Yes We Cannes

And so we found ourselves in Tiffany, a clapped out Renault convertible, on a starry, balmy night, listening to James Brown as we ascended the hills behind Cannes into Super Cannes, home to the sprawling gated holiday homes of the inconceivably rich – Arabs, Russians, entrepreneurs, those with money and a insatiable appetite for showing it off.

Cannes: beauty is only skin deep

After our brief visit to London we’d arranged to meet our old friend Angus (dubbed Gus – pronounced according to locale: Goose (or perhaps that should have been Goo?) for the duration of our time with him) for a bit of a jaunt around the south of France. He’d come across from New Zealand for a friend’s wedding in Germany and had dropped down to the Cote D’Azur to visit friends and await our arrival. Somehow and somewhat uncharacteristically, he’d ended up ensconced in Cannes, as far as I was aware, a town only good for one thing – the film festival.

The owner of Tiffany, a hugely flamboyant kiwi named John, was the lure. A self-styled film critic, festival groupie and worshipper of the rich and famous, John has been in and out of Cannes for the past ten years, blagging his way into parties with actors, porn stars and Russian gangsters, and as he happily admits, “having a fucking ball”. He gleefully and regularly recites the mantra that explains everything in this little bubble of ostentation: “You’re in Cannes, bitch!”

Angus has been friends with John for years, since they both lived in Wellington, and thus he'd based himself in Cannes for a few days before we arrived. He’d rented a fantastically cheap apartment smack bang in the middle of town where we were to stay with him for a couple of days before lurching out onto the peage in the defiantly shabby Tiffany.

Super, Mega, Giga?: too big for the frame anyway

Francine II: more my size but still out of my budget

We spent a couple of days exploring Cannes and Antibes, which involved mainly eating great food, drinking the palest Provencal roses, gaping at super-yachts and people watching.

Antibes: basking on the Cote D'Azur

Cannes is a money magnet. If you have money and want everyone to know it, you come to Cannes. It is like a huge stage and there is only ever one thing showing: Look At Me, Look At Me, Look At Me. Of course, all this money attracts not only the rich, but the feeders - the prostitutes, pimps and aspiring girlfriends/wives (I'd love there to have been a more equitable gender distribution of sleaze, but sadly reality did not comply), the drug dealers and a flotilla of support staff (yacht crews, estate managers, cleaners, drivers, au pairs, chefs and gardeners).

One night while we sat outside a bar we observed a man holding a succession of meetings with (presumably) clients. He would show them a series of images (revealed by Matt's well-honed spy skills to be pictures of attractive women) and then would make a call and a couple of said women would turn up for a drink. They would greet the guy, he'd introduce them to his client and then they would settle down at a neighbouring table. The men would confab while the women drank wine, smoked cigarettes, chatted to each other and pulled a few expert moves to showcase their sexiness – a sleeve would drop to reveal a shoulder, a slight lean forward would provide a glimpse of cleavage, etc.

Baoli: €190 bottle of Tanqueray anyone?

Throwing money to the wind and thinking “When in Cannes”, we hit Baoli, a nightclub on the waterfront for the rich and richer. I changed into the obligatory small black dress (that after one wash was transformed into a singlet) with very high heels and led the way into the club. Baoli is filled with predictably good-looking, expensively dressed, dull people. We secured a table by buying an overpriced bottle of Tanqueray and proceeded to get sloshed. We made friends with some Dutch kids at the adjacent table. They were very polite, in fact one apologised for sweating, explaining that it was because he had “taken an ecstasy tablet”.

Away we go: striking out into the wide blue yonder

With massive hangovers, under a wide blue sky, we loaded Tiffany and plunged into Provence. Amusingly, at the entrance to the peage stands an ill-conceived sculpture of a massive hand giving the peace sign. Those arriving in Cannes and approaching from the other side are presented instead with a giant up yours. Maybe the artist was cleverer than I thought.

We stopped for lunch in the seaside town of Cassis, making the amateur mistake of trying to find food after 2pm and settling for Caesar salads in the only portside eatery still serving food.

Cassis: pretty as a picture

Our destination was Aix-en-Provence. We loved Aix. It is simply beautiful. Gus was inspired and decided that we should go to a concert in a church where we would be uplifted. We were told by the tourism office that the following night a monastic choir from St Petersburg would be performing in one of the churches in the old town. We arrived, joining a full house of pensioners. It was a lovely church and the acoustics were amazing. Satisfied that we were suitably uplifted, we left at the first interval.

Aix: Edmonds cookbook style

Fountains: there are plenty of them

Every day there are incredible markets in Aix – trestle tables are laden with peaches, berries, melons, apricots, cheeses, oils, lavender, vegetables, charcuterie, herbs and honey. Apparently Provence alone has 2500 varieties of tomato. I bet every single one of them is delectable.

Tomatoes: two down, 2498 to go!

Food porn: there's plenty to whet the appetite in Aix

Cavaillon melons: a Provence institution in season

One evening Gus and I had an inexhaustible debate about marriage. Divorced some years ago, Gus is in favour of, declaring that every woman, in her heart of hearts, is dying to get married. Of course, I took great offense to this, both personally and on behalf of all women, and so a good-humoured but idiotic debate continued deep into the night. At the bottom of the first bottle, Gus touchingly said that it infuriates him that Matt and I are not married and appear to have no desire to become husband and wife when, he says, if anyone he knows should be married, it is us.

I patiently and somewhat patronisingly explained to him that we do not need marriage. Some years ago an atheist friend told me that he leaves religion to those who need it. After 14 years of enduring the perennial question of when Matt and I will be getting married, I’ve settled on a variation of this as my retort: “I leave marriage to those who need it” (my alternate explanation is that neither of us want to get fat).

When Gus spoke to his girlfriend in New Zealand the next morning, she agreed with my argument wholeheartedly. Later, on our daily jaunt into the Luberon, I announced that I had taken Gus’s arguments into consideration and had been turned. I told him that all morning I had been lying awake composing our guest list and pondering venues, dresses and flowers. I noticed Matt looked slightly pale.

Electric blue: the Provencal sky at dusk

The Luberon is so beautiful that weeks later its vistas are still haunting me. Apparently the mistral – the wind that blows south across Provence – is responsible for the deep cornflower blue sky that saturates everything beneath it with depth and intensity. In addition to the feeling that one has entered a technicolour world, everything in this world is impossibly pretty and tasteful. Every aquamarine wooden shutter is peeling paint so charmingly, every fountain is cloaked in moist green moss just so, and every town clings to its hillside with understated, louche grace.

Luberon: Provencal cliche complete with lavender

Lunch time in the Luberon: more rose anyone?

Shabby chic Provencal style

Gordes: breathe it in, baby!

As we darted around the Luberon, Angus divulged one of his fantasies – one that Matt and I decided could easily be brought to life. The scene: a shady patch under a tree on a sunny day beside a gently flowing river. Having just consumed an entire poulet roti (the ubiquitous rotisserie chickens that can be found roasting in marches across France, dripping their fat into vast piles of potatoes) and a bottle of rose, our protagonist snoozes contentedly.

The day that we left Aix for Avignon's smaller, lesser-known neighbour, Villeneuve-les-Avignon, we decided to enact Angus's Obelix-style flight of fancy. We located a village market en route but alas, it was closing. As we watched the locals rapidly dismantling their stalls, Angus fixed on a distant mirage: across the street and down a narrow alley a glimpse of a poulet roti stand was just visible. Tiffany launched across the divide and lurched up with a screech beside the few remaining chooks. Matt dashed out, procured three of them along with a kilo of potatoes. One pit stop at a supermarche and three bottles of €3 rose later and we were ready to eat.

Sur le pont d'Avignon

We found the perfect possie on the banks of the Rhone on a small island between Avignon and Villeneuve.

Spuds & chooks

Rose? Check. Poulet? Check. River? Check.

€3 rose goes down well

Mission accomplished

The next morning we decided to have an alcohol-free day exploring Avignon, a UNESCO world heritage site famed for its bridge (now more of a platform due to the end having being swept into the Rhone during a flood in 1668), its papal palace and its annual theatre festival. We visited Les Halles, the food market, and snagged some melon, bread, cheese, ham, tomatoes, Quiche Lorraine and orange juice for lunch on the right bank.

Walking a straight line in Avignon

Palais des Papes: Avignon's papal palace

That evening we settled down around the corner from our small family-run hotel in Villeneuve, at a Cave du Vin where I discovered their champagne was €34 a bottle, the perfect accompaniment to the baked goat's cheese with honey. We drank the three bottles they had in stock and moved on to rose – well, our day was sans booze, but as soon as the sun went down bacchanalia reigned.

The courtyard at Hotel de l'Atelier in Villeneuve


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msQPHxTUgzI

It's a hard job, but...

Charcuterie is such a happy word

Villeneuve was the perfect base from which to hit some serious wine country. Angus is a bit partial to Chateauneuf-du-Pape so we spent the following day happily sampling wine throughout the village and surrounding vineyards.

Pick a vineyard, any vineyard

It's all in the stones

Chateauneuf-du-Pape: vine time

Chateauneuf is famous for its reds, but the roses, which account for a tiny fraction of production, were also excellent.

The menu

We found an excellent restaurant and had a delicious meal of: Salade Catalane Croustillante (salad in a crisp pastry basket with boiled egg and salt cod), Boeuf Bourguignon Ecrase de Pomme de Terre (I should have checked whether it was made with Burgundy or Chateauneuf-du-Pape), and the finale, Poire au Chocolat Facon Belle Helene (poached pear with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice-cream).

I believe we enjoyed this one very much indeed

Life through a lens (of sorts)

When is a salad not a salad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msQPHxTUgzI

We concluded our tour of Chateau-neuf-du-Pape at Chateau Mont-Redon, where we sampled my favourite rose of the day, a 2010 Lirac, a bargain at €9.50 a bottle.

No label required

That night, as my dear friend Sanjay would say, a monkey poohed in all our mouths and the next morning we woke with glazed eyes and heavy heads. The time had come for Gus to return to New Zealand and we'd decided to move on to Italy, so we hurtled back to Cannes for a final (subdued) night before boarding the train for Genoa.