15 September 2014

In Cannes, Life's a Beach

I've travelled to some awesome places this year and have really enjoyed all of my adventures. Sometimes, though, you just want to go somewhere for a few days with good food and a good beach. Luckily, Cannes has both in spades, and even more luckily, my parents have a flat there, so I jetted off there last week with a couple of friends for a long weekend. There are interesting things to do in and around Cannes, but all we really wanted to do was eat delicious food, hang out on the beach, drink gin and play cards, so we didn't really venture more than about a five-minute walk from the apartment all weekend.


September is a great time to go to the South of France, because some of the crowds have dissipated, but it's still very hot and sunny. Well, on Friday morning it was rainy and cloudy for about an hour, but soon that tiny patch of blue sky took over, and we hurried down to the beach.



When the food in the local shops is so good, you don't really need to eat out. We picked up a rotisserie chicken from the local traiteur, Chez Pierre, for a princely sum of €12, added some perfectly ripe avocados, fresh bread and a few gin and tonics, and we had the perfect picnic. Pierre's chickens are delicious: so juicy and with the perfect crispy skin. The best bit was dipping the baguette into the leftover juices at the end. On Saturday night, we switched gears and bought some fillet steaks from Pierre — they were about €12 for each 250g steak. Add a bottle of Champagne and some salad and that's dinner.




The breakfast offerings and sweet treats are pretty damn good too. Our local boulangerie is called Césarine and they do the best pastries and cakes. I enjoyed my shark-shaped croissant, but the trilogy of desserts we shared was amazing. I ordered the chocolate praline mousse cake, which was awesome, although I did also covet the neon-pink raspberry offering.



On Saturday night, we went to the Quirly ice-cream shop on the Croisette, where there are far too many flavours to make choosing easy. In the end, I went for the lavender-honey ice cream, which was a bit different, but very tasty. We ate in on the Croisette, listening to a saxophonist busk and watching all of the Yacht Festival party-goers, and then went for cocktails at one of the slightly less pretentious bars.



Other than that, we just played a bit of paddle-ball, tried to burn off all of the calories with periodic swims along the Croisette and rediscovered the underwater camera. Every time I take underwater photos, I hope I will look like a mermaid, but somehow I usually end up resembling a drowned rat. A great ending to a fun-packed — if not action-packed — weekend in the sunshine.




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