ANTIBES & CANNES

We had previously seen the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera) mentioned so many times on movies, tv shows, magazines etc. so we were pretty excited to arrive in Antibes and mix it with the rich and hopefully famous!

Our hostel was situated about 4km from the city centre, right out on the Cap d'Antibes.  The hostel itself was a bit weird in that reception was only open from 5pm and from 10am-5pm, all rooms were locked.  This accompanied with the fact that it was a bloody long walk into town, caught us a bit off guard, however it was pretty cheap and there wasn't really any other option.

One plus was that we were right on the water, so as soon as we dumped our bags at reception, we walked across the road and jumped off the rocks into the refreshing waters of the Mediterranean.

That evening we met an American guy called Clayton whom had been living in Paris for the last 20 years and frequently visiting the area we were staying in.  He was a really nice bloke and was able to show us all the hot spots.

Walking from the hostel to the bust stop that evening, we went past some seriously huge and amazing villa's and Clayton told us that this was one of the most wealthy areas in all of the French Riviera.  In fact, so wealthy are the inhabitants, that they were somehow able to lobby together and have the flight paths of all planes coming in and out of Nice airport to be changed so that they didn't fly directly over the Cap hah!!

Once we got into the old town, we headed straight for the port as Anna and I have a real obsession with all the really big maxi yachts.

"Anastasia" - in the top 100 largest boats in the world

It was a real highlight to visit the area known as the "billionaires quay" which is an area in the port that has been specifically dug deeper to allow the super duper huge maxi yachts to fit in.  It truly was bloody amazing to see these vessels and couldn't even begin to imagine how much money was sitting on the water in front of us.

Anna and Clayton had to drag me away from these boats as I just wanted to keep standing there and looking at these awesome boats, but our tummies were rumbling, so we headed off for dinner.

We went to a great local joint and were lucky enough to score an outside table where we feasted on seafood and pasta and some really good wine.

The walk home that night was pretty painful, so we made sure we would hire bikes as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

The next day we had organised to spend the day with Alex and Maria and their family.  Mum and Dad met Alex and Maria whilst they were travelling in US/Canada  a few years ago and they came to stay with us in Melbourne at the start of the year from their home town in Minsk, Belarus.

Alex and Maria had rented out an amazing villa up in the hills behind a small town called Theoule Sur Mer, which was about 20 minutes past Cannes.

We caught the train there and Alex picked us up in their car to drive us up the winding road until we reached literally the top of the mountain.  Simply put, the villa was bloody unreal!  About 4 levels of dining and living quarters and then the mother of all gardens and then one of the best swimming pools I have ever been lucky enough to pee in.....nah just kidding!

Maria and the kids had put on a feast for breakfast; pancakes, champagne, fruit, croissants, cheese, ham, salmon, you name it and it was there!  We had a great meal and a great chat with everyone and then we were straight down to the amazing pool.

The views over the small port of Theoule Sur Mer and over the mountains on the left to Cannes and Nice were breathtaking!

We had great chats with Alex and Maria and mucked around a bit with the kids and before we knew it the time was 4pm and it was time for a late lunch.  Once again Maria and the kids and Alex's mum had put on a feast for us; turkey, more champagne, wine, roast lamb, salad, potatoes, it was superb!

We had to be back down at the station by 5ish to catch the train, so we jumped in the car and Alex wizzed us down to the station just in time.  It was a great day and we were very thankful to the whole family for having us!

Instead of getting off at Antibes train station, we got off one stop earlier at Juan Les Pins so that we could hire bikes and then it was a really nice 25min ride along the port, beach and point back to our hostel.

We detoured through the harbour to catch a glimpse of some more amazing boats and although they weren't nearly as big as the ones we had seen the previous day, they were still pretty impressive.  The one above was my favourite and would be just perfect to hoon around Port Phillip bay on!

We had eaten so much food that day that we really didn't need to have any dinner at all, but loving food as much as we do, it didn't feel right to not have anything at all, so we rode into Antibes and had a small, but very good serving of Asian.

The town was abuzz with a band rocking out the street and there were heaps of people around, it was a really good atmosphere, but we were just to stuffed to get stuck into it.  We walked around a different part of the port after dinner and then rode back home to call it a night.

long way from home!

The sun was out in full force again the next day and after a pretty mediocre breakfast supplied by the hostel and a brief session of Skype, we hopped on our bikes and rode back into Antibes to visit the Picasso museum.

not a bad view from the hostel

Anna talking to Buddles on Skype

The Picasso Museum is situated in the Chateau Grimaldi, a castle that was built upon the foundations of the ancient Greek town of Antipolis.  In 1608 it became a stronghold of the Grimaldi family and has borne their name ever since.  In 1946 it was the home for 6 months of Pablo Picasso and today it is home to the Picasso Museum

Picasso himself donated works to the museum, most notably his paintings "The Goat" and "La Joie de Vivre" and in 1990, Jacqueline Picasso (his second wife) be quested many Picasso works to the museum.  Today the museum;s collection totals 245 works by Picasso.

Although we are not huge arty people, it was quite interesting to see some of these paintings and sculptures up close and it really gave you an insight into how imaginative Picasso must have been to paint such weird stuff.  It also makes you wonder just who decides what is and what isn't art because it seemed like anyone could paint something similar.

Picasso completed the piece above on my birthday! (albeit  38 years before I was born)

Standing out on the terrace of the museum, you had a 180 degree view of the sea and also the Antibes harbour and it made us want to back and see the huge boats one last time!

Without doubt the most impressive boat in the "billionaires quay" was the majestic "Sarafsa" - built in 2008, it is currently in the top 50 largest private boats in the world and is owned by the Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud (what a mouthful !!) who named the boat after his daughter Sara.

"Sarafsa" - 82metres and squillions of dollarsof awesomeness

looked like an old school James Bond car

By the time it got to midday, the heat was almost unbearable and the sweat had got to the point where you just had to embrace it.  We had to ride our bikes from the Antibes port to the Antibes train station, which was about 10-15mins away.  When I saw this fountain, there was no chance I wasn't going straight through it!!

Amazingly, by the time we got to Cannes (only 30mins later), the weather had dropped from an uncomfortable 37 degrees, to a manageable 33 degrees.  We decided to walk around town for a while before we went to the beach.

The shopping was a lot better than we had seen in Antibes and Juan Les Pins and the chocolate and pastry shops would cause even the most savoury of mouths to drool uncontrollably.

Cannes is obviously most famous for its film festival held every May at the Palais des Festivals et des Congres and feels more like America when you are there.  The pavement along the beach includes hand prints Planet Hollywood style and the stairs leading up to the Palais are covered in red carpet all year round.

Although the movie festival only lasts two weeks, the buzz and glitz lingers all year thanks to the celebrities who come here year-round to indulge in designer shopping, beaches and the palace hotels of the French Riviera's glummest seafront, the Blvd de la Croisette.

Unfortunately as wide open as we kept our eyes, we didn't see any celebrities, however we did see some pretty amazing cars!!

As with most popular tourist cities, there are plenty of beggars around trying all sorts of different methods to get hold of your loose change.  This guy had a seriously good party trick where he was able to dislocate his knees and bend his legs in the opposite direction, it was really creepy.

After some shopping and a late lunch, he rest of the afternoon was spent on the beach until the sun started to go down and we needed to get back on the train and head home to Antibes.

Walking back to the station, we had to go past the red carpet again and from a distance we noticed there was a loud commotion going on.  We read a poster that said that it was some sort of Russian Arts Week and there was an orchestra playing awesome movie style music with a big group of really hot looking Russian birds prancing around with drums and batons, it was great to watch!

the one third from the left kept winking at me I think

We had spent a long time walking and riding in the sun and hadn't drunk a lot of water, so by the time we finally got back to the hostel, we were buggered.  As the early evening turned into the late evening, the sky got darker.  Obviously this is normal because night time is coming, but I mean because of the storm that was brewing.

At about 8pm we made the call to ride our bikes into Antibes for a quick dinner, and by the time we were seated at the restaurant, there were flashes of light and rumbles in the sky not too far away.  We shovelled our food down as fast as we could and got back on our bikes, but we were in real trouble as the rain started bucketing down with about 3km of riding left before we reached the hostel.

Apart form the fact that Anna had her handbag with her, that last 3km of rain was a real blessing as the saturation we received felt sooooooo good after the heat of the past few weeks!

I was pretty impressed that I was able to capture this shot!

Amazingly the next morning there was no indication that there was a storm the night before.  Our wet clothes had almost dried and outside the sun was beaming and the sky was as blue as my eyes haha.

It was a super effort by us to wake up early enough to ride our bikes back to the shop in Juan Les Pins (about 20mins) and then run as fast as we could back to the hostel (about 30-40mins) in order to have showers and pack our bags before our room was locked at 10am.

We lazed around outside for a while in the morning.  I was able to listen to another disappointing game by the Dees against Adelaide (Brad Greens last game) and give Dad a call for his Birthday, whilst Anna read her magazine and caught up on some sleep.

only in the South of France would you see an advertisement like this in a women's magazine!

With 60-odd kilo's of luggage between us, there was no chance we were walking to the station.  We got the hostel guy to order us a taxi, unbeknown that it was going to cost a bomb.  When the taxi picked us up, the meter was already upto13 euros and by the time we a

MONTPELLIER & AIX-EN-PROVENCE

We arrived in Montpellier quite late that night and were pretty worried that the cheapo hotel we had booked didn't have a 24hr reception.   After banging on the door and ringing the doorbell for a solid 5 minutes, an angry man finally came to the door, let us in and checked us in to our room.

We slept in a little the next morning, but once up we quickly got changed and set out to see the city as we only had one day there. 

Unfortunately as it was a Sunday, the city was like a ghost town.  There was hardly anyone walking the streets and the majority of the shops were closed.  Nevertheless, it was still a pretty cool place to walk around.  There was plenty of interesting street art, lots of tiny streets and every now and then you would walk around a corner and find yourself in a beautiful small square.

First stop for us was the Place Royale du Peyrou, a 3 acre plaza landscaped in 1689.  It was a beautiful tree lined area which reminded us of a section of the Champs Elysees in Paris, and this was further reinforced by the arch at one end of the area which is actually also called the Arc de Triomph!

We found a nice spot for a coffee and then continued walking around the city.  As the afternoon unfolded, the streets started to fill up and more shops opened up.  An hour or so later we both had a huge salad for lunch and then continued on walking down towards the monumental Place de la Comedie.

Crowned at the southern end by the elegant opera house, the Place de la Comedie is a huge car free square that was laid out in the 1700's and is surrounded by beautiful balustrated buildings.

We did a bit of shopping in the arvo and then headed back to our cheapo hotel for a relax before heading out to dinner.

70,000 students make their home in Montpellier each year, meaning the nightlife and cafe culture tend for the bright young things.  We found a great little square that was absolutely full of people and had a great atmosphere.

Although it was our first night in France and we really should have been going for some typical French food, there was a really cool English pub that had a great menu and seemed to be pretty well priced compared to a lot of other places we had seen.

After a few pints of cider, we both couldn't go past the bangers and mash x 2 (mashed potatoes and mashed peas!) and we weren't let down, it was a damn good meal.  

We got talking to the owner and his mate (who we couldn't tell whether he was drunk, or just a freak) who were both really nice blokes and they only had to mention the raspberry cheesecake and apple crumble and we were both sold!

We walked around town a bit that night and found another example of Montpellier's weird art scene (see the bike coming out of the wall hah!), then stopped off at an Irish pub for another cider in another really cool area and then called it a night.

The next morning I did some exercise in our room and then ran down to the train station to book us tickets for later on that day.  Later on after plenty of fruit for breakfast, we found a great little bookshop that was stocking heaps on English titles.  We had an excellent coffee there and I found a book to read for the following weeks on the Cote d'Azur.

It took us about 3 hours including trains, buses and walking to arrive at Hotel Cardinal in Aix-en-Provence and we wasted no time in getting out to explore the city which many people had told us was really great.

Our first impressions were that it was a really cool chic kind of place and very hard to believe that it was only 25km away from the shithole that is Marseille!

We had a pretty quiet night that night and after spending a bit of cash lately, decided to have a cheap meal of take away Mexican and go home and watch a movie on the laptop.  It was the first time we hadn't eaten out in so many months!!

The next morning we were up earlyish and out the door to find some breakfast before getting on with the rest of the day, which we planned to just walk around.

The city's grandest avenue, Cours Mirabeau, was amazing - A beautiful tree lined street that seemed to always have a different market going down one side of the street, whilst the other side was full of fashionable Aixois (locals) sipping espresso on wicker chairs on elegant cafe terraces.

We thought that Montpellier was a really pretty city, full of interesting art, beautiful squares of varying sizes and lots of well dressed locals, but Aix-en-Provence took it to another level.

Unfortunately the hot weather that had followed us around Spain for the last month decided to follow us around the South of France as well.  It was stinking hot, but luckily there were plenty of shaded areas for us to take cover.

We spent the majority of the day just walking around and enjoying all the different sights.  One thing that amazed us was the different types of food on offer, it was like we were back in Melbourne - Greek, Indian, Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan and of course French.  We twiddled our thumbs for a while trying to figure out what to have for lunch and remembered that recently we had spoken about how much we missed tzatziki, so Greek it was!

We spent a fair bit of time in the shops as they were all air-conditioned and I finally found myself a new pair of coloured jeans that I had spent the last few months searching for.  Now all we needed was some cooler weather so I could actually wear them!

Out hotel room was really cool, on both counts.  The air-conditioning was excellent, but the room itself was really good.  Apart from being really big and having our own ensuite, it was decorated in a really old-school kind of way, right up Anna's alley!

We had a brief rest and cooled ourselves down and then walked around the corner to the Musee Granet.  Its permanent collections make it one of the richest provincial museums in the world, however there wasn't really anything that stood out as being amazing.

this was the only thing worth photographing - never seen anything like it before!

Anna outside our hotel entrance

That night we had an outside table booked at a place called Le Petit Verdot which Lonely planet had suggested, but before we got there we went to one of the bars on Cours Mirabeau to have a happy hour cocktail.  We felt like we needed to dress up a bit in this town and Anna even donned the heels!

the mojitos were too small and not even very good, very disappointing!

my lamb shoulder was excellent

Anna's duck was pretty good, but the sauce was very sweet

We were pretty impressed with our meals and had a funny time sitting next to a French couple who's English was just ok.  They were amazed and so jealous of the adventure we were in the middle of and the guy made a comment or a quote that is just perfect for our trip - "you may have empty wallets at the end, but your head will be full of memories" - love it!!

It was very funny and embarrassing at one stage when they asked us what we had planned for the next few weeks......I was trying to tell them about a place called Cap d'Ail that we were planning on staying a few days later, but at the time I couldn't remember the exact name and so for about 10 minutes they thought that we were going to Cap d'Agde, which is one of the most popular swingers resorts in the world and located only an hour from Aix-en-Provence.  Luckily we all worked out that was not where we were going because at one stage I thought they were going to invite us back to their house haha!

We walked around the market for a while after dinner and couldn't help ourselves but buy some macaroons to take back to our hotel room.  They actually weren't that good, but I'm sure we'll get better ones in Paris!

The next day we had a day trip planned down to marseille and then to a place called Cassis.  It was only a 30 minute train ride to Marseille, but another 30 minutes was all it took for us to realise that Marseille is an absolute dump of a place and made Naples in Italy look like paradise!

the best photo we took in Marseille - leaving!!

Another 30 minute train ride and then a 20 odd minute bus ride and we arrived in the really cool little fishing village of Cassis.

Although Cassis was really pretty, we wasted no time in buying tickets for an hour boat ride along the coast to see the spectacular Les Calanques.

The Calanques are a protected 20km stretch of high, rocky promontories rising from the bright turquoise sea.  Sheer clefs are occasionally interrupted by idyllic beach-fringed coves, mostly only possible to reach by the water.

They really were absolutely amazing and we wished that we could have spent longer than an hour out on the water, but an hour still gave us the opportunity to see these beautiful inlets.

our skipper was taking it pretty easy

There were about 8 people on our boat and because everyone else was French, the skipper spoke in French the whole time, so we didn't understand anything he was saying about the different coves he took us in to, but I did understand when he said we could jump out and have a swim!

Back in Cassis we walked around for a bit, got an ice-cream and a crepe and then set off for Aix-en-Provence.

There was a really cool fountain in our street called the four dolphins fountain, which was interesting because the so called dolphins looked more like some angry fish you would find in the depths of the ocean.  This small square in the shade of the four corner trees is a great example of the charms and pleasures of strolling through the streets of Aix!

We were pretty stuffed after a big day, but managed to get dolled up for a few more drinks and another pretty good meal.

Once dinner finished though, we were pretty close to falling asleep at the table, so we set off home to hit the sack.

interesting shop name!

Next morning I got up early to do some exercise and then went to the markets to pick up fruit and just have a wander around.

After breakfast we packed our bags and went to the train station, bound for the Cote d'Azur (French Riviera), super excited!!