, so we had to somehow get her there. We went to a travel agent, and found out that tickets for sunday morning were sold out, we had to fly her saturday at 5PM. Since she was going to have to hang out for that long, I got a ticket too. We flew to London on saturday, after doing laundry and getting rejected by the Nice Casino for having sandals on (I had an uninteresting number of Francs left, and wanted to either lose them or win enough to be worth changing). We had been planning to go out and party in London, but when we found a hotel, checked in, settled down, and turned on the TV, a great movie - "Heavenly Creatures" was just starting, so we decided to watch it. Well, I think its a great movie, but if you have a problem with graphic death by bludgeoning of someone who doesn't really even deserve it, it isn't for you.

This morning (Sunday) we got up very early and Treasa went off to the airport. I then went to Legoland, an adventure about which you will hear more next time I write...

And finally, a note on the sadness of americans. Its ok that Americans don't give a shit about the World Cup. Thats fine, just like its fine for them to not care about the Superbowl. But if any of you saw Jay Leno a night or two ago, he made fun of the entire idea that anyone could care about the world cup. It was pretty fucking pathetic.

Oh, and a note on itinerary - I am currently in London and briefly on my own again, where I will be for another few days before going to Pamplona to meet Mats and Riyad for Pamplona's Running of the Bulls. Tomorrow I think I'm going to try to get into wimbledon. Wish me luck.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention my adventures with the law. A few weeks before leaving for europe, I got a speeding ticket in california. The ticket didn't have any address or phone number or anything useful on it, so I didn't do anything about it, figuring they would send me mail letting me know what I needed to do. Well, I got email from my mom a few days ago saying that I had been forwarded a letter saying that if I didn't show up in court on June 22nd, they might get pissed and do things like suspending my driver's license and/or issuing a warrant for my arrest, and that no, it couldn't be settled by mail. For a speeding ticket! What the fuck? Ain't that just a fine? Stupid fucking courts. I mean, I was only going 112 in a 70...

The funniest thing about it is that I hadn't mentioned the ticket to my mom, and the letter apparently just listed a citation violation, and not what the crime actually was, so my poor mother basically just got this random letter about my needing to appear in court or else! Oops. Thats right folks, life as a parent of Patri *is* as rough as you thought.

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