Day 9 – Cannes

Although we are staying in Nice, our first day in southern France was spent in Cannes. We took a thirty-ish minute train ride there, and then wandered off into le vieux Cannes du Suquet (translated: old part of town). As Miel wants me to include, I remarked that it was “like California…but Romans lived here.” With the Film Festival going on, it did feel a bit like I would imagine Hollywood to be, but with actual history. We managed to stumble upon the main historical attraction of Cannes, the Eglise de Notre Dame de l’Espérance. Judging by the scaffolding, we assumed it was undergoing renovation. The hill atop which it sits provided a lovely view of Cannes. We encountered a tour group and stole part of their tour, covertly listening to the guide explain the history of the Suquet (if you’re interested, after the Romans left, it was a tiny fishing village until it was rediscovered by some British dude, who built a house and bought land).

Lots of tall apartment buildings and narrow roads in Old Cannes.

Clock tower of the church.

We then walked towards the large mass of white tents near the shore, which we found out were all for the Film Festival. There were many, many official people with name tags, presumably press and others involved in film stuff. We took pictures of famous people’s handprints and walked on the red carpet. It was very exclusive and secure and busy.

The red carpet, sans celebrities until tonight.

We meandered along la Croisette for a while, until we spotted a mini-train tourist tour attraction, which we then did. We heard about each of the big famous hotels, all the famous people who stayed in them, and the movies that were filmed there. The tour also took us back up the hill to the church that we had found on our own, so we took more pictures there. We passed many cafés and noted that most of them advertised “Service non stop!” letting the tourists know that the establishment would not close in the middle of the day. Miel thought this was an interesting cultural note because they did not mention this in London or Paris.

As we felt obligated to touch the Mediterranean, we found a non-exclusive swathe of beach, took off our shoes, and let “the end of the waves…what do you call that? That last bit of wave” wash over our feet. We desanded and dried our feet using different methods of choice and headed away from the general commotion of the beach.

"It's just...so...blue..."

Our next stop was the Cimetière du Grand Jas, located about two miles (uphill) from the coast. It was really big and pretty. As we went to investigate a particularly large mausoleum, we saw a solemn procession heading our way and quickly scampered away with an exclamation of “Funeral! Awkward!” Miel has kindly offered to write this part for me (read: started listing things I had to include). “Things you have to mention about the cemetery. You have to mention that we learned things about grave architecture, specifically the knobs that permit one to open the tomb for the purpose of adding in more [dead people]. You can paraphrase what I say next. That way, grammatically, it will make sense.” (There is so much meta-discussion going on now that I can’t properly paraphrase, so we’ll move on to more grave stuff.) We made inferences about the circumstances of people’s deaths (wars, etc.), Miel translated various inscriptions, we found one very wordy and indignant family’s monument (they had three exclamation points in a row at one point, although, to be fair, they were describing their innocent daughter’s random murder), and found a note written to thieves who had presumably stolen something off the gravestone. We didn’t take pictures, as it was forbidden. Sorry. We did, however, preemptively dodge several mourners out of respect.

Beach! More blue!

One of our DEVOTED READERS should go through and calculate the percentage of each blog that is random quotations and arguments, versus actual content regarding the events of our day. (“You have to mention it was my idea!”) It was Miel’s idea.

Additional reports (Nice!) forthcoming.

-Sara & Miel

P.S. As of today, we have realized just how close we are to Italy. If we had a car, we could get across the border in about half an hour. No wonder everything is printed in Italian as well as French and English. As the tour guide pointed out, you can see the foothills of the Alps from Cannes as well.