The Mistral / Cavaliere / Cavalaire

Sometime during the night the wind REALLY began to blow, howl, and roar... GIANT gusts of wind battered the house, trees, and everything.  The weather report indicated that it would likely keep up all day, and rain was very likely.  It felt like the gusts reached 50 mph!  Click the following to read more about the mistral.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistral_%28wind%29

With that the state of things after breakfast we decided to venture to Cavalaire to do a little gambling.  We had been to Cavalaire on previous occasions and enjoyed it.

The first time we went we mixed the name of the town up with another town.  We arrived in a town named Cavaliere and looked all over for the casino.  (The Casino is also the name of a major grocery store chain in France.)    Unable to locate the casino, I popped into a hotel to ask for directions.  The man must have been used to being asked the question because he just pointed in a direction and then pronounced the names of the two towns.  I understood "ici Cavaliere", the gesture pointing down the road, and the "CAVALAIRE" he said slowly and loudly as if he were weary from all the tourists confusion between the two towns.  To this day I still have trouble differentiating the two towns and could not pronounce them if I had to.  I just remember that the town ending in -aire is where the casino is located.  Both are very pretty seaside towns, but in one you can gamble and the other you can't.

Gambling turned out to be a good choice for such a rotten rainy and windy day.  It turned out that the casino had very good food... so good in fact that locals made reservations to each lunch there.  Gambling was good... and by good I mean that I broke even almost exactly and Skip actually ended up on the plus side.

Pictures of two of my "big" wins:

The wind was still howling when we finished gambling.  In fact, the wind continued all that night, ALL day today.  So, we decided to go back to the casino.  Again, we had good luck and a very nice lunch with wine "on the house".  Unlike gambling in the US, guests are not usually "comped" with food or beverages.  So you can imagine our surprise when our server told us that our wine was "in the house".  We again broke even or came out a little ahead with our gaming.  The drive home was again VERY windy and rainy.  A check of the weather forecast suggests that the wind is predicted to continue through tonight.  Here's hoping that the weather will improve tomorrow!  Tomorrow is our last full day in Bormes and we really would like to go to the market in La Lavandou tomorrow before we leave for Cannes on Friday.