On the French Riviera...
... there are no unhappy people. I doubt I can effectively describe how beautiful this region is, but I will try. Ben and I visited 3 key cities this weekend along the "Cote d'Azur" which us Americans (and the British) refer to as the French Riviera. We stayed in Nice, and we took day trips to Cannes and Monte Carlo.
Nice is a coastal town that, at first glance, looks a lot like maybe a town in Florida or on the Pacific coast somewhere. Palm trees line many of the streets, and many of the buildings are brightly colored. The weather was very nice, the best I've had yet in France, really. Upper 70s all weekend, sunshine, and a pleasant breeze blowing in off the Mediterranean.
Our hotel was in the city center, but of course the real action is along the waterfront. Tons of boutique shops, cafes, beachfront restaurants. Just walking around the waterfront was entertainment enough. This being a Formula 1 weekend AND the culmination of the Cannes film festival, there were even more tourists than usual. Nice is where the French come on vacation. I picked it because it was one of the few places I could find with a hotel available, and because it is in between Cannes (West of Nice) and Monte Carlo (East of Nice).
Friday morning we hopped a train to Cannes (pronounced "can") to take in the film festival. Just walking around this town made you feel like a movie star. The atmosphere was like a carnival - a very rich one. The major hotels along the waterfront in Cannes are taken over by the big movie studios for the festival. Their facades are covered with enormous movie posters (X-men III, Dreamworks logos). The hotels all employ extra security to keep out the riff raff like me and Ben. The stars normally stay in town a few nights around the premiere of whatever movie they're promoting, so there is a lot of paparazzi type star-watching taking place. People crowd around hotel entrances just to get a glimpse of their favorite star. If you asked me, the locals were MUCH nicer to look at, and there were more of them.
The main street along the waterfront in Cannes is entirely blocked off to public traffic except scooters. It is used exclusively for moving the stars around between theatres and parties etc. Ferrari's, Bentley's, and the occasional Aston Martin, Maserati, or Rolls Royce is about all that you see. The exception to this is the swanky Renault "official vehicles" used to shuttle the underlings (producers and directors) around. The movies are shown all over town in maybe 4 or 5 big theatres, and there is a big festival hall where the awards ceremonies are held.
Ben and I walked up and down the beach, checked out the festival village, stopped to gawk at some of the beautiful cars and beautiful girls that are all along the street. Most of the women we saw around the beach and hotels looked like models. Keep in mind that this is the Mediterranean coast, between Spain and Italy. Beautiful people have been marrying other beautiful people for generations in this region, and the resulting genetics yield some impressive specimens. The store fronts along the beach read like Rodeo Drive - Gucci, Armani, Cartier, Louis Vitton, Dolce & Gabanna. Some guy pulls up in a Ferrari, drops off his supermodel girlfriend to go shopping for the day (at these discount stores I just listed). This was happening all day long - a continuous stream of glamour circulating about town.
We had lunch at a beachfront restaurant, watched some of the enormous yachts come in and out of the harbor. We ended up getting tickets for a premiere for a movie called "Congorama." You have to line up an hour early if you're groundlings like Ben and I, but it was worth it. It was more of an auditorium than a movie theater. Before the show, the director comes up on stage and says a few words. The stars of the movie are seated on the main floor of the house to watch the premiere with everyone else. After the movie the cast signs autographs. It's really a spectacle. Great movie too - not sure if it will be shown in the US but if you get a chance to see it at an independent/arts cinema, I'd recommend it.
After the premiere we headed back down the strip (it was night at this point). The beachfront was hopping with "VIP" parties. Many sections of the beach are blocked off for exclusive use of hotel guests. DJs are pumping music, bouncers let those with passes, and of course really hot girls without passes, down to the beach to join the party. And oh, how the liquor flows freely. Actually in Cannes we saw a lot of the beachfront parties where people were passing around big bottles of (rose) wine and champagne and drinking from the bottle! I think this is what Will meant when he spoke of "conspicuous consumption." The people watching was really amazing. Oh yeah and these beaches are topless, if you so choose. Ben and I kept our shirts on, which was probably best for everyone.
Further down the boardwalk we found ourselves in front of the red carpet outside the festival hall. Guests were arriving for a big premiere (United 93, I think). There was band playing, an army of paparazzi, and the red carpet was lit up with stage lights. Boom cameras were broadcasting the whole thing on two jumbotron screens for those who couldn't get close enough to see everything. The spectacle of it all was just wild. A couple British guys tried to talk their way through security and promptly got the boot - that was just plain funny. You see things like this on TV but then when you're here in person you keep asking yourself "is this real?" Ben and I certainly felt like rock stars just for being a part of all the action. Then reality set in and we hopped our train back to "boring" Nice.
Nice is a coastal town that, at first glance, looks a lot like maybe a town in Florida or on the Pacific coast somewhere. Palm trees line many of the streets, and many of the buildings are brightly colored. The weather was very nice, the best I've had yet in France, really. Upper 70s all weekend, sunshine, and a pleasant breeze blowing in off the Mediterranean.
Our hotel was in the city center, but of course the real action is along the waterfront. Tons of boutique shops, cafes, beachfront restaurants. Just walking around the waterfront was entertainment enough. This being a Formula 1 weekend AND the culmination of the Cannes film festival, there were even more tourists than usual. Nice is where the French come on vacation. I picked it because it was one of the few places I could find with a hotel available, and because it is in between Cannes (West of Nice) and Monte Carlo (East of Nice).
Friday morning we hopped a train to Cannes (pronounced "can") to take in the film festival. Just walking around this town made you feel like a movie star. The atmosphere was like a carnival - a very rich one. The major hotels along the waterfront in Cannes are taken over by the big movie studios for the festival. Their facades are covered with enormous movie posters (X-men III, Dreamworks logos). The hotels all employ extra security to keep out the riff raff like me and Ben. The stars normally stay in town a few nights around the premiere of whatever movie they're promoting, so there is a lot of paparazzi type star-watching taking place. People crowd around hotel entrances just to get a glimpse of their favorite star. If you asked me, the locals were MUCH nicer to look at, and there were more of them.
The main street along the waterfront in Cannes is entirely blocked off to public traffic except scooters. It is used exclusively for moving the stars around between theatres and parties etc. Ferrari's, Bentley's, and the occasional Aston Martin, Maserati, or Rolls Royce is about all that you see. The exception to this is the swanky Renault "official vehicles" used to shuttle the underlings (producers and directors) around. The movies are shown all over town in maybe 4 or 5 big theatres, and there is a big festival hall where the awards ceremonies are held.
Ben and I walked up and down the beach, checked out the festival village, stopped to gawk at some of the beautiful cars and beautiful girls that are all along the street. Most of the women we saw around the beach and hotels looked like models. Keep in mind that this is the Mediterranean coast, between Spain and Italy. Beautiful people have been marrying other beautiful people for generations in this region, and the resulting genetics yield some impressive specimens. The store fronts along the beach read like Rodeo Drive - Gucci, Armani, Cartier, Louis Vitton, Dolce & Gabanna. Some guy pulls up in a Ferrari, drops off his supermodel girlfriend to go shopping for the day (at these discount stores I just listed). This was happening all day long - a continuous stream of glamour circulating about town.
We had lunch at a beachfront restaurant, watched some of the enormous yachts come in and out of the harbor. We ended up getting tickets for a premiere for a movie called "Congorama." You have to line up an hour early if you're groundlings like Ben and I, but it was worth it. It was more of an auditorium than a movie theater. Before the show, the director comes up on stage and says a few words. The stars of the movie are seated on the main floor of the house to watch the premiere with everyone else. After the movie the cast signs autographs. It's really a spectacle. Great movie too - not sure if it will be shown in the US but if you get a chance to see it at an independent/arts cinema, I'd recommend it.
After the premiere we headed back down the strip (it was night at this point). The beachfront was hopping with "VIP" parties. Many sections of the beach are blocked off for exclusive use of hotel guests. DJs are pumping music, bouncers let those with passes, and of course really hot girls without passes, down to the beach to join the party. And oh, how the liquor flows freely. Actually in Cannes we saw a lot of the beachfront parties where people were passing around big bottles of (rose) wine and champagne and drinking from the bottle! I think this is what Will meant when he spoke of "conspicuous consumption." The people watching was really amazing. Oh yeah and these beaches are topless, if you so choose. Ben and I kept our shirts on, which was probably best for everyone.
Further down the boardwalk we found ourselves in front of the red carpet outside the festival hall. Guests were arriving for a big premiere (United 93, I think). There was band playing, an army of paparazzi, and the red carpet was lit up with stage lights. Boom cameras were broadcasting the whole thing on two jumbotron screens for those who couldn't get close enough to see everything. The spectacle of it all was just wild. A couple British guys tried to talk their way through security and promptly got the boot - that was just plain funny. You see things like this on TV but then when you're here in person you keep asking yourself "is this real?" Ben and I certainly felt like rock stars just for being a part of all the action. Then reality set in and we hopped our train back to "boring" Nice.
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