Word: gentile
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...Port Gentil is no ordinary town. That much is clear from the moment you touch down in the small coastal city in the West African nation of Gabon. Next to the airport exit, a gaggle of shrieking, minimally dressed women dance to loud rock on the terrace of a bar called Le Aero Club. "Come fly me!" one shouts down. Instead, I accept a taxi driver's offer of a ride into town - a 10-minute drive that costs $30. We drive past another bar, A Qui La Tour? - which roughly translates as "Whose round is it?" although the driver...
...named, a few years ago, as the world's most expensive city. With a bunch of carrots selling for $10, a box of eggs fetching $13 and rent on a medium-sized house touching $6,000 a month, it's still comfortably in the top 10. The reason? Port Gentil is a ville petrolier, an oil town that has drawn rig workers and executives from places as far away as Texas, Aberdeen and Caracas to earn fortunes pumping Gabon's oil reserves - and spend it like there's no tomorrow...
...sheer volume of cash sloshing around Port Gentil's streets lends them an unreal atmosphere. At the dump on the edge of town, Gabonese boys sort through trash in search of something to eat. But walk into any downtown cafe, and $400 will get you a bottle of 1999 St Emilion Premier Cru Bordeaux. The handful of paved streets are scarred with potholes the size of small swimming pools, but they are jammed with new top-of-the-range SUVs. Excursions on offer include tours of the jungle on giant-engine trail bikes or tours of the coast in giant...
...same traumas--divorced parents, an unhappy first marriage and the death of a parent (Diana's father, Dodi's mother). The couple first met in 1986, at a polo match, but this summer, with the elder Fayed's prodding, the pair developed an intimate bond. "He was tres gentil, especially as Princess Diana would have seen him," says Dodi's friend. "All her life she was meeting very cold people. He was a big change for her." Al Fayed spokesman Michael Cole recalled speaking to Dodi in August, after news of the romance had broken. "Michael," Dodi said, "I will...
...KNIGHT. Chaucer's "verray parfit gentil" hero could be a killer in a metal dinner jacket, slaying unbelievers when it pleased him. Even so, as Mark Twain speculated about the old warriors, "there was something very engaging about these great simplehearted creatures, (although) there did not seem to be brains enough . . . to bait a fishhook with." The knight has been Galahad, Don Quixote and every tin soldier, in Robert Louis Stevenson's couplet, "With different uniforms and drills/ Among the bedclothes, through the hills." The chevalier now answers the roll call as Rambo and G.I. Joe. He wears camouflage...