South of France – Part 4
Thursday
After our wonderful evening at La Palme d’Or, we slept in until 11, then got up, packed quickly, checked out and headed to Nic’s father’s house. Many of Nic’s friends from all over Europe came down for the weekend to party. Christine and I had a great time. We met many new people and just enjoyed relaxing in the sun and playing in the pool. Nic’s girlfriend, Aurore, made a nice pasta dinner and then the booze came out.
As Nic and his dad are Finnish and Finns love their saunas, it was inevitable that we’d end up in the sauna. Since there were more people than seats in the sauna, the girls went first while the men stayed upstairs and were perfect gentlemen and didn’t try to peak when they jumped in the pool afterward. OK, maybe there were some attempts at peaking, but no one saw anything. After the girls were done, it was the boys’ turn. Somehow, the jumps into the pool to cool off turned into a game of 500 followed by flips off the pool cover. You learn not to take a swimsuit for granted when you don’t quite get all the way around on a flip and certain man parts hit the water hard.
Friday
Jeff flew in from Amsterdam early Friday morning, so I had to get up and pick him up from the Nice airport. We thought we were going to miss the boat ride, but everyone was running late so we headed back to Nic’s dad’s before heading to Cannes for a ride on Stig’s boat. 10 of us cruised out into the bay and anchored off a small island. The water was incredibly clear and we had some nice weather. Flips and dives off the front of the boat and a little swimming before heading back in. The afternoon was more swimming and pool volleyball in Stig’s pool. We decided to make it an early night to bed as we had to be up early for golf the next morning.
Saturday
Met up at Stig’s at 7:30 and played golf at his club, Four Seasons Terre Blanche. Very nice. Since we didn’t have room for our clubs in the car, Jeff, Christine and I had to play with rentals. The rental clubs were Taylor Made and other than the wedges being short and hard to use, it was a nice set.
Nic, Jeff, Icaro and I have a little golf league and we decided to make this round our 3rd major of the year: The Riviera Championship. Icaro has been tearing up the league this year, having lost only once (to me) and winning the 2 previous major championships. That made Nic, Jeff and I more determined to win this one. Unfortunately for Nic, he was playing against his dad in a side bet so he had no chance of winning it all. Jeff had a horrible day and couldn’t get things going. Icaro started poorly as well, but managed to fight his way around the course for a 108. I shot 100 to tie Icaro on net score, but won the major on the tie breaker of low gross. Christine played pretty well and finished with a 123, which was good enough to finish 8th out of 9.
After the round, we had a quick bite to eat at the club before heading back to the house for more swimming and a sauna before Nic’s birthday party. Good food (except for the beef) and good conversation with loads of new people offset the fact we had to leave a bit early so we could pack and get ready for the long drive home.
Sunday
We got up at 7, checked out and got on the road by 7:30 to get Jeff to Nice airport. After dropping Jeff off, we began the 1200+ km drive home. With some detours and some minor traffic delays, we made it home around 9pm. We thanked oma and opa for taking care of Marcus, put Marcus to bed and then crashed ourselves. It was a great vacation.
Loading...