june 21 - 3 meals in 3 countries

disclaimer: we've been in Florence for 2 days. bikes are boxed and I am blogging late as usual.

on june 21...we had breakfast in room and left nice. climbed into Monaco, which G says is one mile by one mile. had lunch overlooking the marina. not as many ships as in st. tropez, but two of them had helicopters, which is two more than st. tropez. also saw too many ferraris to count and a Z06 corvette with Illinois plates?!

climbed a monsterous hill up to the casinos. saw a $1 million Ferrari Enzo, a ton of Bentleys and a a $300,000 Mercedes. climbed an even bigger hill out of town. it was probably >15 degrees incline. crossed border into italy, which is really more like crossing from IL to WI. There is a vacent border station, but that's it.

Made it to San Remo for the night and scored a cool hotel room with a balcony facing the sea. The place had a great rooftop deck also.

went looking for dinner, but didn't see much that was open. did, however, find the old part of town that consisted of these little, tunnel-like passages similar to Venice. who knew? finally settled on some random place called 'Dick Turpin's' for dinner. turned out to be fantastic. G had a lemon rissoto that was out of this world and the sangria (yes, in Italy) was the best of the trip.

introduced Ben to the wonders of gelato (Italian ice cream). the key with this stuff is to only eat from a place that makes it on site. you can quickly tell by the gelato itself. if it is rough and a little unprofessional looking, it's probably the good stuff. if it is smooth and polishe dlike baskin robbins, steer clear. it would still be better than the crap at home, but not nearly what you came for.