Our Fantastic Trip, Part Six: Cannes

This was a short, but a fun day. Cannes is very walkable and it was so interesting how different the various parts of the city looked.


Here was the view as we sailed in:

The building on the left is the one where they hold the Cannes Film Festival. We'll see it up close in a minute.

This is the pier where they tendered us in.

I was very, very happy to see this sign:

They could have used these all over Italy. It is a big problem. Even while being very careful, I ended up stepping in something and had to have the "washy, washy" guy help me clean off my shoe before getting back onto the ship. It was very embarrassing.

The first place we came to was a cute little flea market in a little square. It wasn't quite open yet so we kept moving.

We headed straight to the Palais des Festivals, which is where they hold the red carpet events for the Cannes Film Festival.

Not the most attractive building, is it?

If there was a red carpet, I'd be on it right now.

We walked up to the older part of town that was built up to check out the view. I made friends with this nice, little seagull. We made a video that amazed our kids. I would ask him a question and have him nodding his head up and down. The trick is, they always think you are holding food, so if you move your hand up and down he follows it with his eyes (and the rest of his head follows).

Now we headed back down to the cute little shops behind the market, which were open.

It was here that I realized, much to Hal's chagrin, that we still had a pretty good amount of euros left so I bought a few things for the kids and my babysitter/mom here. (Ok, and an orange scarf for myself, but it was the only thing I bought just for me the whole trip. It was 5 euros.) It was fun because my old high school and college French came back better than I had expected so I was able to ask questions pretty easily. Maybe that's why I kept shopping so much. It was good for my self-esteem. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Next we walked to the downtown area where they had the nicer, more expensive shops.

I try to stay out of those, as a general rule, but it was here that we saw the only Ferrari of our trip.

Here is the beautiful Carlton Hotel.

Walking along the waterfront, back to the market. On the right of the photo is the Casino.

Now I am not generally a fan of bathroom humor but this just begs for it. This is seriously a public toilet. It looked like a tin can. In real life, the color is more silver than it looks here. It cost .70 euros to use and, though I really didn't need to use it that badly, I was curious as to what I would find inside. Once you put the money in, the door automatically opened. Everything was automatic, right down to the place you would stick your hands for first plain water, then warm soapy water and finally rinse water. It was very clean, the only problem I had was figuring out what to do to get the door to open again.

Using the "can" in Cannes. (I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

Ok, now back to the market. Here I was very proud of myself because I was able to bargain in French and actually talked a vendor down on a price. Looking at this photo I was quite alarmed at the amount of weight I had gained in my stomach on this trip. Upon closer scrutiny of the photo, I realized that it is just the pouch of euros under my shirt. Whew!

After that we walked slowly back to the ship and ate a leisurely lunch. Look at the great view we had of the sailboats. (This photo was taken through the restaurant window so it isn't great.)

Here is another one from outside.

So, the next day, in order to catch our plane we had to get up at 5:00 a.m. We were then shuttled to the airport, and since there were over two hours to wait I looked around a little. I bought some candy for the kids from the different countries we'd been to (ok, and a few others) at the duty free shop. It wasn't until later that I realized that I'd spent over $30 on candy. Darn euros. Anyway, we caught our plane, went through customs and were then surprised with an extra five hour layover before our next flight. I can't see how some people can fly to and from Europe very often. By the time we actually got home we'd been up for over 24 hours. I wouldn't recommend doing that if you can help it. It took us both over a week to get over the jet lag. It's great to get up early, but not being able to stay awake past 7:00 p.m. is not a good option, especially with small children around who need adult supervision at all times.

All in all, I have to say it was the most wonderful trip of our lives. (I especially loved the fact that there was no cell phone coverage. It was truly a vacation, in more ways than one.)

The End.