Anita and I arrived in Monte Carlo at night and quickly found our hotel after a quick dinner at a restaurant near the train station. I was very content with the hotel room Anita booked us….EXCEPT HOW BAD I RAN THERE!!!@ AHHHHHH!!!! When I arrived at the hotel I turned on my computer and pulled up multiple 25/50 NL and PLO games and ended up quickly starting down about $20,000 to $25,000. Fortunately by the end of the sessions I rebounded slightly for a small loss of $10,000. I haven’t been used to losing lately, but a $10,000 loss still wasn’t a big deal.

The next day we were planning on roaming the streets of Monte Carlo and heading over to the famous Monte Carlo Casino where multiple movies have been filmed, including the latest James Bond Movie: Casino Royale. Before leaving the house, I saw one of my favorite PLO fish multi tabling 25/50 and 50/100 PLO, so of course I had to join in! I end up playing about a 4 hour session that had me losing about $40,000. I decided to quit because it was impossible to win a hand. We ordered room service and sat on our beautiful balcony overlooking the Mediterranean Sea with the mountains to the left and right. It was absolutely, stunningly beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a panoramic view like that before, especially from the leisure of my own hotel balcony with chairs, a table, delicious sandwiches and fruit with my wonderful wife. Anyway, we hung out there for a little while and I decided it was time to redeem myself and start up another session as the games were just incredibly good and deeply irresistible. I played a rather short session of 10 tabling or so and got $10,000 back and quit, as we had to go out and buy train tickets for the following day from Nice to Barcelona and Barcelona to Madrid before the train station closed. We wandered aimlessly around for a couple hours, snapping some nice photos, visiting the shopping center underground in the middle of the city, scoping out expensive cars parked along the street, and walked through the surprisingly non-busy Monte Carlo Casino. On a whim, I decided to ask if they had any poker, but they said they don’t have any. They must only have it during the EPT Final. We returned to our room and without going into too much detail, I ended up punting off another $60,000 or so in 25/50 No Limit Hold Em, while winning $18,000 in 50/100 PLO. I was actually staging a comeback at one point and had myself down about $25,000 I believe, but within a window of 15 minutes of time, I lost $30,000 straight and decided to shut it down for the night as I had an early train to catch the next morning. Net loss was somewhere in the $80,000 range, as nowadays I don’t like to count my losses too much as I think it may depress me a little more than it should if I know the exact outcome.

We caught the train as scheduled and arrived in Barcelona where we spent the night. The next morning, we were supposed to have a simple itinerary composed of one train about four or five hours long straight to Madrid. When we arrived at the Barcelona train station for departure, we found out something was wrong with the tracks or something, and we needed to take a bus to another train station to catch a different train going to Madrid. Okay, surprise, no problem, we can handle that. We take a twenty minute bus ride to a bus station where we end up having to switch buses and get on yet another bus for TWO HOURS! Now, remember, Anita and I have been traveling all over Europe for three months now, we have quite a lot of luggage, seven bags in total; therefore, making switching the luggage beneath the buses in the compartments not very fun at all. We finally arrive to a train station in the middle of nowhere where we board with our first class Eurail passes and rail another four hours until we arrive in Madrid. We quickly check into our hotel and set off for the second best museum in all of Europe (second best to the Louvre in Paris). They had some great paintings by Velaquez, Goya, El Greco, and a few Rembrandts in the mix. That night we had reservations to see a native Spanish Flamenco dance to the midnight show where we also ate tapas and had some wine. The show was quite entertaining and the guitarists and dancers definitely knew how to have some fun.

Right now, we’re on the airplane going non-stop from Madrid, Spain to Miami, Florida where my father is picking us up and driving us home to Orlando. I have a lot of matters to attend to when I get home with some logistical stuff and I also look forward to relaxing with good old American food on my couch while playing online poker and seeing a few buddies! Hopefully the remainder of my trip is safe (about halfway through), and I’ll be home in a few hours.