It was a brief outing, a night on the town with a small group of friends. As the bus rounded the bends and curves of the coastal highway, cliffs fell off to the side with waves bombarding the coast line. “Call Me Maybe,” blared from the speakers as we all danced and sang along. We stopped for a candlelit dinner in a small window front restaurant overlooking the vista. Fancy dinner plates were passed around with joyous conversation intermingling between the girls. I felt so grown-up, so adult, all done up in a dress, sipping wine at a water front eatery in Monaco. Afterwards, we headed to the world renowned Monte Carlo for some gambling (read: 20 euros bet sadly lost within 5 minutes) and architecture ogling. We only had admission to the three front rooms of the Monte Carlo open to the general public, but we peeked through doors as they swung closed and around corners behind red velvet curtains, trying to witness the “real” gamblers. It was a short lived experience, due to our 20 euro budget limit at black jack, but I was equally entertained by the people watching. Ladies in long gowns with pearl lined necks and flashy diamonds glided across the rooms, men in tuxedos touting cocktails meandered around the tables heading towards to back rooms. The night ended romantically, as Whitney found a foreign coin on the steps leading up to the casino. We joked that it was our good luck coin, even though we had lost our money just an hour before. When we went our separate ways, each to our own home state after our European adventure, she hammered and drilled for days until our good luck coin morphed into a beautiful and unique ring. I wear that ring on a silver chain to this day, and remember our first summer together and our love that was at that time just beginning to bud and grow.
