Places to see, Cote d Azur

Depends on what you are looking for. Cote d'Azur has got everything: great beaches, beautiful water, lots of art and culture. Places to visit if you are staying at Cote d'Azur for 1 week: Nice, Cannes, Monaco, and smaller towns such as Antibes (Picasso museum and more), St Paul de Vence (Villa d'Ephrussi - a must), St Jean-Cap Ferrat (Foundation Maeght - a heaven for art lover) and Villa Kerylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. I'll try to tell about these places in the upcoming journals.

Quick Tips:

If you don't want to miss anything worth checking out, I would recommend buying a brochure on Cote d'Azur. They are sold in a lot of places along the coast and are printed in several languages, so you can pick the language you are most comfortable with. These brochures have very nice pictures and are great guides for first-time travelers as I was. But I got to see almost everything.

Best Way To Get Around:

I would recommend a car. Make a reservation on the internet before you go to France, you will get a good rate and the car that you want. Most of the time, you will get an upgrade for the same amount of money. I rented from Avis, who at the time was running a promotion of 30% off on European rentals. Also, if you know how to drive with a stick-shift, don't rent an automatic, since it can be twice as expensive. Also there are only two routes to follow, either N7 or N98. Just pick the direction that you need. It's impossible to get lost.

This is a great place to go if you love Picasso. This museum has a huge collection of his pottery; the rest of the Picasso pottery collection is in Spain. There are also several large paintings and tapestries. Unfortunately, they don't allow you to photograph, so you might have to buy a catalogue if you really want to treasure this collection forever. The gift shop on the first floor has so many different catalogues of different painters, it's just amazing. The prices can be a little high, but when compared to prices in the USA, it's still much cheaper to buy catalogues in France.

Haut de Cagnes is one of the French towns where history seems to be in everything, in the narrow streets, old houses, names of the churches. But the most interesting thing about this small town is the castle, located on the hill. The castle is currently a museum and is called the Grimaldi Chateau. It houses an interesting mixture of antiques and ultra-modern paintings and sculptures. On the outside the castle looks like a real fortress with its walls and towers being a familiar image of any medieval fortress. But inside it’s very different.

It has rooms that still exhibit the furnishings of its time, the ceilings along the stairs are covered with beautiful patterns in gold and light blue. A humongous fireplace in one of the rooms is made of white and green marble. But the most amazing thing is that the exposition of modern paintings and sculptures in the next rooms somehow is not out of place, but works here. And these paintings are really worth a look. Mostly you can see 3-dimensional objects that cast a shadow, and that shadow is a very interesting and creative image that adds to the object itself.

When you are done with the Castle, walk along the streets surrounding it, look at the old signs with the street names, houses with walls made of stone. It seems that nothing has changed here in 100 years, the illusion is very real except for the cars parked everywhere. This town attracted a lot of artists, Renoir was the most famous among them and you can visit his house when you are here.

Cannes Tourist Office
Palais des Festivals, La Croisette
Phone: 04-9339-2453
Website: www.cannes-on-line.com
e-mail: tourisme@semec.com
Open: summer daily 9am-8pm, winter Mon-Sat 9am-6pm

Cannes has always had in my imagination this allure of glamour that surrounds the yearly film festivals. But I guess my imagination is as inventive as Amelie’s. So I was in Cannes a week before the annual festival, and found nothing that I'd expected. Cannes seemed like a regular Riviera town with nice beaches and overpriced hotels, lazily going about its business, with several museums that may or may not be worth your time. It just wasn’t that different from any other small town along the Mediterranean coast. Maybe it was me, and I was expecting too much, or maybe I should have gone the next week and then I would see what makes Cannes the place the whole world comes to for 1 week in May with stars sitting in cafes, people getting autographs . . .

Nonetheless, I came to Cannes by car from Nice, and started at the very end of Boulevard de La Croisette, which is the main street--a very long stretch of hotels and shops on one side and yachts and beach on the other. The luxury yachts and fishing boats stay here in Vieux Port, and you can spend hours watching people in preparation for various journeys. If you have a nice map of the city, it will show you which hotel is which along La Croisette. Practically all the way at the beginning of La Croisette, you finally see the famous Palais des Festivals, which looks like it was built in the '60s. Here you will also see Allees des Stars, with handprints and signatures of the most famous stars of the last four decades. Also here in Palais des Festivals is Cannes tourist office, where you can pick up maps of the area, get discounts on museum passes, and arrange your hotel accommodations. You can get to Cannes by car or by train; there are two train stations within the city limits.

Continued in Part II

Continued from Part I

Cannes has several museums: Musee de la Castre, Musee de la Mer, La Malmaison, Espace Miramar, and Chapelle Bellini.

Musee de la Castre is located very close to the Palais des Festivals on top of the hill in Le Suquet, which is considered to be the highest point in the city and is the best place to get the panoramic view of the city and the sea. It houses a collection of artifacts from ancient worlds as well as paintings by local artists.

Musee de la Mer, as the name suggests, has collections of everything that has to do with the sea.

La Malmaison has some interesting temporary exhibitions of art; you should check what they have going on at the time of your visit.

Espace Miramar has temporary exhibits by young painters of the area--not very interesting.

Chapelle Bellini was Bellini’s studio, and some of his works are here on display. It’s open Monday through Friday from 2 to 5 pm and by appointment.

None of these museums have collections that you absolutely have to see, so if you don’t have much time, skip them.

Fondation Maeght (in French)

Open July through September 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. and October through June 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. - 6 p.m. (during lunch everybody has to leave the premises)

Phone:(33)0493328163

Maeght Foundation is an amazing place. It was built in 1964 and is a private foundation. The building has a very interesting architecture which is very difficult to describe but you can see it at the following website http://www.musexpo.com/english/maeght/. One side of the building has Chagall's mosaic on it. The garden is full of fountains that were created by Miro. Most fountains are shaped like a frog. Another fountain on the right handside of the church is a moving fountain and you really have to see it to appreciate the creativity of the author Pol Bury. There is also a pond, bottom of which is mosaic by Braque. The sculptures and paintings by Arp, Bonnard, Braque, Calder, Chagall, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Léger, Matisse, Miro are presented here. The sculptures are not only inside but also outside in the open. The fence surrounding the estate is also a continuous work of art.

This museum is one of the largest collections of modern art in the world and if you love modern art as much as I do, you definitely have to visit Foundation Maeght if you are ever in Côte d'Azur.