Adventures in Florida: The Callihans Take Tampa: Yes, we Cannes!

Hi Everyone -

And we're back. Let's continue our adventure through France!

Friday, June 9th

This was not a great day, since it was mostly a driving day and driving in France is bananas. We went to Arles and saw the only active Coliseum in the world (but only from the outside) and had a meh lunch at the lovely Vincent Van Gogh café.

Glenn took the above selfie because you can see the Asian girl, who is apparently a social media "influencer", behind him. She had a tripod and was filming herself drinking coffee and smiling and talking to the camera, but she was there alone.

Then we drove to Aix en Provence, which sounded nice - and looked nice from the car, but we could not find a place to stop or park anywhere, and we suddenly seemed to be driving through a pedestrian outdoor mall. At one point, Glenn asked if he should drive the car down a stairway (?!) which seemed like a bad idea. We discovered there were bollards that would lower under the ground when you pulled up to them, but it all seemed insane, so we got out of there and headed straight to Cannes. I have no pictures of Aix en Provence.

At one toll booth, Glenn realized that he did not know how to put the windows down in our car and had to park and get out to get the ticket. Another time, he somehow got in a “restricted” lane and was trapped until he read our credit card number to some person from the call button.

Finally, we arrived in Cannes. Our hotel was tres fancy – Glenn did a fabulous job picking out accomodations. Cannes felt more Vegas-y than our other stops – everything is big and expensive, lots of shops like Gucci and Armani, big boats, fancy cars, etc.

This location gave us our first look at the Mediterranean Sea, which is beautiful. The weather was still quite hot. Here are some pics from our first evening walking around the harbor at Cannes.

Please note: the amount of boat pics we have is INSANE. I cut them down a lot, but still. So. Many. Boats.

Saturday, June 10th

This ended up being a frustrating day, but let's start by showing you some more pics of Cannes during Glenn's morning walk, while I - and the rest of the country - was still asleep. You'll note there are hardly any people in these pics.

So, once I got up and joined him, we had a nice breakfast at a nearby cafe and then walked around and checked out our hotel's beach club across the street.

Then our day kinda fell apart. We drove to Nice, where we planned to park near a gluten free bakery and buy some goodies before walking through the old town. First, we tried to find a place to park, and every parking lot in Nice was full, so we had to park very far away from our destination. Then we had to walk forever to get to the bakery where we discovered they were closed for vacation until Monday.

We then walked to old town and found a place for a late lunch – (food was again meh). There was a church nearby that was literally having weddings every 30 minutes or so (we saw at least three wedding parties), and then all the traffic in town would honk their congratulations to the bride and groom, which meant about 2 hours of ceaseless honking.

So here are a few pics from Nice.

Their beaches, as you can see, were all rocks, which looked rather uncomfortable.

But still popular

We got back to the garage and couldn’t get the machine to work, couldn’t get out of the garage, and there were no humans around to help. We reparked, (Glenn backing down the tiny corkscrew garage like a pro) and then Glenn had to accost a couple of nice women on the street who came in with us and helped us pay and get out.

We had made other plans for the day, but at this point, we just wanted to get back to Cannes. Unfortunately, the road in front of our hotel was closed with construction, as were a bunch of roads behind the hotel, and we probably drove around in circles for an hour before I got Waze to tell us how to get back. Remind me to also tell you about the shenanigans involved in getting gas. Anyway, it was all a mess, and I swore not to get back in a car for at least 24 hours.

Sunday, June 10th

So, Sunday, we stayed in Cannes for a quiet day.

Here are a few of Glenn's morning pics.

At the hotel by the pool, I asked for GF toast for breakfast, and they brought me 6 slices with butter and jam, which was very exciting (I ate 5!).

We sat by the pool and read for a while.

Then we headed down to the beach club. Unfortunately, they told us that they had no beach chairs available and we needed reservations. Back at the hotel, they told us our beach club was full so Glenn made reservations at another private beach, and we went down and they asked us to wait 15 minutes for lounge chairs, and gave us a bench under an umbrella.

They then ignored us for over an hour, (although we were able to get drinks and have a nice view) so we said we were leaving, and then they were very upset! "But we have chairs for you now!" Nope. Saved us 50 Euros.

Some evening pictures from the boardwalk...

That night, we went to a restaurant that supposedly had GF pasta. We arrived at 6:30 and they said they did not open until 7. We waited a half hour, went back, and they said that you had to call and reserve the gluten free pasta ahead of time. Murder. We went back and ate at the hotel, which was good – we shared a roasted chicken.

Monday, June 11th

Monday, we drove to Monaco, which was like an hour away of INSANE driving through a million tunnels and roundabouts and whatnot, and we literally were only there for about 15 minutes. (I'll tell you why in a minute, but it was Glenn's dream to see Monaco.) It was beautiful, with lots of gorgeous gardens, and the casino (which we saw from only the outside), and we took pics super fast.

Here's a fun little tunnel

Glenn fulfilled his dream of driving on some of the roads that are in the Grand Prix.

We came out of the parking garage to a little park...

And then emerged across the street directly at the casino.

Our 15 minutes in Monaco were FABULOUS.

We rushed through that because we had to drive back to Antibes where Glenn had rented a private boat for us for…a three hour tour. (Gilligan’s Island, anyone?) Anyway, we made it to the dock on time and Captain Mark and his assistant welcomed us onboard a pretty 35-foot boat, and took us down past Nice (which used to be the Italian city of Nitza), back through a pretty secret harbor (Villa France?) and back to give us a water view of Monaco and go through their marina of insanely gigantic yachts. The water was smooth, the weather was warm, and we had a wonderful time. We even saw some dolphins. The Captain bought us a delicious bottle of champagne as an anniversary present. Such an unforgettable adventure.