On to Monaco

Airport posting this afternoon as I wait at my gate. Flying to Munich, then Nice, then taking a ride over to Monaco where I’ll be camped for the next good while helping report on the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final for the PokerStars blog (about which I was writing last Friday).

This’ll end the 11th season of the EPT, with a huge series packed with side action. There are 78 events on the schedule all told, although a few of the numbered ones are satellites. I believe that’s a new standard for the number of events listed in a single EPT series, and I’m getting in a little early to help report on some of them prelims.

I mentioned last week how Vera and I had a chance before to visit Nice, which is the closest I’ve been to Monaco before. Was during that year we lived in France, spending the better part of it in a tiny closet of an apartment up in rainy, gray-skied Lille in the north. Needless to say, the coastal city looking out on the Mediterranean offered quite a contrast, providing some nice, sunny memories from near the end of our année abroad.

We were on a tight budget that year (one reason for the très petit living quarters), and so had to pick our spots, vacation-wise, not to mention save our francs whenever we did decide to take the TGV somewhere different. That’s right -- francs. Gives you an idea at least how long ago that was.

Already know in advance I’ll be spending more on this trip -- a lot more -- with all of the stories of 25-euro sandwiches I’ve been peppered with already. I suppose I was conditioned somewhat for the experience after the PCA in January, where my colleague Adam Hampton quipped upon spending $3.50 for a piece of fruit: “Not since the Garden of Eden has a man named Adam paid a higher price for an apple.”

Hate leaving Vera and all our four-legged friends on the farm, but I am looking forward to another new adventure, one that might revive some memories of old ones, too.

Talk to you next six time zones from here.