It Lives! (La Seyne sur Mer, Cannes and Antibes)

The van is alive and well again after our stay in La Seyne sur Mer. Peugeot have replaced the starter motor and the battery for an obscene amount amount of Euros. While the van was in the shop (five days) we spent one night in the Novotel which was very decadent, and the rest of the time in the budget Formula 1 Hotel chain. We are both certain on which one we preferred. We also headed into town for an evening to get new books as we are going through them at a rapid rate and we had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant. We picked up the van on Friday 7/8 and headed along the coast towards Cannes. We were able to find a park along the esplanade a few kilometres out of the city and we headed into central Cannes via train. This turned out to be a good move as the city centre was packed with thousands of holidaymakers. It’s an attractive city and we had a long walk along the promenade which was full of designer boutiques, hotels and restaurants. The large marina was full of expensive craft and there was a large number of trendy types swanning about. We had a sensational seafood dinner at a local restaurant before heading back to the van. We decided to free park out of Cannes to make up for a bit of a splurge on dinner and so it would be a little quieter. It turned out to be a good descision as the centre of the city was gridlocked in traffic or almost an hour watching a huge fireworks display out over the bay. Once we managed to evade the worst of the traffic we headed towards Antibes and found a park near a very small beach and got some sleep. The next morning we went down to the beach for a bit of sun and a swim. The whole beach was only a few hundred metres long and the public section was only about 50 metres wide (most of the beach was taken up with cafe’s and restaurants that had private beach chairs). As we didn’t want to pay for the privilege we found a good spot on the public beach and set up. Kirsten found the water too cold but enjoyed people watching on the beach. I went in for about half an hour. It turned out that there was a large number of small jellyfish along the coast, a guy near me ended up getting stung twice, prompting him to pack up his family and leave. I was stung once on the stomach but I didn’t feel it at the time, I only saw the welt once I was out of the water. Not a big deal. We worked on a theory that the guy who made his family leave didn’t want to be at the beach anyway. It was a really nice morning and a good farewell to the French beach culture. We left Antibes in the afternoon and took the motorway towards Paris, watching thousands of holiday-makers from all over Europe head towards the coast in vans and caravans. We stayed the night in another free park off the motorway in one of the many well kept and well equipped rest areas.