It’s always a pleasure to fly into Nice airport; the plane has to approach from the Mediterranean, to avoid the mountains, and the sweep of the Cote D’Azur
It’s a quick trip fromSouthampton , too. From takeoff to Goodwood takes no more than fifteen minutes, then it’s out over the sea to Brighton and a right turn to cross the French coast near Dieppe Paris Alps , and on the horizon, one or two snow-topped mountains can be seen. As the steward collects the empty glasses, there’s the first suggestion of sea in the distance, then suddenly it’s "Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing", a gentle bank to the left, gosh, that’s Antibes, been there, and we’re down, the jet having accomplished in sixty minutes what it took Paul and me three days to do by car a few years ago.
Right, airport toCannes Cannes
Yes, I know… I can’t afford it, can I? Certainly, I can’t afford to have Jenny and Mark as my guests for the weekend. I mean, the rooms start at 230 euros a night.
Ah, but these rooms are as expensive as my flight, costing me zero pence. How come? Holiday Inn Priority Club and Flybe loyalty scheme, that’s how. I have enough Flybe points for several flights, and as for the Holiday Inn points – well, the Carlton offers standard 230 euro rooms for 40,000 points. And I’ve got half a million of ‘em. More than enough for a couple of rooms for three days.
Boy, is this one hell of a hotel. As the Merc stops outside, two porters step forward, grab my bags and drop them off at Reception. There’s a big welcome at the desk; even though the rooms are free, there’s no drop in service. It’s a good room, too, even if it doesn’t have a sea view and a balcony as I’d hoped, but all of those bedrooms are taken by the great and the good of Sony, who are in town for the World Photo Competition.
Having found Jenny and Mark, there’s just one thing that’s missing – Coke (the drink, of course!) I get through vast quantities of the stuff, and I haven’t passed any open shops. The concierge is excellent. In response to an enquiry, he reckons that the nearest place that sells a big bottle of Coke is a kebab place three streets away, whips out a tourist map, marks the Carlton, marks the kebab shop and draws a line to show me which street to walk down. Hmm, I haven’t eaten, either (Jenny and Mark have)… well, says the concierge, the kebabs are very good, too.
So it proves, because not ten minutes later, we’re sitting outside the snack bar, I’m eating a smashing kebab – "Garlic sauce or chilli, monsieur? Or both?" – we’re drinking cans of Kronenbourg, the kebab chef is chatting to us as if we’re old friends, and man, oh man, I’m back in France. The written word can’t possibly express the joy and the deep satisfaction that typing those words gives me.
How about some coffee? Oh yes, un café cognac would be just the thing, and Jenny knows a place. She leads us along the Rue D’Antibes, apparently the place to shop in Cannes, dropping down a couple of side streets (and past a shop called "Video Sex", indicating that the salubrity of the Cannes shopping experience plummets quite sharply once off the main drag), and there’s the very place - the ubiquitous French bar, with chairs and tables outside.
One tiny coffee and one huge brandy later, we return to the hotel, I fire up the iTunes, a bottle of something nice is opened and, with a tiny pop, all thoughts of the office and chillyEast Kilbride fly from my thoughts.
Next morning, the bottle of niceness is now mainly emptiness and I’m needing coffee in a big way. Jenny, Mark and I stroll down the promenade and into a restaurant, where trois grande tasse de café put the day into perspective. It’s already shaping up to be a good day; the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, and I’m regretting putting my raincoat in my rucksack. It’s clearly not going to rain, so I’ll be lugging it around all day.
We walk on, past the harbour and the yachts that we could never afford, checking out the restaurants, because it’s my birthday tomorrow and I’d like to find somewhere a little bit special. This isCannes
The vegetarian option is asparagus with Bearnaise sauce, for 69 euros. Yes, some fifty of your English pounds for a clutch of spears that go for three euros at the local greengrocers.
Luckily, there are a few reasonable places, too, and making a mental note, we turn for the market. A real Provencal covered market, with stalls selling flowers, vegetables, fruit, cheese, fish, herbs, meat, honey, olives, spices, oils and more. There’s a huge choice of everything, from the round courgettes that I’d never seen before, to the somewhat gloomy-looking octopus on the fish stall. Oh, it’s all going on here… there’s someone handing round slivers of melon, to tempt us to buy from her stall, the flower sellers are putting
together bouquets of all sizes to suit all pockets and all colour schemes, the cheese man is gravely explaining the difference between one of his many specialities and another, the butcher is enthusiastically chopping a leg of lamb in half, the baker is cutting a big lump from a massive loaf, while exhorting customers to try any of the thirty or so varieties on the stall, olives are being ladled, pineapples are being inspected, huge knobbly tomatoes are split to display the quality of the fruit within, someone’s making up a complicated spice mix, dried mushrooms are being picked over, business is being conducted in that very French volume that can only be described as a friendly yell, and over everything there is a smell hanging… a smell that simply screams "Fresh Today!"
You know, all this looking at food is making me hungry. What about looking at some shops full of things we can’t afford and then looking at a plate of lunch? That’s a good idea, is the general feeling, so we set off to find the Rue D’Antibes – only to fetch up, half a kilometre later, at another market. Well, you can’t have too much of markets, you never know when you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before, like a circular courgette. Anyway, this one sells clothes, too, and as we’re wandering round, I do, indeed see something I’ve never seen before. Fur coats. Well, yes, I have seen fur coats before, but never a rail of them in a market. They’re real fur, too, and priced accordingly, but here we are, walking around an open-air market on a hot day (and it’s beginning to be seriously hot), and there’s a hopeful stallholder with a rail of minks, reckoning that someone with many hundreds of euros burning a hole in their pocket will happen along and exclaim, "Ah! I knew I left something off my shopping list! The fur coat!"
No, this is all getting too silly, I need a drink. All markets have cafes nearby, and Jenny has spotted an asparagus salad that exactly fits her lunchtime expectations. Lunch it is, then, waitress, bring on the Ricard!
We sit outside, of course, because there’s precious few chances to sit outside and lunch in this life, and every opportunity should be embraced as an old and very welcome friend. Yes, a salad appeals to me, too, as does a bottle of Cote Du Rhone.
My salade Nicoise is made from the standard French recipe that seems to start with "Take one lettuce. Arrange on a plate." I’ve remarked in previous posts that the French do salad on a huge scale, so I’m prepared for the mound of tuna, anchovy, boiled eggs, tomato, pepper and assorted greenery that arrives. I had to leave half the lettuce, though; I’m not joking about that recipe.
We’re having pud down the street, I’ve warned Jenny and Mark, because I’ve seen an ice cream shop. All home made, many of surprising or exotic flavour, the whole collection presided over by a very patient man. Well, it’s so hard to choose, isn’t it? Many minutes later, having made difficult decisions, we emerge, Mark with a scoop of nut and a scoop of coffee, Jenny with Tiramisu and pineapple scoops, and I with a cone that’s red berry on one side and chestnut on the other. I know! Chestnut!
Look, this rucksack’s getting very heavy, my raincoat was a stupid idea, it’s so hot that my denim jacket has joined the raincoat, I’ve bought two litres of Coke, some champagne for tomorrow, some lovely French rum… let’s go back to the hotel and drop it all off. Then we can find out how to get onto the part of the beach that theCarlton
Uh huh, Mr Concierge… so that would be thirty three euros to go on the beach, would it? And that’s each, is it? And you think that it’s full, but we can go and check? I think maybe we won’t. I think we’ll walk a few hundred yards down the promenade and go to la plage municipal, thanks. Thirty three euros? I mean, that’s a couple of bottles of wine! (Truth be told, with my taste in wine, it’s more like fifteen bottles.)
I’m determined to get my feet wet, though; I’m not coming to theMediterranean just to watch it. Accordingly, I take my shoes off, bugger the jeans, they’ll just have to get damp, and advance on the incoming tide.
By the cringe, that’s cold isn’t it? Definitely too cold for swimming, we all agree, expertly disguising collective relief. Nearly too cold for paddling, really, but I can stand it for a minute or two more, especially with this weather and this view. It’s very hot, 73F, and the curve of the bay thatCannes
With feet encrusted with fine sand, we return to the Carlton for an hour or two’s relax before dinner. It’s a hard life sometimes, ain’t it?
I’m in my room, ready for a good relax, when the muse hits me, the damned annoying old biddy, so I write for a couple of hours. "Writing" makes it sound like I’m pounding the keyboard, of course, whereas most of the time is more truthfully spend wondering whether a) salubrity is a real word and b) I’ve used it in its proper context.
Three pages later, with most of my text underlined in green or red by an ever-helpful MS Word, I rejoin Jenny and Mark and we go for a "travelling hopefully" wander that ought to bring us to an undiscovered gem of a restaurant. As it eventually does, but not before we’ve taken in DJ Lyric cranking out some banging beats at a bar on the beach. Enjoy that last sentence, because it goes out of fashion in about five minutes. He’s accompanied by Saxophone Man, who’s grooving on the beats. (Sentence found in the "beyond sell-by
date" skip.) We listen from the cheap seats, i.e. the promenade, before turning toward a road that looks like it ought to be busy with bars, cafes and good places to eat.
Fifteen studied, rejected menus later and with nearly a kilometre between us and the prom, we find a place that has "un plat vegetaraine" – fettucine with a selection of vegetables. That sounds good to Jenny and Mark, so in we go, three kirs, s’il vous plais, while we study the menu.
Mmm, I’d quite like a steak with Roquefort cheese sauce, but it’s a bit pricy. There are burgers, though, and I’m always happy to settle for a burger. Especially as one can "double up" for a small extra charge, so I order a double burger with "sauce piquant" and frites. The kirs arrive, as does a plate of crudités, a basket of crisps and a large ramekin of yoghurt infused with a selection of chopped herbs. Yum. That keeps us busy until the meal is served, whereupon it appears that I have ordered a giant tower of burgers. The sesame’d top of the bun leans some eight inches above the plate. I get it, it’s a challenge, then, is it? (See, this is why Weight Watchers have got a contract out on me.)
As we’re finishing our meal, Jenny and Mark explain that tonight and tomorrow’s meal is on them, what with me giving them the room for the weekend. It’s a most generous and unexpected gesture, and I’m quite overwhelmed. I mean, what can you say? What I say is that I should have had that steak, but never mind.
Right, coffee ho! A few streets away we come across the usual bar/café, order coffee, brandy and chocolate for Jenny on automatic pilot, then take stock of the place. Mmm, well, it’s unusual – it seems to be a cross between a bar on one side, and a betting shop on the other. The customers are buying some kind of ticket from a booth in one corner, then watching horses racing in that trotting style that is, I believe, popular in the States. Nobody seems to win, nobody obviously loses. At one point, a young woman in a studded leather jacket walks in and does that continental round of being welcomed, shaking hands and kissing people, then settles down to watch the race. We finish our drinks and leave.
Walking back down the promenade to theCarlton Carlton
TheCarlton
It’s a quick trip from
Right, airport to
Yes, I know… I can’t afford it, can I? Certainly, I can’t afford to have Jenny and Mark as my guests for the weekend. I mean, the rooms start at 230 euros a night.
Ah, but these rooms are as expensive as my flight, costing me zero pence. How come? Holiday Inn Priority Club and Flybe loyalty scheme, that’s how. I have enough Flybe points for several flights, and as for the Holiday Inn points – well, the Carlton offers standard 230 euro rooms for 40,000 points. And I’ve got half a million of ‘em. More than enough for a couple of rooms for three days.
Boy, is this one hell of a hotel. As the Merc stops outside, two porters step forward, grab my bags and drop them off at Reception. There’s a big welcome at the desk; even though the rooms are free, there’s no drop in service. It’s a good room, too, even if it doesn’t have a sea view and a balcony as I’d hoped, but all of those bedrooms are taken by the great and the good of Sony, who are in town for the World Photo Competition.
Having found Jenny and Mark, there’s just one thing that’s missing – Coke (the drink, of course!) I get through vast quantities of the stuff, and I haven’t passed any open shops. The concierge is excellent. In response to an enquiry, he reckons that the nearest place that sells a big bottle of Coke is a kebab place three streets away, whips out a tourist map, marks the Carlton, marks the kebab shop and draws a line to show me which street to walk down. Hmm, I haven’t eaten, either (Jenny and Mark have)… well, says the concierge, the kebabs are very good, too.
So it proves, because not ten minutes later, we’re sitting outside the snack bar, I’m eating a smashing kebab – "Garlic sauce or chilli, monsieur? Or both?" – we’re drinking cans of Kronenbourg, the kebab chef is chatting to us as if we’re old friends, and man, oh man, I’m back in France. The written word can’t possibly express the joy and the deep satisfaction that typing those words gives me.
How about some coffee? Oh yes, un café cognac would be just the thing, and Jenny knows a place. She leads us along the Rue D’Antibes, apparently the place to shop in Cannes, dropping down a couple of side streets (and past a shop called "Video Sex", indicating that the salubrity of the Cannes shopping experience plummets quite sharply once off the main drag), and there’s the very place - the ubiquitous French bar, with chairs and tables outside.
One tiny coffee and one huge brandy later, we return to the hotel, I fire up the iTunes, a bottle of something nice is opened and, with a tiny pop, all thoughts of the office and chilly
Next morning, the bottle of niceness is now mainly emptiness and I’m needing coffee in a big way. Jenny, Mark and I stroll down the promenade and into a restaurant, where trois grande tasse de café put the day into perspective. It’s already shaping up to be a good day; the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, and I’m regretting putting my raincoat in my rucksack. It’s clearly not going to rain, so I’ll be lugging it around all day.
We walk on, past the harbour and the yachts that we could never afford, checking out the restaurants, because it’s my birthday tomorrow and I’d like to find somewhere a little bit special. This is
The vegetarian option is asparagus with Bearnaise sauce, for 69 euros. Yes, some fifty of your English pounds for a clutch of spears that go for three euros at the local greengrocers.
Luckily, there are a few reasonable places, too, and making a mental note, we turn for the market. A real Provencal covered market, with stalls selling flowers, vegetables, fruit, cheese, fish, herbs, meat, honey, olives, spices, oils and more. There’s a huge choice of everything, from the round courgettes that I’d never seen before, to the somewhat gloomy-looking octopus on the fish stall. Oh, it’s all going on here… there’s someone handing round slivers of melon, to tempt us to buy from her stall, the flower sellers are putting
together bouquets of all sizes to suit all pockets and all colour schemes, the cheese man is gravely explaining the difference between one of his many specialities and another, the butcher is enthusiastically chopping a leg of lamb in half, the baker is cutting a big lump from a massive loaf, while exhorting customers to try any of the thirty or so varieties on the stall, olives are being ladled, pineapples are being inspected, huge knobbly tomatoes are split to display the quality of the fruit within, someone’s making up a complicated spice mix, dried mushrooms are being picked over, business is being conducted in that very French volume that can only be described as a friendly yell, and over everything there is a smell hanging… a smell that simply screams "Fresh Today!"
You know, all this looking at food is making me hungry. What about looking at some shops full of things we can’t afford and then looking at a plate of lunch? That’s a good idea, is the general feeling, so we set off to find the Rue D’Antibes – only to fetch up, half a kilometre later, at another market. Well, you can’t have too much of markets, you never know when you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before, like a circular courgette. Anyway, this one sells clothes, too, and as we’re wandering round, I do, indeed see something I’ve never seen before. Fur coats. Well, yes, I have seen fur coats before, but never a rail of them in a market. They’re real fur, too, and priced accordingly, but here we are, walking around an open-air market on a hot day (and it’s beginning to be seriously hot), and there’s a hopeful stallholder with a rail of minks, reckoning that someone with many hundreds of euros burning a hole in their pocket will happen along and exclaim, "Ah! I knew I left something off my shopping list! The fur coat!"
No, this is all getting too silly, I need a drink. All markets have cafes nearby, and Jenny has spotted an asparagus salad that exactly fits her lunchtime expectations. Lunch it is, then, waitress, bring on the Ricard!
We sit outside, of course, because there’s precious few chances to sit outside and lunch in this life, and every opportunity should be embraced as an old and very welcome friend. Yes, a salad appeals to me, too, as does a bottle of Cote Du Rhone.
My salade Nicoise is made from the standard French recipe that seems to start with "Take one lettuce. Arrange on a plate." I’ve remarked in previous posts that the French do salad on a huge scale, so I’m prepared for the mound of tuna, anchovy, boiled eggs, tomato, pepper and assorted greenery that arrives. I had to leave half the lettuce, though; I’m not joking about that recipe.
We’re having pud down the street, I’ve warned Jenny and Mark, because I’ve seen an ice cream shop. All home made, many of surprising or exotic flavour, the whole collection presided over by a very patient man. Well, it’s so hard to choose, isn’t it? Many minutes later, having made difficult decisions, we emerge, Mark with a scoop of nut and a scoop of coffee, Jenny with Tiramisu and pineapple scoops, and I with a cone that’s red berry on one side and chestnut on the other. I know! Chestnut!
Look, this rucksack’s getting very heavy, my raincoat was a stupid idea, it’s so hot that my denim jacket has joined the raincoat, I’ve bought two litres of Coke, some champagne for tomorrow, some lovely French rum… let’s go back to the hotel and drop it all off. Then we can find out how to get onto the part of the beach that the
Uh huh, Mr Concierge… so that would be thirty three euros to go on the beach, would it? And that’s each, is it? And you think that it’s full, but we can go and check? I think maybe we won’t. I think we’ll walk a few hundred yards down the promenade and go to la plage municipal, thanks. Thirty three euros? I mean, that’s a couple of bottles of wine! (Truth be told, with my taste in wine, it’s more like fifteen bottles.)
I’m determined to get my feet wet, though; I’m not coming to the
By the cringe, that’s cold isn’t it? Definitely too cold for swimming, we all agree, expertly disguising collective relief. Nearly too cold for paddling, really, but I can stand it for a minute or two more, especially with this weather and this view. It’s very hot, 73F, and the curve of the bay that
With feet encrusted with fine sand, we return to the Carlton for an hour or two’s relax before dinner. It’s a hard life sometimes, ain’t it?
I’m in my room, ready for a good relax, when the muse hits me, the damned annoying old biddy, so I write for a couple of hours. "Writing" makes it sound like I’m pounding the keyboard, of course, whereas most of the time is more truthfully spend wondering whether a) salubrity is a real word and b) I’ve used it in its proper context.
Three pages later, with most of my text underlined in green or red by an ever-helpful MS Word, I rejoin Jenny and Mark and we go for a "travelling hopefully" wander that ought to bring us to an undiscovered gem of a restaurant. As it eventually does, but not before we’ve taken in DJ Lyric cranking out some banging beats at a bar on the beach. Enjoy that last sentence, because it goes out of fashion in about five minutes. He’s accompanied by Saxophone Man, who’s grooving on the beats. (Sentence found in the "beyond sell-by
date" skip.) We listen from the cheap seats, i.e. the promenade, before turning toward a road that looks like it ought to be busy with bars, cafes and good places to eat.
Fifteen studied, rejected menus later and with nearly a kilometre between us and the prom, we find a place that has "un plat vegetaraine" – fettucine with a selection of vegetables. That sounds good to Jenny and Mark, so in we go, three kirs, s’il vous plais, while we study the menu.
Mmm, I’d quite like a steak with Roquefort cheese sauce, but it’s a bit pricy. There are burgers, though, and I’m always happy to settle for a burger. Especially as one can "double up" for a small extra charge, so I order a double burger with "sauce piquant" and frites. The kirs arrive, as does a plate of crudités, a basket of crisps and a large ramekin of yoghurt infused with a selection of chopped herbs. Yum. That keeps us busy until the meal is served, whereupon it appears that I have ordered a giant tower of burgers. The sesame’d top of the bun leans some eight inches above the plate. I get it, it’s a challenge, then, is it? (See, this is why Weight Watchers have got a contract out on me.)
As we’re finishing our meal, Jenny and Mark explain that tonight and tomorrow’s meal is on them, what with me giving them the room for the weekend. It’s a most generous and unexpected gesture, and I’m quite overwhelmed. I mean, what can you say? What I say is that I should have had that steak, but never mind.
Right, coffee ho! A few streets away we come across the usual bar/café, order coffee, brandy and chocolate for Jenny on automatic pilot, then take stock of the place. Mmm, well, it’s unusual – it seems to be a cross between a bar on one side, and a betting shop on the other. The customers are buying some kind of ticket from a booth in one corner, then watching horses racing in that trotting style that is, I believe, popular in the States. Nobody seems to win, nobody obviously loses. At one point, a young woman in a studded leather jacket walks in and does that continental round of being welcomed, shaking hands and kissing people, then settles down to watch the race. We finish our drinks and leave.
Walking back down the promenade to the
The
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