Antibes

After a leisurely breakfast served by our hotel proprietors, we headed for the open market that takes place under a huge canvas roof. The apricots smelled delicious. Had I brought my backpack, I would have been tempted to fill it to bring back north, but I wasn't about to lug a bag of fruit around the city all day so I only bought two apricots...and two fresh figs. Yummy.

We wandered on and found a store featuring the bright colors of Provence and I bought napkins in pairs so there would be a sampling to remind me of the colors and vividness of this area. At the first pharmacy I bought sunblock!

Sidewalks and streets are often at the same level and may even be of the same material so stanchions protect pedestrians.

We learned that the Mediterranean has been almost fished out so most of the fish we might encounter would actually come from fish farms or the Atlantic Ocean.

We had an English breakfast for lunch at an Irish Pub near the yacht basin...
our way of hobnobbing with the rich.

Behind all those cute little sailboats is the Saudi yacht with its private helicopter!


Antibes is the last port before Italy so the French kings made sure it was well fortified!  

After lunch we headed for our hotel to get ready for the beach. Near this picture were some long steps and as we walked down them I noticed a large gold ring on the ground. Then some fellow who was walking towards us picked up the ring, commented about it being gold and wondered if it was ours. I smelled a scam and kept moving, but Carol paused. Suddenly he put the ring on her finger and told her to keep it. Then he asked if she could give him money for a sandwich! At that point she gave him the ring and finally managed to move on.

We stopped to rest on a park bench and watch a crowd of men play boule. It was comical. They got quite raucous at times. In fact, the more they played, the louder they got. Eventually some of the louder male spectators surrounded our bench. We realized we were the only females in the park and decided to let them regain their all male domain.

Some palm trees are sick...infested with a bug from California! It truly is a small world.

Above is the beach where we went swimming.

Notice the "pipe" near the water towards the left side of the picture. That is actually 3 showers for those who want to rinse off the salt or sand. There is another further down the beach.

The Mediterranean seldom has waves so swimming is easy. It was cold, but Lake George, my usual swimming hole, would feel colder to me.

The plants fascinated me. A prickly pear cactus hung down from a stone wall on one narrow street. Carol spotted it first and we felt sorry for any tall person who might not be paying attention as they walked by.

Antibes was a military town until after WWI, therefore the rich and famous partied elsewhere until it was discovered by the likes of Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scot Fitzgerald, and Hemingway around the 1920s.

Carol had noticed a sign for a lavoir earlier, but we hadn't found it. On our way to dinner we were on the same street, but going in the opposite direction and noticed a narrow street called Rue du Lavoir. The street wasn't much longer than the average driveway and it really did lead to a lavoir!

It was dark by the time we finished dinner and we once again wended our way home along the promenade on top of the fortified walls.

The yachts in the harbor were lit up. We could hear a party taking place on one of them.

The tower by the Picasso Museum was beautiful. Apparently Picasso gave away many of his paintings to a family in Antibes so they finally created a museum for his work.

This was our last night in Antibes, the place where water skiing was invented.

Walking around the city was easy; driving was another story. The next morning it took a few wrong turns before we were actually on our way.