Plage de Pampelonne

The place is ridiculous.  In the morning, the megayachts leave St Tropez, Cannes and Antibes and race to anchor in front of this 3-mile beach.  From further afield, i.e., Cap Ferrat and Monaco, fast boats in the 30 to 80-ft range zoom in at 20 knots-plus to make it before lunch time.  And for the people unwilling to lounge on a fully crewed yacht for an hour to make the trip, the helicopters come in all day from Monaco, Menton, and other points.

The beach then hums with activity, but it is crowded.  Think Central Park on a sunny late spring weekend.

Then in mid afternoon, everyone commutes back to their harbours and villas, and only a handful of boats remain at anchor to watch the sunset, there where were hundreds of vessels laid at anchor just a few hours before.

And this is what we saw each day for three days at Pampelonne.  And let's not even talk about the nudist sectors of the beach.

Pampelonne before noon, only about 3/4ths full, looking south from Tahiti Beach.  Each flag marks a different "beach."  27 June 2016, iPhone 6 Plus.

Antibes

In the two months we spent on the Côte d'Azur, we saw evidence of la dolce vita everywhere.  Even in the refuse bins.

When we took out Peregrinus' household trash at the Port d'Antibes-Vauban marina, the container was nearly full.  Some harried yacht crewman had dumped his trash in front of the dumpster, and we just had to pull our iPhone camera out.  The remains of a bit of shopping spree laid there for the trashman to pick up: 24 bottles of Louis Jadot, 2 boxes of Chanel, 9 of Hermés, 3 of some fancy Italian apparel thing, and a few shoe boxes.

Antibes, 24 May 2016.  iPhone 6 Plus.

The Victory of the Alps

Huc usque Italia ab hinc Gallia.
———Antonine Itinerary, early III cent. (Wesse:206)

The Triumph was originally round.  Only four columns out of 12 have been restored. 

Built in the year 6 before Christ at the point the Romans considered the southern end of the Alps, the mountain immediately above Monaco, this monument celebrated Octavian Augustus' victory over the alpine peoples.

Forty-nine meters high, it marked at the time the border between Italy and Gallia.  It was built across the Via Iulia Augusta and was visible from the coastal sea routes to Spain.  

The Tropaeum Alpium from Peregrinus' anchorage at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.  19 June 2016, Leica Typ 114

Monaco...

... Is so very small. Much of what one sees when anchored out is actually France: the city of Beausoleil sits right uphill from Montecarlo.  

We arrived an afternoon into the Fontvieille harbour for provisioning and left the Zodiac less than 100 metres from the full-size Monaco Carrefour.  In the morning, we went Summer-clothes shopping in Montecarlo and it was easy to just leave the Zodiac among the large yacht tenders at the very corner of the Quai des États-Unis and Quai Albert 1er: we figured it would take the port employees a while to figure out that the Zodiac marked T/T Peregrinus did not actually belong to a harbour-dues paying mega-yacht!

Port Hercole from Peregrinus' Zodiac tender.  On the very left, the Rock of Monaco, with the princely palace and Monaco-Ville.  Behind the boats, La Condamine and above the built-up-area, the Tête de Chien mountain.  14 June 2016, iPhone 6 Plus.

Nice La Bella

The Greeks who founded the town called it Nikaia or "place of Nike" and when the Romans incorporated it into their Provincia they didn't bother changing it, they simply spelled it Nicaea.  Unlike Cannes and every town from here to Lisbon, Nice was never taken by the Saracens, as the Niceans stopped the invasion in 729, though the Moors still sacked and burned the town in 813, 859, and 880.  When the French took it from the Savoys in 1860 they called it Nice, but the locals still call it Niça or Nissa.

We had fun reading a number of signs written in Niçard around town.  Not quite Occitan (though some words look Catalan), not quite Italian, a dash of Portuguese, and you can tell French has muscled its way in.  We were able to actually decipher each word!  So all those years of Italian, French and Portuguese we've taken didn't entirely go to waste.

The Port of Nice.  iPhone 6 Plus.

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat

Il y a une jeunesse mystérieuse
dans les vieilles pierres de
Saint Jean
––– Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Found written in a corner in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where every child appears to have a nanny, old resident American acquaintances meet on the street by happenstance, people commute to the villas in the cap by helicopter, and the bricklayers and plumbers commute from Monaco. 

Peregrinus anchored at Anse de La Scaletta, in the Saint-Jean waterfront.  Maybe Cocteau's "mysterious youth" is just a side effect of more money than people know what to do with.  Leica Typ 114. 

Artistic license

In the poster, there is only one building between the iconic Carlton and Martinez hotels.  In real life, shot from Peregrinus at anchor, these two are a couple of streets away from each other.

But then again, what would a place like Cannes be without  a dose of artfulness, a bit of a sleigh of hand?

iPhone 6 Plus.  And never mind the fact that, in Cannes, there's usually a crew to drive the tender.

Leica Typ 114.  8:29 PM, 26 May 2016.

Cannes

This area of the Roman Provincia Nostra was well-populated and accessible by a major highway –the Via Iulia Augusta passed thru on its way from Antibes to Fréjus.  Unlike those towns, however, Cannes did not exist as a city, but merely as farms and factories along the coast.

With the collapse of security after the fall of the Empire, the area became largely depopulated, with a nadir in 891 when the Saracens invaded and held the territory for 80 years.  After William the Liberator kicked out the Moors in 972, reconstruction began, and Cannes proper first appears in a document from 1030.

It is largely an accident that turned Cannes into what it is today.  In 1834, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Henry Brougham, was taking his daughter to Italy to take care of her respiratory ailment; but the Italian border, at Nice back then, was closed off because of the cholera.  Backtracking along the road, he spent a few nights at Cannes, and liked it so much, he built a magnificent villa here and launched it as an internationally fashionable resort town.

Peregrinus at anchor in the Rade de Cannes in front of the Boulevard de la Croisette.  26 May 2016, Leica Typ 114.

Cleaning day for Magic Carpet 3

Just arrived home from the PalmaVela 2016 regatta which ended Sunday, Magic Carpet 3, a Wally 100' and one the world's most famous racing boats, gets a thorough cleaning in the Vieux Port at St. Tropez: jacklines and foul gear gets hung out to dry in the foredeck, three large cases of all kinds of cleaners and soaps are brought dockside and onboard, wet-dry vacs and electric buffers are readied, and assorted mops, brushes and water-hoses lie about.  When your racing crew is a couple of dozen sailors, it's probably not too hard to find a handful to clean up afterwards.  

On Peregrinus, though, the sailing crew is down to two, so it's always quite a challenge for the Admiral to rope up cleaning crew after passages!

Check out the dodger on Magic Carpet 3: is it up to Bristol standards?  St. Tropez waterfront, 13 May 2013.  iPhone 6 Plus.

A passerelle in St Tropez

Saint-Tropez is a place of fancies and whims.  One could strut ones' fashions on this dining table, or dance on it: steps are thoughtfully provided.

iPhone 6 Plus.