A Real French Manicure

Re-cap of June 1 and 2:

ON Thursday we left Cassis and drove down to the Cote de Azure, towards St. Maxime and St. Tropez, to a little town called St. Aygulf. We checked into our small hotel and then drove on down to St. Tropez.

St. Tropez was amazingly full of money!!! The marine was full of multi-million dollar yachts. We shopped around the town for a few hours, found the rocky point that showed off a glowing sunset, and then selected a marina-front restaurant for dinner. Our waiter, Antonino, really wanted to take Mandy out after dinner, "if Maman eees o.k. with dotter being safe vid good man." We said we'd be back the next day and left giggling. He didn't seem to understand her being engaged, or the big rock she sported on her finger. Poor Antonino.

On Friday, I woke up feeling not-so-good again. I had coughed a lot in the night and knew this bug was really starting to take hold. I had my voice back, but the coughing is getting significant. It looked like rain outside, so we decided to do laundry and get our nails done instead of sightsee anywhere (we were definitely NOT going back to St. Tropez). I had a really honest-to-goodness French manicure. A beautiful french girl gave me the white-tipped French manicure, all the while trying to converse with me in French. How cool is that?! She did a great job too. She was sweet as she was trying to communicate with the few English she knew. We both did a lot of hand waving and hemming and hawing trying to think of words or point to pictures or items that might help explain what we were trying to say. It was a blast and somehow it all managed to work out.