Philip J Mikal

Meryl and I were married at a private residence located on the South Sister of the Twin Sisters, the highest peaks in Solano County, California. To our surprise, it’s also the virtual set for Royalton Industries in the 2008 movie Speed Racer.

Before our wedding:

In the movie:

Meryl and I are mentioned on 7×7 magazine’s Social Studies Blog. Thanks to Drew Altizer for making us look good!

Tomás turned two years old in November and we got him a new toy pheasant. It’s become his favorite toy.

DJ Culture

The DJ Culture section of my website is no longer maintained.

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music”

- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989.

Our driver picked us up in the early afternoon for an Ambien fueled hop to Nice, France with a three hour stopover in London. The weekend seemed to disappear with all the timezone changes, but we finally checked in to our hotel, the Beau Rivage, just off the Promenade D’Anglais.

Being that Sunday nights aren’t the best for eating out in Nice, we ate at Brasserie Flo, which is open late. Flo is in a faded turn-of-the-20th-century restaurant near place Massena. Its high ceilings are covered with their original frescoes and the kitchen sits enclosed in glass above the patrons, almost like a stage.

…and then on to Corsica.

The grocery delivery to provision our boat arrived in the late afternoon. After a quick breifing, SV Jacar left Ajaccio, Corsica. Winds were rather lite, so I motor-sailed us south down the coast about four hours to Propriano.

Propriano has a beautiful natural harbor that while once was quite successful, fell victim to ongoing pirate raids. The local government has rebuilt over the recent 15 years, but the town maintains it’s unfinished appearance. Here we had our first taste of the wonderful Corsican ice cream at La Gelateria De La Marine, just a few steps from our boat.

Continuing our sail south, we hit the only rough seas of the trip head on in about 20 knots of wind. I navigated closer to shore for calmer weather just in time for an early evening swim and drink of local vodka in the Golfo di Murtoli. Murtoli is a popular destination for cruising yachts in the south of Corsica. Some neighboring Italian men, also anchored in Murtoli, swooped in on their dinghy and tried to charm Meryl and Christine while I was below deck!

It was a quick trip from Murtoli to Bonifacio, which everyone agreed was the best stop on our trip. Bonifacio enjoys a superbly isolated location at the southernmost tip of Corsica. The town is hidden by a peninsula that creates a natural harbor. Sailing in, Bonifacio slowly reveals itself from the dazzling white limestone cliffs and is unlike any other town in Corsica. As we came in early in the afternoon, the harbormaster gave us a great slip. Literally steps from dozens of restaurants and shops. After getting settled, the 148 foot MY Atlantic Goose arrived, causing quite a stir.

The main part of Bonifacio is basically the marina and the haute ville. The haute ville is a maze of narrow streets built into the top of the cliffs overlooking the marina. Most restaurants seem to serve pizza, which I continued a trend of eating almost everywhere we went. More suprising was that every pizza was great – Corsica’s close proximity to Italy has left it heavily influenced by their neighbor’s taste in food.

We spent two full days in Bonifacio. The second was mostly exploring the town and a dinghy excursion to some neaby caves and snorkeling off the southern cliffs. If you are ever in Corsica or Sardinia, I highly recommend spending at least a day here in one of the most romantic towns in the Med.

We tried to catch an earlier flight out of Ajaccio with no luck and finished our boating journey walking around the old town. Most of it was closed in the afternoon and we sat to drink Perrier with mint at Fashion Coffee. Before heading to the airport, we strolled around shopping for clothes while I had yet another ice cream.

…finishing up in Monaco & Cannes.

One of the great things about the south of France is that almost every taxi is a Mercedes, even Nice had tons of new Jaguars. The drivers were all well dressed, extremely helpful and drove very, very fast.

We stayed at the hip Hi Hotel in the center of Nice. Hi is inside an otherwise plain building that is the work of one of Philippe Starck’s former associates, Matali Crasset. Rooms offer varying themes, with Meryl and I getting the Happy Day & Night room, one large room – including bathroom – that converts with folding doors into a lounge of sorts.

In the evening we sped down to Monaco’s new port for a wonderful dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant. Three hours later at 1:30am, it was time for roulette at the Casino de Monte Carlo. It was really quite beautiful, but a little dissappointing to see so few people here on a Saturday night.

Our final day was at the Festival International de la Plaisance, the Cannes Boat Show. There were 100s of boats, including some new models from Jeanneau that I’ve been looking at. The old port of Cannes was littered with multi-million dollar power boats, which unfortunately they make a bit difficult to get on. Luckily we did see a few of them, and had a great tour of the Palmer Johnson boat Cover Drive. The asking price was around 12.5 million Euro.

I was excited to spot the MY Giant motoring into the harbor. Giant is a super luxurious salvage icebreaker conversion that charters for U$300,000 per week.

We forgot to eat lunch and instead had Pina Coladas at the Havana Cafe on the Croisette. Our waitress recommended another good restaurant, Barbarella, which was a perfect end to an excellent vacation.

Check out the photos.

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