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.