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I woke up at 4:45 AM and by 5:00 was back to sleep, waking up

again at 8:50 by a buzzing from my phone telling me I had a message from Irene. I fell back to sleep until 10:30 when I was awakened by a call from Celia. I really needed my sleep so I got some more. I decided to skip my run here so we could get started. We had some coffee with the owner of the place who finally remembered our drinking bout four years ago. He is a nice guy and he bought our morning drinks. The hotel also had free internet on the computer so I went to AOL Anywhere and did my email. It is a very lovely spot that is hard to leave but finally we checked out of the hotel and headed out at 1:40. Before we got out of town we got gas at AGIP for $5.67/gal. Marcia drove the 211 miles east crossing the French border FINALLY entering France on our 19th day in Europe - not exactly as we had planned.

We arrived in Nice at 3:15 and could not find anywhere to park. So we went to the hotel we stayed at in 2001, the Splendid Hotel, and told the guy we wanted to make reservations. They kept the car there and I asked the guy inside where we could buy phone chips and he let us go and get them.

At 4:15 we finally found this place called Easy Phone and I bought two French chips at $38 a piece and he told us we could buy top up cards at any Tabac shop.

After that we had a cappuccino at La Trattoria and Marcia stayed there while I went to the Tabac down the street and bought two �50 top ups, one for each phone. I also bought a Nice pin to add to my collection. We had already been in Cannes in 2001 and figured due to the weeks delays we should keep moving on to a city we haven't seen. We headed out at 5:15 and Marcia drove the next 25 miles east to Cannes and we arrived at 6:15 and found (by GPS) the hotel Irene had recommended and booked for us, Hotel Chateau de la Tour [10 Av Font de Veyre,

+33-(0)4-93-90-5252]. The guy that checked us in (Christian) said he could not find the reservation Irene made on the internet but would honor the �170 rate I quoted him.

At 8:15 I had a cappuccino in the Hotel bar area free thanks to Christian. It was now time to do my run so at 8:40 I took off and ran to the beach (plage).

It was a long haul back to the hotel but after changing we headed

to the beach restaurant area we were recommended to have dinner. At 9:40 we finally settled on Restaurant Le Madeleine [13 Blvd Jean Hibert,

+33-(0)4-93-39-72222].

We had Aqua minerale con gas (gaseous) along with some house vin. Marcia had cold shrimp c Aioli sauce followed by Sole meniure, then cheese (chevres), followed by strawberries with cream.

I had linguini fruit de mer (mussels), then canard (duck) with peaches, followed by potatoes. For dessert I had iles flotantes (floating island).

It was all so good I actually left a tip. We found this place only by accident and thought it would be just a tourist trap but what a pleasant surprise. Our luck is maybe changing. After we left we ambled down the street and at 1:30 we had a cappuccino and limoncello at Le Tartar. At 11:45 we drove back to the hotel.

I started to work with MS FrontPage and Word and messages came up telling me I had to register with Microsoft before I could use them. At 1:15 I made two international calls on the French chip to America to speak to someone in India to give me my unlock codes. The calls cost me �6.60 ($8). I was finally ready to get back online. I went to bed at 2:30.