Barcelona

"work. In his mind’s eye he could see Monte Carlo awakening from the unnatural slumber and reverting to the glory of the past. One of his exciting visions was of a new outer harbor big enough to accom¬ modate the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth and attracting a big international cruising clientele. There was not a port in the Mediter¬ ranean capable of taking big passenger liners without subjecting them to the noise, smoke, and dirt of a commercial harbor, as in Genoa, Naples, Marseilles, or Barcelona. In Villefranche and Cannes the swell was so strong that it was impossible to embark or disembark pas¬ sengers during more than six hours at a time. Onassis visualized oceangoing liners coming in like yachts and staying while their pas¬ sengers flew on quick excursions to Paris, London, Rome, anywhere in Europe. It would put Monte Carlo among the great international harbors of the world and, he reckoned, attract two thousand visitors to Monaco every day. A man whose visions quickly solidify into hard figures, he worked out that even at twenty-five dollars a head a day, even without gambling, this represented a secure income of fifty thou¬ sand dollars a day. The project might require an investment of at least thirty million dollars but this was not an amount to deter Onassis."

"Trends, colors, successes of each season arrived at the design tables of Arteixo from all over Europe and beyond the seas. This was always this man's obsession: reworked, reinvented clothes, in direct connection with what consumers expected. Clothes that appeared very shortly after hanging in Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities in Spain; in Porto, Paris, or Mexico."

"In his lecture at the University of Pretoria, he stated that it was necessary to send a ‘young man … with a Polaroid camera’ to places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Florence and Barcelona to photograph and report on what people in small businesses were doing."

"Through this difficult period Gibbs had a helpful distraction. In October 2003, just after the Aquada’s public launch, he’d bought a boat in partnership with Douglas Myers. No ordinary boat, *Senses* was a 59 metre, 1000 ton ship, equipped with two helipads, one helicopter and a flotilla of small craft, including a charming 12.8 metre Nelson tender and a Halmatic Atlantic 24, a high-speed rigid inflatable favoured by the British military. *Senses* had a crew of 14. *Senses* was designed to be equally at home in the Arctic or Saint-Tropez, and best of all, for Gibbs, it had a ramp at the stern up which he could drive an Aquada. With the helicopter, Aquada and other boats, *Senses* was really a luxury base for exploration. When cruising up the coast from Barcelona to Nice it was possible to fly into Perpignan for a bistro lunch, or drive the Aquada in."

"Through this difficult period Gibbs had a helpful distraction. In October 2003, just after the Aquada’s public launch, he’d bought a boat in partnership with Douglas Myers. No ordinary boat, *Senses* was a 59 metre, 1000 ton ship, equipped with two helipads, one helicopter and a flotilla of small craft, including a charming 12.8 metre Nelson tender and a Halmatic Atlantic 24, a high-speed rigid inflatable favoured by the British military. *Senses* had a crew of 14. *Senses* was designed to be equally at home in the Arctic or Saint-Tropez, and best of all, for Gibbs, it had a ramp at the stern up which he could drive an Aquada. With the helicopter, Aquada and other boats, *Senses* was really a luxury base for exploration. When cruising up the coast from Barcelona to Nice it was possible to fly into Perpignan for a bistro lunch, or drive the Aquada in."