Hello there, so nice to see you again – finally

9

May 22, 2012 – This morning was still cloudy, and there was a little bit of water spitting from the sky, but by early afternoon the sky was blue and that fabulous Mediterranean sea was finally showing its true colours. In other words, today was fabulous!

We slept late this morning since we had stayed up late down in the hotel lounge. Not a bar, but a wonderful room with couches and chairs and art books and magazines, where the owner will serve you just about any alcohol you might wish for, and has a good selection of wines that he likes. It was just us, enjoying a bottle of wine in the dim light, and around midnight we took the remains of the bottle up to our room so he could lock up. So we slept in. It’s not like we have a schedule of any sort, and even when we do plan something, we rarely actually do it since something else usually takes our fancy.

A schedule is just a backup plan.

So after breakfast of crusty baguette, fresh croissant with apricot jam, coffee, orange juice, and a madeleine, we set off on foot for Antibes to visit the Picasso museum, maybe. The Chagall museum and the Matisse museum were also on the potential list, but we never made it to either, because we eventually ended up at Fort Carre, where we hadn’t planned to go until tomorrow. But I jump ahead.

We walked on the road near the train tracks, knowing the next stop in that direction was Antibes, so we couldn’t get lost, well, we probably could have – this is “US” after all – but we didn’t.

We came down into Anitbes and ended up near the bus station and then wandered down into the warren of narrow streets and Mediterranean architecture that make up Old Antibes. It felt very similar to many of the shop areas that we visited in the Greek Islands, and as a result, felt familiar. The cobbled streets are far removed from the luxury down near the marinas.

Antibes was founded by the Greeks over 2000 years ago with the name Antipolis. Shortly afterwards it was incorporated into the expanding Roman empire when it was known as Antiboul. With the fall of the Roman empire Antibes was a target of pirates and raiders until the growing power of Genoa removed most of these menaces.

Around the 11th century AD Antibes was a feudal town whose eventual overlord was the Pope. In 1384 it passed into the hands of the Grimaldi family – the former Genovese merchant princes who had now moved westwards to Monaco and Nice – as collateral to a loan that the Pope could not repay. Shortly after this Antibes became the easternmost port of the kingdom of France – at that time Nice was part of Savoy – and thus was extremely important. Over the years, and particularly during the 100 years war, it’s port was continually fortified and expanded, culminating in the Fort Carré and the Port Vauban finished in 1710.

The first tourists arrived at Cap d’Antibes in the 1880s and the adjacent town of Juan les Pins was built at the end of the 19th century. Although it expanded, during the early 20th century Antibes was less developed than its neighbours on the French Riviera and was thus a haven for artists such as Picasso and later Nicolas de Staël. ~ Wikipedia

We wandered in and out of shops, expensive and not, and I found a treasure in a small artist’s silver and stone jewellery shop. A lovely and very unique necklace that I will treasure.

After wandering for a couple of hours, we popped out into the Cours Massena which becomes a bustling market each morning. We were close to lunch and many of the sellers were packing up their goods, but we still managed to buy a couple of Nutella macarons from a seller with a dizzying array of flavours. There were olive vendors with a dozen or more varieties, and a vendor selling potatoes with a selection of 18 varieties. Dozens of types of tomatoes, carrots, and other fruits and vegetables that we are never lucky enough to see in our pathetic stores.

From there we headed down to the Museé Picasso, except that we found that it was closed – like so many places – between 1200 and 1400. So with that knowledge, we backtracked to the Couse Massena to find a spot for lunch. I can’t recall the name, but as we walked along, the busiest (and smallest) cafe seemed like an obvious choice. We have found over the years that the busiest places, and those patronized by locals, are generally the best. And we weren’t disappointed. It was tiny, cramped, and the food was delicious and reasonably priced. I had a crêpe bretonne and a Kir blanc, Kirk had a crepe complête and a rosé.

Then it was back to the museum, the two Japanese women sitting immediately next to us (more like with us) at the cafe were also there, apparently also killing time while waiting. Like good little Canadians we walked up the ramp and stood in line. Eventually we noticed that several couples were bypassing the line and going in, so we went and asked. Apparently the line was for groups/tours. Such Canadians – we saw a line and we automatically stood in it. We were happy to discover that (for whatever reason) tickets were half price today, so instead of six euros each, it was three.

The Museum is located within the Château Grimaldi at Antibes, which is 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 six months of the artist Pablo Picasso. Today it is home to the Picasso Museum. From 1702 it became the town hall of Antibes. From 1925 it was known as the Grimaldi Museum, and is today known as the Picasso Museum, the first museum in the world to be dedicated to the artist. Picasso himself donated works to the museum, most notably his paintings “The Goat” and “La Joie de Vivre”. In 1990 Jacqueline Picasso bequested many works by Picasso to the museum. These included 4 paintings, 10 drawings, 2 ceramics and 6 etchings. These are displayed at the Château in addition to the 3 works on paper, 60 etchings and 6 carpets by Pablo Picasso which the museum collected between 1952 and 2001. Today the collection totals 245 works by Picasso. ~ Wikipedia

The art was wonderful. Many sketches, paintings, some pottery, and a large collection of painted plates. None of the descriptions were in English, but I found that I could actually translate more than I’d anticipated. Apparently more French stuck from high school than I thought. I can often decipher written French to some extent, but I get lost very quickly when people speak it.

On that note, all of the stop signs here say “Stop”, not “Arrét”. That seems strange to me.

The museum has a small outside area overlooking the ramparts of the wall and when we emerged we discovered that the day had changed from cold and grey, to warm and sunny, with fabulous blue skies that lit up the Mediterranean and finally revealed that colour that I had longed for since the last time we were in Greece.

And of course we had no sunscreen. I meant to buy some, it’s not like pharmacies are difficult to find. Look up and down the streets and keep an eye out for a neon flashing green cross and a pharmacy will be below it. We already visited one for some insect cream since the local population of biting bugs quickly discovered Kirk had arrived. The cortisone cream the pharmacist provided for a few paltry euros has not left his pocket since!

We wandered back through Old Town, and headed down for Port Vauban. Time to go feel like a peasant again. We walked up along the ramparts of Port Vauban and found a huge art installation that can be found (in a smaller rendition) in English Bay back in Vancouver. We found ourselves meandering along behind some of the largest private/charter yachts in the world. I started to document some names because it seemed unlikely that these wouldn’t be listed somewhere in the top 100 yachts.

We saw:

Dilbar 110m (360ft) with a 16m (52ft) beam and number 21 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Lady Moura – 104m (344ft) with a 19m (62ft) beam and number 24 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Nirvana (oh and she was a beauty!!) – 87m (285.5ft) with a 14.2m (46’7″) beam and number 48 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world. The Nirvana was being cleaned (like they all were) and a half dozen crew had the side of the vessel opened up to load back four big jet-skis and a speedboat into the garage. The speedboat (aka the dinghy) was about 30 feet long and stunning, with the same lines as her mothership.

Kingdom 5KR (the ugliest superyacht around these parts) – 86m (282′) long with a beam of 13.2m (43’4″) and number 50 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Lady Sarya – LOA of 76.31m (250’4″) and a beam of 11.58m (38′) and number 92 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Anastasia (lovely vessel) – 75.5m (247’8″) LOA and a beam of 13.4m (44′) and number 95 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Northern Star – LOA of 75.4m (247’5″) and a beam of 13.5m (44’3″) and number 97 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Polar Star – LOA of 62.97m (206’7″) and a beam of 11.9m (12’2″)

Eminence – LOA 78.43m (257’4″) and a beam of 12.4m (40’8″) and number 80 on the list of the largest 100 superyachts in the world

Hermitage – LOA of 68.15m (223’7″) and a beam of 12.8m (12′)

We have also seen the following vessels at anchor here:

“A” (definitely one of the uglier superyachts around!) – 119m (390’5″) LOA and a beam of 18.87m (61’11”) and ranking number 14 on the list of the 100 largest superyachts int eh world.

Nero (seen in Cannes yesterday) – 90.10m (295’7″) LOA with a beam of 12m (39’4″)

Rising Sun – 138m (454 ft) – This vessel is at anchor off the beach here in Juan les Pins – Kirk thought it was a cruise ship! It is the 8th largest superyacht in the world!

Ice – LOA of 90.1m (295’7″) and a beam of 15m (49’3″) makes Ice the 38th largest superyacht in the world. Ice was anchored just outside of the marina in Antibes.

Those are the ones I could identify….

I find it funny that the lengths actually list to the inch…really, because the 3″ make all the difference on a 300 foot boat! And as we were leaving we looked at a “small” boat between to of the Megayachts, it said it was a Mangusta 92′ and we thought, no, that’s not 92 feet long, it looks like it’s 50 or 60 feet long. The 92′ must mean something else. A walk along the marina and into more normal sized boats and we stopped next to a 42′ Dufour, and realized how screwed up our relative perspective on boat sizes was after being near those megaliths. That “little” boat really was a 92 footer, and it looked small, really small, to us.

We needed to get back to reality, so we stopped and watched a group of older men play a cutthroat game of boulés for awhile, before heading up to Fort Carré. We walked up and around the ramparts and looked down into the marina and over the city before heading back to Old Town for a snack at a cafe. I told the waiter we would like a Tiramisu, a café cremé, and an espresso. He seemed confused and repeated “tiramisu?” back to me. “Oui, tiramisu.” “Sweet?” Kirk replied “Si!” Now the poor fellow was really confused. It was dinner time, we were apparently ordering dessert without dinner, and then Kirk answered in Spanish, with a french pronunciation, when he was obviously English speaking. We finally got our tiramisu and coffees, and they were excellent.

A walk back to Juan les Pins where we thought we would have a late dinner by the beach, we thought wrong. Restaurants have no rhyme or reason here. We did get a table on the beach and a bottle of wine with some crostini and tapenade, but they had stopped serving dinner and said if we would like dinner to come back tomorrow. Most things are open every day “except Monday”, and those restaurants that are open Mondays don’t seem to be open Tuesdays. Some are only open on weekends, and some only open for breakfast and lunch. Some show dinner menus, but we still haven’t encountered them open. Some serve late and are well patronized, some seem to close around 7pm. And the menus may or may not have english, so my interpretive skills have been growing, turns out that the vast majority of French that I know relates to food. One particular restaurant had a great food selection section – Snaking – and although we were tempted to ask for some snakes, we decided not to. In general though, it’s a crap shoot for finding a place to eat, but it probably has a little bit to do with the time of year, although according to our hoteliér, not completely.

And now, with the sound of fireworks carrying from Cannes, scooters racing up and down the roads, and the occasional blaring radio, we are enjoying a bottle of red wine back in our room.

Another great day, only a slight sunburn. I should probably find a pharmacy and buy some sunscreen.

Only the one photo right now, it’s late and I want to get to sleep. More photos from today to come tomorrow, which will probably still be today back home, depending on what time I wake up anyway… just too many to sort through tonight.