DAY 1: ANTIBES
Cloudy and showery (but v warm) morning so headed to Antibes to wander round the harbour and check out the billionaire’s yachts, then strolled to the Antibes Provençal market – incredible fresh fruit, meats, cheeses, flowers and local produce, and beautiful quintessentially French streets to wander through, drink coffee and eat croissants.
Yes folks, it’s the return of the selfie stick!
Cap d’Antibes is full of massive houses/chateaux which you can’t even see really cos they have security measure to rival a maximum security prison – huge steel gates, spiked fences, cameras, the lot. It’s a proper billionaire’s playground.
The coastline is STUNNING, with clear blue water and beautiful beaches and rocks to clamber about on underneath lush green trees. If there is some great creator whose job it is to design bits of the world, they did an amazing job here.
DAY 2: Monte Carlo, Monaco.
The playground of the rich, the super rich and the even richer. Everyone here is incredibly well turned out and effortlessly good looking, even the dogs.
Had to take a look at the iconic Fairmont hairpin bend as featured in the Monte Carlo F1 race through the streets, and of course the superyachts in the harbour, then a wander through the Japanese garden to the beach. I also had steak tartare, which was fucking glorious, and turned out the restaurant we picked by chance was right on F1’s Tabac Corner.
I have only ever played roulette twice in my life – once with the lead singer of Keane, and today at the world famous Monte Carlo Casino, beloved of James Bond in Casino Royale. I think that’s a pretty good run. And I left €75 up!
I also bought this fucking fabulous massive hat.
Day 3: St Tropez
Boat trip along the French Riviera to St Tropez. Cannot cope with all these effortlessly glamorous and gorgeous French people. But what do you expect from a place that has the world’s most famous spray tan named after it 🤣
Like Monaco this is the playground of the uber wealthy, but whereas Monaco is steep and hilly and built on a million different levels, with narrow busy streets, St Tropez has a much more relaxed and open feel (except the market, which was HEAVING, and not as nice as the Antibes market).
The old town is the best place to go on market days, to wander through the beautiful picturesque lanes and eat and drink in the many bars and cafes (incidentally the service everywhere has been amazing, relaxed, polite and friendly, and needless to say the food has been incredible – classic moules frites with a champagne cocktail in St Tropez is probably as glamorous as I’ll ever get).
Chilled out for a bit on Pearl Beach, then more billionaire yachts to gawp at in the harbour of St Tropez, (this time trying to eat ice cream before it melts cos it’s HOT!) before catching the boat back to Cannes.
Day 4: Mougins
A whole day doing nothing but lying by a pool, reading. Saw 5 Lear jets flying overhead. Absolutely nobody else came by, except a woman who brought me a charcuterie board and an aperol spritz, so effectively this is my own private pool now 🤣
My new fabulous hat is too big to wear and lay back comfortably on a sun lounger. First world problems.
Day 5: Mougins
I am staying in the most beautiful village imaginable – Mougins, just outside Cannes. Picasso lived here for the last 12 years of his life. It’s a pedestrianised village that you can only get to by driving to the edge of the village then either walking or being picked up with your luggage in a golf cart. It’s streets form the shape of a snail or snake from above.
It’s like something out of a fairytale. You know those chintzy, twee books where an English girl goes to France to get over her heartbreak and meets a brooding French artisan baker in a picturesque village filled with little cafes and restaurants and art, and you think oh bollocks, nowhere like that really exists? Well, it does and it’s right here.
It’s an Instagram influencers DREAM, all hidden passageways, boulangeries and patisseries and little French cottages in chocolate box colours, but the influencers evidently haven’t found it yet, and you might see a total of 30 people all day. Except at night, when every restaurant is filled with glamorous French people (there are more Michelin starred restaurants here than anywhere else)
Hung out by the pool again. Didn’t get the memo about people here wearing only classic black stylish swimwear. Or rather I got it and completely ignored it in favour of brightly coloured tiny sparkly bikinis and an ostentatious silk kimono I bought from Greenwich market.
Day 6: Marseilles
France’s 3rd biggest metropole after Paris and Lyon, and a very different vibe from all the other places on this trip. This is a lively, busy city with streets chock filled with restaurants and cafes – and all the food is incredible.
Wandered round the harbour which is more like a proper harbour and less of a billionaires’s playground, and mooched around the old town with its winding streets of coffee shops, boutiques and ice cream shops, and Marseilles cathedral looking over the water. I swear the sky here is bluer than the sky we have.