The French Rivera…
Astute readers of the blog will notice that I changed the
background color. The reason for the
change is that overnight, the blog was sold to Jeff Bezos for $250. Jeff bought the blog with his personal
fortune – not that of Amazon.com – and has agreed not to mingle in the
editorial. He will keep me on as a
writer. However, I do need to add the
following link at the end of every paragraph… www.amazon.com
Our days in Nice seem like long ago, as we are now in
Provence. However, I want to stay true
to my readers and capture everything.
So to that end, I am going to do a whirlwind coverage of our last 4 days
in the French Rivera in one blog posting – St. Tropez, Antibes, Cannes and
VilleFrench Sur Mer.
St. Tropez
All during the 3 hour drive to St. Tropez, Tree and I sang
the song “Do you know the way to St. Tropez…”
That is, until her brother Pat --
who actually was a teen in the 1970s and knew that music – told us that the
actual song was “Do you know the way to San Jose…” (As an aside, WTF was going on in St. Jose in
1970 that would justify a song about it.
There is nothing going on there now, much less 40 years ago, but I
digress.)
St. Tropez is actually only 90 miles from Nice, but the last
10 miles are bumper-to-bumper getting in.
We actually left early – 7:30 a.m. – to beat the crowds, but apparently
everyone else had the same idea.
Tree’s reason for going to St. Tropez was to attend the big
open air market that runs from 9:00 – 2:00.
We were told that the vendors, displays and selection were pretty
remarkable. Dad’s reason was that he
heard that stars like Nicole Ritchie (w/ Joel Madden), Bethany Frankel, and
Sylvester Stallone had been sited there over the weekend and he wanted to do
some star gazing. Fortunately the market
did not disappoint. [Nicole and Bethany,
on the other hand, apparently pulled up anchor and were long gone.]
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| Gummy Bear Vendor |
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| Giant Paella |
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| Tom found a waffle vendor! |
The market closed promptly at 2:00 – it was like a stampede
to get out of there – before we had really had a chance to appreciate it. We were left with no real “plan” for the
afternoon, so we wandered the streets of St. Tropez and had an impromptu lunch
next to our parking garage while we figured out our next move.
We decided to wander the streets for an hour while we waited
for the cellular phone vendor to re-open.
[Dad needed to buy a French SIM card for the phones so we had
internet/navigation, and the story was closed until 2:30.] The
shops of St. Tropez were nothing special.
In fact, I would call the town way over-rated and suggest you avoid it,
save for the beach (see below). The one
newsworthy story from our visit came from our popping into a local pharmacy,
where we opened a box of “LeClearc” perfumed talc to smell the scent. The shop-owner came over and asked us what we
were doing. We told her we were smelling
it. She replied by telling us that we
now had to buy it since we opened it – she could not re-sell it. Of course, she could absolutely re-sell it,
and we started a fairly long and dragged out argument with her. In the end, Dad gave her the 50 euros for the
1oz of powder so as to avoid a scene, but the incident definitely colored our
views of St. Tropez.
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| For Sale - 50 Euros - First come, first served |
In a typically French outcome, when the phone store opened
the computers were down and they were unable to issue a SIM card to us. Without a working cell phone, we were pretty
lost because we did not have a map.
However, we had decided to hit the St. Tropez beach in the late
afternoon, and were able to locate it and get there.
As much as the town of St. Tropez was a disappointment, the
beach was a real joy. I was left with
the conclusion that when people talk about going to St. Tropez, then really
mean the beach, which is called Pampellone Beach. Running about 2 miles long, the beach is
dotted with chic private clubs that host the likes of rock stars, models and
billionaires. The VIPs anchor their
yachts about 1 mile off shore as skiffs come out to retrieve them for extended
4-hour lunches the the private clubs. Here is a panoramic view:
The most famous club is Club 55 (founded in 1955). When we pulled up in the Fiat Scudo 9 person
van, we questioned whether Club 55 was right for us. The parking lot was packed with Ferraris,
Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Lamborghini's.
(Truth be told, I was worried that a drunk patron might back his Ferrari
into my Scudo and scratch it.) We opted
for the public parking lot – now empty since it was 4pm – and went to the “Key
West” Beach Club which was only 100 yards away from Club 55.
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| Next time we plan to come by yacht to avoid the traffic |
The kids perked up at the beach – the water and the setting
were great. Perhaps the best feature is
that you can walk several hundred yards offshore and still be in 3-4 feet of
water. Tree and I ordered a bottle
of wine and enjoyed the people watching
as the sun set. Once again, we closed
the club down (7:00).
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| Kids? What kids? |
PS -- anyone remember the book Caps for Sale?
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| 50 cents a cap |
Day Off
The next day was a much-needed day off. We literally had no plan and went nowhere,
save a quick trip into town to (finally) get a SIM card for the cell
phones. The kids played in the pool at
the Villa Dracona, and Tree did laundry.
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| Trying on their purchases from the market in St Tropez |
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| R&R at the pool |
Antibes
Well rested, we set out early on Thursday to visit two
Antibes. Antibes had two draws -- the
museum of Pablo Picasso, and sandy (as opposed to rocky) beaches.
We did not take many photos in Antibes, perhaps because
there was not much to see. The town is
build upon a massive old fort, and is actually quite beautiful. There is some tie in between Picasso and the
fort that led to his museum being located there, but I tuned it out (mostly
because I was thinking about something clever to say to Nicole Ritchie and Joel
Madden if we ran into them).
Over lunch in Antibes, one of the locals told us not to go
to the beach because there were Muduses – French Jellyfish -- in the
water. She said we would be better off
driving to Cannes – 15 minutes away -- and going in there, because they had not
been hit by the same storm that had brought the Meduses to Antibes. All it
took was the mention of Cannes to perk me up.
I doubted we would find Nicole and Joel in Antibes, but in Cannes we had
a shot.
While we did not meet any stars in Cannes, we did rent beach
chairs at the Hotel Intercontinental and were seated next to Simon and Rebeccah
from the UK. Simon runs a plumbing
distributor, and owns an apartment in Cannes.
They spend a month here with their two young children, Honey (age 9) and
Xavier (age 3). Lilly and Honey became
fast friends as Tree and I enjoyed a bottle of wine with Simon and
Rebeccah. The ultimate treat for the kids
was being pulled on an inner tube behind the hotel’s boat.
More Nice and Villefrance sur Mer
Tree still had not had her fix of Nice, so in the morning I
took her (solo) into town to see the fresh flower market. The kids stayed home to chill/swim, but they
enjoyed the images she captured.
They were probably saving their energy for the afternoon,
when we had planned a visit to the Henri Matisse museum in Nice. Matisse had spent much of his life in Nice,
and substantially all of his best work is here.
The kids agreed it was not to be missed.
While the little kids enjoyed the museum, Billy and Danny skateboarded outside:
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| Tommy and Jimmy enjoying the Matisse Museum |
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| While Billy and Danny reflected on the meaning of his work |
Now I am no art critic, but (as mentioned earlier in the
blog) I did take one art class in college, and I think that gives me the right
to critique… Below you will find photos
(illicitly obtained because you are not supposed to take pictures in the
museum) of some of Matisse’s work. My
favorite is the “book” entitled "Jazz" that he produced in his last years of his life. The book was “written” using cut outs. I’ll let you read from the display for yourselves:
Here you can see the book, as it is laid out in the museum:
Now here is the actual “art.” Can we not agree that Jimmy could do
this? The only conclusion I can draw is
that after 50 years as an established artist, sycophantic fans will fawn over
everything you do…
That evening we set out for Villefranch sur Mer for dinner. We did not get to see much of the town, but we had a lovely (and fancy) dinner on Rue Obscure, which is an underground street that runs below the main town square.
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| Jimmy ordered the snails -- he loves them. |
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| A view from our table - man doing laundry |
Bonus Blog – Update on the Family Truckster
I have encountered what I would call the “prefect storm” of driving nightmares here in Italy and France. The three “ingredients” to the storm are:
1) A stick shift van
2) No rear camera or collision sensors
3) Very narrow streets
Tree and the kids count no less than 8 collisions on the trip. Dad contends that they were mere scrapes, and that they are par for the course here in Europe – e.g. that all cars have these scrapes. Here they are:
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