For my 30th birthday Jamie took me to the French Riviera, where we stopped in Marseilles, St. Tropez, Cannes, Eze and Monaco. Southern France is a beautiful part of the world, and I highly recommend visiting the area so you can see what I mean.
My most memorable experience was not walking the marina in St. Tropez, it wasn’t visiting the world-famous Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco and it wasn’t the breath-taking Mediterranean views along our drive on the coast. All were incredible, and each offered insight into why southern France is a destination for so many people over the summer months.
My most memorable experience came on the morning of my birthday, when I got behind the wheel of a Ferrari. It was a red 360 Spider, and it’s a special creature – the car stunning to look at, but that’s not all. Its 400 horsepower catapults the car to 60mph in about 4.5 seconds and its handling allows you to throw the car in to just about any corner without worrying. Oh, and the sound of the 3.6 litre V8 sent a tingle down my spine every time I touched the gas pedal.
The fantastic thing about this experience was the perfect alignment of what I wanted to do with the car and what I was allowed to do with the car – for me it was simple, I wanted to abuse a $250,000 super car. I wanted to make it go as fast as I possibly could and I wanted to make the car corner with little consideration for any consequences. Lucky for me, the French man who rode with me was happy to comply. We were a team. He pointed out the police station, told me where we should ‘keep the engine quite’, guided me through the corners and told me when I could ‘really get on it’.
This was a great way to begin my fourth decade of being alive. Maybe after another four I’ll own one of these beautiful machines!
