The French along the Côte d'Azur seem an uncanny lot. They eat well, dress well, speak well, but the moment le soleil pokes its head out, they dash to the beach, strip down to their thongs, and remain narcotically immobile, baking for hours in microwave temperatures. Few actually venture out for a swim. Most, however, appear to retreat from the cooker only when they are hungry or smell something on their body burning. The objective, I gather, is to look like a worn brown leather bag.
Nice
I had my first baptism with the French when I entered a magazine kiosk in Nice and asked, in what I assumed was perfectly comprehensible French, "Avez-vous de l'eau, s'il vous plait?" I pronounced water low . The sales clerk looked at me as though I just imitated a sonorous moose mating call. She turned to her husband and addressed him in a verbal staccato. But he simply replied in typical Gallic fashion by echoing her confusion with a lost shrug. After several attempts, I reverted to mime. "Ah, l'eau! " she gasped with a coarse exclamation, emphasizing an acute lu . "Vous étes Canadian, non?" They probably spoke English flawlessly but enjoyed correcting my French grammar, laughed at my accent and went on their own way. I had no choice but to slink away muttering, "But that's what I said ."
Yet, if there is life after death, may I return as a palm tree along the Promenade des Anglais that hugs the Baie des Anges. This walkway is a sight of which one never tires. Very little changes here yet everything moves. In over 200 years, the most obvious changes are the clothes people wear (which is less), and the congestion of the traffic (which is more). In fact, it seems a moving parking lot. Sweeping belle époque hotels with rococo façades and cotton candy cupolas line the Promenade like debutantes, reserve a timeless elegance hard to equal. One of the most beautiful avenues is Victor Hugo, a quiet, tree-lined boulevard with leaves poetically casting a rhapsody of shadows and patterns on imperial cream-colored buildings. There lies an aged yet graceful face on each building—one of yawning symmetrical French windows, stealth-like drawn curtains and arabesque iron balconies. A face that welcomes the present but never forgets the past. At night, the streets become ribbons of light, while open cafés fill with music, chatter, the clink of glasses, ebullient greetings and mock protests, apologies and flirtations that make up the conversation of the French.
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Rue de France, a pedestrian lane, may cater unabashedly to the tourist franc; however, it has unmistakable energy. The cafés whirl with mustachioed waiters who serve you avec panache while the most strenuous task is deciding which rosé to select. A kaleidoscopic stream of locals sells knickknacks and foreigners gently saunter by as though on an escalator, deciding where to dine by examining the samples on each proffered plate. As the fifth largest city in France, Nice feels prosperous without it being too unattainable like Monaco. Not too laissez-faire like St. Tropez or too glitzy like Cannes. Nice, the unofficial capital of the Côte d'Azur, is what the Italians might refer to as la nonna (the mother).
It is worth going to the fish market just to gawk at what is caught in the Mediterranean. It makes you think twice about swimming. Needless to say, seafood is a specialty here, but for the best meals, it is best to travel north into the Maritime Alps to places like Castellane.
St. Tropez
If Nice is the capital of the Côte d'Azur, then St. Tropez is the forbidden fruit. The French authoress, Colette, wrote "a color of blue reigns here that elsewhere is but a dream." On the Riviera, life itself is décolleté —a lifestyle that dissolves into a nonchalant pace. Colorful café awnings bloom out like hibiscus. The small seaport is infested with galleries and cafés that charge Parisian fees. Unfortunately, paradise has a price—popularity. Tourists are attracted by the zenith of casual luxury, the tropical beauty and the promiscuous taste of it all under a blow-torch sun. But don't expect to see celebrities. The Bardots are now like evacuees, fortified behind high hedges, iron gates or on opulent yachts. The beaches are more like a monochromatic terrain of sandpaper—hard, crusted sand sprinkled with dry grit and broken rock. Hardly the rapturous escape. Just sit under a café awning and watch the world drift by lazily. Linger over moules , pommes frites , fresh fruit, cheese, baguettes and local wine. There is a studied blasé elegance that takes over—lovers embrace like boats moored together. The place emits an air of Tropezian white pants, spaghetti straps, espadrilles and a certain catch-me-if-you-can behind each glance. The town is an androgynous figure which clearly savors the attention of both sexes with an erotic charged playfulness. St. Tropez isn't Sin City; rather it's a flirtation with life. Wind-cheating Speedos wrapped around the contours of nubile, bronzed bodies, pepper the beaches and swimming pools like piqued displayed ornaments. When wet, they could incite a riot.
The architecture is an array of turn-of-the-century salt-washed, pastel-colored buildings squeezed together. The monoculture of tourism has slightly tarnished its seduction, clogging it with overcrowding and ersatz consumerism along the harbor front. This sensory feast is under a constant onslaught of air-conditioned tour buses that bully past cars on roads as slim as an anorexic supermodel. These buses carry a perpetual tide of blue-haired, bespectacled women and middle-aged men wearing Bermuda shorts that are too tight— all scrutinizing the view like a David Attenborough discovery. They stare at their surroundings like it was some sort of hedonistic zoo, fed by adulterated fruit under a gold and platinum-card sun. Nevertheless, St. Tropez drifts into a relaxed and secular milieu the deeper one ventures into the old quarters.
Cannes
Cannes is the Dom Perignon of the Côte d'Azur. Cannes personifies understated luxury. The city seems to act as though it is constantly under klieg lights. The locals look glamorous in a haughty way. The women, tall and emaciated, are attached either to a toy poodle, a Louis Vitton purse or a Mercedes-Benz. The place is a tonic of sun and the elixir of money. Mint-colored Belle Époque buildings line La Croisette, a canopy of domes and a sea of beach umbrellas that seem to commiserate with each other.
During the International Film Festival, topless budding models pose on the beach in front of flashing bulbs, swaggering and giggling like mermaids who have just discovered how to walk. Everyone wants to be recognized during the Festival and the promenade becomes a fashion parade. And, of course, the pink and white Ritz Carlton, with its red carpet dribbling out, stands out like the self-indulgent Rolling Stone tongue. During the Festival, it is virtually prohibited to turn off or question the Media Epiphany and what starts off as shocking soon becomes routine and ritual. After the two-week circus is over and the carnival of actors has left, the city resumes its normal pace of civility.
Monaco
Somerset Maugham aptly described this snuffbox-sized principality as "370 sunny acres peopled with shady characters." Monaco's history sounds like a mob ancestral tree: initially a feudal anomaly, the land was seized by the Grimaldi clan, a Genoese family (pirates), as early as 1297. Shifting loyalties contributed to a checkered independence until France lost its patience and annexed it in 1793. Nevertheless, the Grimaldies recovered it in 1814 and have ruled it with undeniable shrewdness.
If Aristotle Onassis, the controlling shareholder of the Société des Bains de Mer had had his way, he would have restricted Monaco as an elite enclave for the super rich. However, Prince Rainer, a savvy capitalist, opened Monaco's pearly gates for tourists and gamblers. It became the exclusive sandbox for the jet-set, yet this tax-shelter sovereignty has only granted 4,000 applications for citizenship in the last 15 years, even though there's a population of 30,000 inhabitants who live in unequivocal security. There is almost one hidden surveillance camera per citizen. Discretion is the valor of Monaco. Sighting a celebrity here is about as rare as breaking the bank at the Casino.
The last time I strolled along the Boulevard Albert was in 1973. It had a Cinderella-like charm. White, honey-combed shaped apartments sprinkled the mountainside. The harbor was smaller, though not the size of the yachts which stretched like suburban bungalows. Now, when I drive in via La Basse Corniche, I can only see the Mediterranean, like rays of light reflecting between the slits of stacked pancake layers of condominiums, brazenly postulating themselves, vying upwards, creating a dark wind tunnel.
This sea of white- and sandpaper-colored concrete clutter may seem to some to have scarred the landscape and some may feel that the luster died with Princess Grace, but Monaco still generates a fervent excitement and sophistication like few other places. The giant edifices depict a stylish prosperity as the principality now grows out into the Med—the only realty left to build on. Construction now ranks above gambling as Monaco's chief GNP revenue. Regardless, it's still gambling, royalty and Formula One that draw in the millions of tourists each year to this amorphous jewel.
For more travel information: http://www.guideriviera.com/ .
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