A day with the stars in Cannes

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We are fortunate again to have a hotel that is isolated and up in the hills allowing us another peaceful nights sleep.
We are self catering so its back to scambled eggs again with our cereal.We have used the toast bread from Italy and we brought some French bread which is much better to toast.
The plan today is to spend a few hours in Cannes and see why its so famous in the world of movies.
Rather than take the road straight back down the hill to join the N7 to Cannes which is about 30km away we will take the road across to Grasse and then down the 'Route Napoleon'directly into Cannes.
We were pleasantly surprised by the scenery around us yesterday when we arrived and took a short drive to the supermarket at a small village under a steep and high rock cliff face where the old town of St Jeannet is located.
So we headed back in that direction today and drove through a number of small and very picturesque villages set in the hills to the large town of Grasse.We were amazed at the size of Grasse which we thought would be just another hilltop town but it had a large shopping area and bus services that seemed to go all over the place.
The D6085 or Route Napoleon did what we hoped for and took us directly down to Cannes and we found an underground parking building on the waterfront that had plenty of space.
With another fine,warm day we headed off around the waterfront to the beach area and had lunch from a sidewalk caravan of a freshly prepared panini with salmon and salad filling....yum!!
There were a good number of people on the beach all enjoying the late autumn sunshine and there even a few in swimming.By the number of children around we guess it must be a school holiday period in this part of France at least.
A liitle further along there were a number of restaurants right on the beach with seating that went down almost to the waters edge.
There are a huge number of apartments and hotels on the beachfront and unlike the ones along the Italian Riviera which were all closed up,these were still open and accepting guests.
We could have walked further along the promenade but we thought we should go and have a look at the super yachts tied up in the marina and also have a look where the movie stars walk the red carpet for the Cannes Film Festival.
We retraced our steps and walked down the row of super yachts in the marina.Most had crew on board doing manitenance,diligently shining the superstructure,while owners were back at their work making their millions,now that the summer cruising season was over.
On one though, it appeared as though the owners were on board,as there was a quartet of people sitting in cane chairs on the stern deck sipping wine and finishing their lunch.What a lifestyle.!!
On our return down the row of super yachts we stopped to watch a new arrival squeeze into a gap between 2 berthed boats,to tie up.At first glance it didn't look as though there was enough room for the large craft but it slowly edged its way in with 3 crew on the boat and two others on one of the adjoining boats moving big bags along to make sure the boats did not rub against each other in the process.
We nearly had an international incident as we were stood watching this process going on.There was a small group of people who sounded like Germans standing with us and at the outset we didn't get in their view of the proceedings and they didn't get in ours.Then another one of their group arrived from somewhere else and stood directly in front of Gretchen blocking her view.She didn't take any notice of Gretchen asking her nicely to move so to make a point Gtrechen went around her and stood in front of the new arrival.This brought a lot of babbling from the group and the words 'foreign tourists'used,which we presume was aimed at us.The point did get across and the woman found a spot further away to watch the rest of the proceedings.
We completed our walk alomg the waterfront by taking in the building where the film festival is centred on.The building itself is not particulary interesting but we guess that with all the red carpet laid out and the addition of trees etc to tart the area up it would look quite different.
After a short walk through the expensive looking shopping area we returned to RR and headed home along the beachfront to the airport where we rejoined the road back up the hill to our hotel.
There is a substanial difference between the Italian and the French Riviera in the money that has been ploughed into the towns and marinas that are in the French part.The coastline, when you take out all the development,is however very similar.

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Comments

[Rin]

*lol* at the photo of Dad with "George" :-D I'm guessing it was a bit too cool for the topless bathers on the beach there like there were during our time in Nice?? There were more boobies uncovered than there were covered up when we visited the Cote d'Azur!!