The Cote D’Azur: St Tropez, Cannes and Antibes

Super Yachts, Food Markets, Pina Coladas and Ice Ice Baby

As this is the rich men’s play ground were both looking forward to seeing how the other 0.5% of the population live and have some people on-board with us to experience it. Katie was joining us for a week, my Mum and sister for 3 nights and Susan for a day of sailing from Antibes into Nice.

St Tropez

To make sure we entered this part of the trip in style Geoff and I rounded the headland into the Golfe of St Tropez with Ice Ice Baby playing out on deck and me dancing away.

I wasn’t sure about anchoring just off the marina breakwater instead of the anchorage a few miles down the coast as I didn’t want us to be the only boat there. Geoff pulled put the binoculars to check out the situation and was confronted with what he described “a small armardour” of boats outside the marina. We weren’t going to be on our own but we were going to be one of over 100 and the smallest boat by a long way… so we decided to join the big boys and anchor off the marina.

I can’t decide whether rich people go to St Tropez because they like being there or because they like being seen there. Either way, I had to see it with my own eyes and, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

Amazing super yachts worth more money than I could dream of, designer shops, pretty little French streets and lots of very expensive cars. There’s nothing like St Tropez to make you realise that there are a few people in this world with a hell of a lot of money.

I’m unsure whether I was in awe of the boats or a bit put off by the extravagance of them and the fact that despite their speed they only really travel between here and Monaco (about 20 miles).

One afternoon Geoff and I nearly got invited onto one of the Gin Palaces – we’d taken the dinghy down the Golfe to another seaside town and on the way back started waving to someone in a Super Yacht (Dea Blue). I’m not sure how the waving started but he waved us over towards his boat. Geoff was all up for heading over and seeing if we could go on-board but I chickened out. Oh well – maybe we’ll get another chance!

Katie joined us for some of St Tropez so to celebrate us being here and get into the swing of the rich and luxurios life on this coast we made Pina Coladas and drank them on-deck while we watched the sun set.

Cannes

Katie and I fell in love with Cannes for several reasons – the main one being it’s food market. We spent a whole morning here buying food for lunch, dinner, snacks and whatever meal we would make up. Fresh figs, doughnut nectarines, smelly goats cheese, olive tapenade, multiple varieties and colours of tomatoes, beautiful flower arrangements – the list goes on.

Cannes also had a beautiful old town which was great to explore and was full of lovely places for eat. The steep streets were a bit hard to navigate with our heels on our night out but we persevered and had a lovely meal and drinks out.

As we were staying here for 2 nights we decided to head a bit further in land to Grasse famous for it’s perfume industry. It was an interesting trip and nice to see the mountains as well as the coast. We had a tour of a perfumery (in French so we didn’t really understand it) and had a walk around town before jumping on the bus and heading back to Cannes.

Antibes

A pretty and busy old walled town buzzing with holiday makers, artists stalls and popular cafes and bars. If we had had more time we would have stayed here a bit longer but none the less we got to have a good look around and to check out the local restaurants.

We hadn’t booked into the marina but thought we were lucky when we called up and they were able to “squeeze us in”. And they meant it literally. We had a mooring which was just about wide enough for us to fit into and to make matters slightly worst we were touching the bottom. As we left the marina the next morning the keel was literally scraping through the mud – not something we want to be doing again in a hurry.

Susan joined us here in the morning, the four of us had breakfast on-deck and then headed for a sail to Nice.

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