Cannes Film Festival.....

It's almost that time of year again, where the Cote d'Azur becomes the French equivalent of the Hollywood Hills and Tinsletown, where wanna-be starlets suddenly find themselves in 2,000 euro a night rooms with dubious middle-aged 'producers' and the Croisette becomes the biggest runway event this side of Milan fashion week.

Imagine bling, and then multiply that by 100. Welcome to the Cannes Film Festival, home of the gold shoe, super yacht, and name dropping centre of the universe.

Flashback to 1993, young, naive American steps off the plane in Nice to start her semester abroad in Cannes(chosen for its proximity to the coast; seriously unaware that Cannes was for girls with clear-skinned smiles, who married young, then retired.... ) but completely unaware of the parallel universe she was about to inhibit. Full of European trust fund babies who could only look askance as this riff-raff group of American scholarship students disembarked.

After a surreal 6 months at the Collége International de Cannes, I came away with a slightly improved level of French and an English husband. I now look back fondly on my time there.

Cannes is as French as Miami is American. But like Las Vegas, something you've got to see to believe.

And what do I have to show for my endeavors there, besides my husband? This photo proving that for just that one Andy Warhol 5 minutes of fame, I too, was a red carpet walker. (But I post this photo in full embarrassment of my ill fitting dress and the Duke's cobbled together tux.) What must the paparazzi have thought of us? Ah, to be young and naive again.....