(Love) Balboa on The Promenade
5 – 8 May 2011
Love Balboa hit the French Riviera!!
It all started off with Richard discovering I had a down-escalator phobia… I just can’t take that first step on to it (and the impending doom), especially when my hands are full. Add to that the fact there is a queue of people behind me and there you have it. I wonder if there is a proper medical term?
Everything was going fairly smoothly until we got on the bus in Cannes to get to Mandelieu and the bus driver shut me in the doors, 3 times!!!! I don’t know what his problem was, he just kept pressing the button. I had nowhere to go because Richard was in front of me and I had my case and the bus was packed. After that battering we ended up getting off at the wrong Ibis, so had to get on the bus again (getting-on-bus-phobia begins.) Anyway we got to the right Ibis in the end
The next part of the adventure was direction-gate (because Richard didn’t listen to the little voice, no) and we ended up taking an hour to do a 15 minute walk. Men eh?
Finally at the Thursday night party, a well earned cold beer, seeing old friends and lots of dancing. A great end to a very stressful day.
Opted to volunteer at the event so no lie in for me Friday. Up at 7am after 2 hours sleep laying a dancefloor the size of London (okay slight exaggeration) ready for the weekend. It was great fun though, I made friends, got an admirer (A Frenchie trying to chat me up in Japanese) and got to lay the last square of floor J Back in the room at 11.30 (guess who had only just got up) got some food had 30 minute nap and it was off to workshops!
That evening we had already purchased copious amounts of Rose from the supermarket so got wined up whilst getting ready , listened to a DJ’s funky wedding set (tunes!) and generally just had a laugh til it was time to get dinner – half cut in the restaurant then realised it was nearly midnight and I was working on the bar at 12! Legged it to party, band were sounding fab, no time to change shoes (was wearing high heels) so dropped our stuff and got on the dancefloor for two, drunken but also quite good dances considering the state of us and how fast the band was playing!. They felt good anyway!!!
At midnight I began my bar duty with Jeremie, (my carriage was awaiting) spent an hour moaning with the teachers at the lack of alcohol, it was a dry bar which was a bit shocking and I’m guessing that was what made most people coming to the bar a bit miserable, it was sour face city! Luckily Jeremie and I had a few dances behind the bar and I got to swoon over Jeremy Oth’s arms for most of the hour, which was cool as I had been eyeing them up the previous night. It was actually quite fun probably because I was everso slightly inebriated I lost every ounce of inhibition and flirted with everybody. You only live once!
After bar duty was over it was time for wine (in secret) and dancing, yayyyy! Had an awesome night, the music was so fast; my heels were slowly getting fit for the bin. Great to dance in though. Sat outside with Zack a bit later on and drank a bottle of wine, felt like naught little kids hiding from teachers! It was an appalling/shocking/disastrous state of affairs to be reduced to that but we did well – that’ll teach them to have a few hundred people at a Swing dance party with a dry bar!! We will beat you!
Favourite dances of the night: first 2 with Richard, crazy one with Olivier, near perfect one with Mel, mega fast one with Benoit, drunken one with Zack (I wonder why) and a pretty swish one with Nicolas.
Hardly and sleep again and we were up and out ready for Saturday’s workshops. Favourite class that day wasn’t even a workshop, it was a ‘teach the teachers’ class with Zack and Maryse. Got loads out of that.
After classes we had a few hours to chill, to me that meant soak up some sun!! I baked while Richard went to the supermarket to stock up on that night’s wine and invest in sun cream. When he got back I went to the loo and nearly wet myself although I’d just been, when I saw him when I got back. He had sun cream everywhere, looked like a ghost. I was laughing too much to take a photo else that would be here, he’d bought baby sun cream so it was thick like glue and whitey UV white. Spent a while trying to get it out of his beard, eyebrows, ears etc etc. Highlight of the day for sure.
Had a nice bit of reflexology whilst sun bathing laid out on the grass. (Thanks Richard.)Discovered I have an allergic reaction to aforementioned grass once back in the hotel room, my back was bright red, itchy and lumpy, it looked awful. Then it was time to get ready for the Saturday night party. We tried to get food after the cabaret but to no avail, not one take away or eating establishment open on a Saturday at midnight – crazy. Forced to drink wine instead. It was a bit of a mad night Saturday night, as it was open to the public and so felt a bit ‘strange.’ Dry bar again as well so it lacked a bit of the party vibe that you usually get at these types of events, and wasn’t as good an atmosphere as the parties in venues with bars.
That said, it was still a good night, I did a lot of leading so got some practice in (I was following in the workshops.) Highlight of Saturday night was dancing with Jeremy, it got off to a bad start because I had forgotten how to follow haha but ended good then we swapped roles and he was helping me with leading outs and ins, thanks J, I got a lot out of that.
Sunday workshops were really good, though everyone was absolutely shattered by then! Favourite class was the last one with Peter and Mia, and then rather than the outside dancing we did a spot of eating and sunbathing, always a good thing.
The Sunday night party was very good, a great end to the weekend but didn’t want it to be over! Highlight of Sunday - having a ciggy out back with Neil and Richard talking in Geordie accents pretending to do a video interview about QBF and it made me choke I was laughing so much. Lucky that night we got a lift back to the hotel with Olivier (thanks Olivier) that saved my little legs.
Monday meant Bus-day (eeek!) but we got to Cannes okay with no injuries this time. The train to Nice was rather pleasant as well, the 1.5 hour walk to hotel wasn’t. Richard insisted on walking as ‘it wasn’t far’ which was the understatement of the century. It was very hot, we were lugging cases, it was the day after a long dance weekend, feet hurt, I was shattered and we didn’t have a clue where we were going! Turns out we should have got off the train about 2 stops before or could’ve got a tram from station to outside hotel door. Cue foul mood! The hotel was a bit of a disappointment too, on 6th floor with a small window that didn’t open, it was unbelievably stuffy and hot.
After a much needed power nap we got ready to go out and that evening, we finally saw some real promenade! We were looking for restaurants that had been recommended to us by the hotel and admiring the sea and the boats and bumped into Sven, a fellow BOTP attendee! He videoed us doing some Balboa on the Real Promenade and off we set, admiring the scenery, walking round, playing stone skimming in the sea (I was useless,) I got in the sea as far as I dared, it was beautiful and warm, the sun was just setting and I wished we had spent more time there. We found the restaurant and eat together then Sven had to go. Before we left I put a QBF flyer in the wine bottle we had just consumed and we went to the sea and watched it drift away. We stayed out and decided to explore Nice with the intention of getting hammered.
And hammered we were!! The remainder of the night gradually turned into haze and then memory loss, we were in an Irish pub/bar that seemed to be frequented by Nice’s rich mid 20’s and then an outside bar who had gypsy Jazz playing on the radio (cue dancing) then we ended up in a club that had a live band at 3am, after that we don’t remember much, except for Richard cutting his leg where he walked into a bollard! No idea how we found the hotel.
Woke up at 10.30 the next morning, no alarm, lucky I did or we’d have missed the flight! Understandably we were still drunk, so getting ready wasn’t too bad, the bus to the airport wasn’t much fun but on our arrival we saw a few famous faces, those arriving for the Cannes Film Festival.
What a fantastic weekend, full of dancing, friends, adventures, fun. Thanks to all those mentioned in this review, without you it wouldn’t have been so special and memorable.
