What could be more French?

#cannes

#Nice

#retiredtravellers

#canadiansinfrance

#checkthisoffourbucketlist

We had to wake up with an alarm this morning! Yeesh…me and alarms on vacation don’t get along, but we needed to get a fairly early train to Cannes to meet a friend of ours who was arriving on the Norwegian Epic cruise ship and only had until 3:30pm before the last tender went back to the ship. With Cannes being a tender port, for the Epic, it also meant making sure we could co-ordinate our train trip with the tender group our friend was given to get off the ship.

We walked to Nice Gare stopping to pick up an almond croissant at our favorite little patisserie, bought our train tickets to Cannes and hopped on the 8:45am train. There are many trains to Cannes daily, so getting a train is very easy from Nice. Frankly any guide book I’ve read on the French Riviera says if you want to make somewhere your home base in the French Rivera, make it Nice because of it being such a great transportation hub for all of the surrounding towns.

Our trip to Cannes was about 30 minutes making stops at places we were familiar with like Cagnes-sur-Mer and Antibes. I was so familiar with Antibes I could tell we were there by the orange terra cotta colour of the train station, before I even saw the sign for Antibes. You know you’re becoming a local when…..!

Our friend was waiting for us at the Casino in Cannes so after we got off the train, I punched the Casino Barriere into my GPS and we started walking. From the train station in Cannes to the port where the casino is located, is about a 10 minute walk.

And there we me our friend Sarah Anne from Canada! Sarah Anne is on a 13 day Norwegian cruise from Civitavecchia (Rome) to Port Canaveral on the Norwegian Epic. The ship is a doing a repositioning cruise and visits Cannes, Ibiza, Cartagena, Ponta Delgado and arrives in Port Canaveral on October 30th. Sarah Anne boarded the ship yesterday, so Cannes was the ship’s first port of call.

Sarah Anne and I met about 3 years ago at the Ontario Senior Women’s Amateur golf tournament when we were paired together with another friend of ours Sandy Glibota on the final day of the tournament. We have played many competitions together since and most recently won the 2024 Lone Palm Ladies Member Guest Tournament in March of this year at my club in Florida.

The co-incidental thing about the cruise which Sarah Anne is taking is the same ship will reposition back to Civitavecchia departing from New York on March 31st, 2025 and me and Richard along with some other friends of ours will be on the Norwegian Epic when it repositions! Sarah Anne sails it to North America….and we sail it back to Europe!

The weather today was pretty miserable with periods of drizzle, to heavy rain. I did not want to bring my goretex jacket because it doesn’t breath and yet, an umbrella is really only partially effective and part way through the day, my cheap 5 euro umbrella we had bought in Nice last week, broke!

I wanted to get some shots of the Norwegian Epic and Sarah Anne was a willing muse! The Epic holds 5,074 passengers and was originally christened by Reba McEntire! Sarah Anne says the ship is not full as there are many singles occupying the normally double occupancy cabins.

There is the Cannes sign and of course there is a hill so we had to climb it!

Yacht Club de Cannes

We had seen what looked like a castle or fortifications on top of a hill with a ‘Cannes’ sign so I set my GPS to what I thought was our destination and we started walking along ‘The Promenade de la Croisette’ past the Yacht Club de Cannes to Boulevard du Midi Louise Moreau.

As we started walking up a very steep hill (sounds familiar?) we realized that perhaps we were going the wrong way. We did see a very cool old Cadillac on our walk though which looks so out of place in France where the cars are so small. The car next to the Cadillac is a Citroen “Ami Ami” which is electric and retails for 7,990 euros! The Ami Ami is 2.4 metres long and 1.4 metres wide and has a range of 75km (46 mile) and has a top speed of 45km/hr or 28mph. The vehicle can be driven without a drivers license by anyone aged 14 or over. It can be charged from a standard home plug in 3 hours. The car has a panoramic roof; and an automatic transmission, which only has Drive, Neutral or Reverse on it. There is no trunk, but the ‘frunk’ or front of the vehicle has a small storage area. I think this is the perfect vehicle for an urban location like Nice or Paris!

Renault also has the 2 seat Renault Twizy which as you can see has no difficulties parking sideways between 2 other parallel parked vehicles! The Twizy has two models which can go either 45 km/hr or 80 km/hr. The Twizy was the top selling plug in EV in Europe during 2012. The car has no heater, so heating was provided by plugging in electric blankets to a USB to keep the driver warm! I think we’ll stick to our Chevy Silverado EV back home thank you very much, but these variations of electric vehicles in Europe sure are interesting!

After turning around from being lost and going the wrong direction, Richard went into full blown ‘Trip Director’ mode and got us going on the right path towards the citadel and the French flag we had seen by the Cannes sign.

Villa Victoria, Cannes. An apartment building that was built in 1852. It looked a lot older than it really is!

Cannes has a number of murals painted on buildings representing famous mythical scenes and icons from the cinema. Of course Charlie Chaplin and The Kid mural is based on a still from the 1921 silent film or movie called “The Kid” starring Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan as the child.

Walking up another wet hill!

Cannes is very nice in the old pedestrian section of town!

Marching up more slippery hills to try and find out what we saw at the top of the hill by the Cannes sign!

And up more stairs!

And more stairs! We liked this mural on the wall which looked sort of like a butterfly. Its a good thing Sarah Anne brought her running shoes for the walks we were doing today!

Finally! Almost there…Eglise Notre-Dame-de-l’Esperance, Cannes!

Eglise Notre Dame d’Esperance has amazing views of Cannes that you cannot get anywhere else in Cannes. We heard angelic voices coming from inside the church and had to go in to take a look at where these voices were coming from!

I have a one minute video if you would like to hear the angelic voices and see a bit more of the church from Cannes.

Looking back over Cannes from the church.

Looking over the coastline of Cannes and the ‘Promenade de la Croisette’ which stretches for over 3km along the waterfront.

We could see that the skies were about to open and the wind was really picking up. We still wanted to see what else was up at the top though as we hadn’t fully explored the top of the area around Eglise Notre Dame yet.

There wasn’t much room to stand in front of this Cannes sign to take Sarah Anne’s photo.

Sarah Anne actually took this photo from behind the sign and I edited the photo and flipped it around to show Cannes this way instead of backwards In hind sight I should have taken Sarah Anne’s picture from behind the sign and edited it too!

Richard wanted to make sure he got the French flag in the background.

We decided to walk around Cannes old town when it started to really pour rain. There were may little shops to nose around in to stay out of the rain and I was able to get a nice black and white fake Louis Vuitton scarf and a blingy grey beret in old town Cannes..

Walking the rainy streets of Cannes

I introduced Sarah Anne to the wonders of the French pharmacies today!

As we wandered the pedestrian streets we looked at the various menus of the small sidewalk cafes trying to decide what would be on the menu for our lunch. I was feeling like something typically French and so were Richard and Sarah-Anne!

Moules frites!

Moules frites!

French onion soup for me!

Richard and Sarah Anne loved their Moules and I enjoyed a few of their frites too! Moules Frites were 14 euros a person and Richard says he’s never had more Moules in a serving before! What a typically French lunch on a typically rainy October day in Cannes, the French Riviera! Oh my! Does it get any better sharing it with friends?

After lunch it was time to go and find out where the Cannes Film Festival takes place in Cannes each May.

Movie stars arrive on the red carpet at Cannes! I’m not sure we were dressed for the occasion but at least it had stopped raining!

The Cannes film festival commenced in the city of Cannes in 1939 and Hollywood stars like Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Mae West, Spencer Tracy and James Cagney all arrived on an ocean liner that MGM had chartered for them, On August 31st, 1939 ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame‘ was screened. The next day German troops invaded Poland and the festival was postponed for 10 days and then finally cancelled when the situation worsened and WW2 broke out. The festival was relaunched in 1946 with 21 countries presenting their films. In 1955 the ‘Palme d’Or’ or Golden Palm was created which was the award given by a panel of judges to the best film from the film festival which is held each May..

The Cannes Film Festival is the most publicized event in the world after the Olympic Games. The festival attracts 30,000 people and 5,000 Journalists.

Like the Walk of Fame in L.A. Cannes has its own ‘Chemin des Etoiles’ or Road of Fame. The stars who come to Cannes leave their hand prints on cement on the pavement around the film festival. Here are some of the hand prints I captured today:

Antonio Banderas

Vanessa Redgrave

Richard Gere

Meryl Streep

Isabella Rossellini

The Cannes Film Festival had a tourist office with replica chairs from the ‘Auditorium Louis Lumiere’ which is pictured behind where Richard is sitting.

There were film clips playing of the various movie stars who have graced the red carpet at Cannes and they even showed one clip of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they were still together and not embroiled in a bitter divorce!

We didn’t have much time left before Sarah Anne had to go back to wait in line for her tender to the ship. The last tender was at 3:30pm so we bid out farewells and we headed back to the Gare de Cannes. Since we had only bought a one way ticket to Cannes, we could return to Nice whenever there was a SNCF train going that direction.

Waiting for the train back to Nice which was delayed.

We really enjoyed meeting up with Sarah Anne and sharing a rainy day of memorable typically French experiences exploring the City of Cannes. It is always nice when you can meet friends in far away places and spend some time with them. We hope the rest of Sarah Anne’s cruise is enjoyable on the Norwegian Epic and that she has calm seas crossing the Atlantic to Port Canaveral near the end of October. We will see each other in the spring once she is back from her winter home in Texas and we are back from Florida.

We’ve seen on Facebook the Viking longship ship that we are to board in Avignon is going to be sailing down the Rhone for us to board on Sunday, but without any passengers sailingon it. The water levels are very high on the Rhone so apparently the guests on the Viking ship who were to disembark in Avignon are being bused on day trips while the ship is being sailed down the Rhone in the day while they are on excursions and they join the ship after their excursion is over. This news is not giving us positive vibes for the River Cruise we are to board in Avignon on Sunday. After having to do 3 river ship switches last Christmas on the 15 day Grand European River Cruise with Viking, we were really looking forward to just one ship on the Rhone and another on the Rhine, as planned for 15 days. I guess Mother Nature may have other plans. Stay tuned for more updates in this blog!