I had arranged our last eight nights in Antibes expecting that we could relax after almost three weeks of more active travel in mostly busy cities. This turned out to be a good plan. As interesting and exciting as Amsterdam, Paris, and Barcelona were, it was tiring to explore them, not to mention, always getting used to new places. Antibes has been the perfect ending to our European vacation.
We rented an apartment from a couple, Arlette and Andrew, in the heart of Antibes, a block from the beach. Arlette met us at the train station and walked us to the apartment, which was really nice. Even though it was only 10 minutes by foot, it can be dis-orienting to be in a new town so having someone meet us was really appreciated.
Our apartment is technically a studio, but has two fold-out sofas in the living room for the kids, and a loft above the kitchen, which acts as the master bedroom even though it has a four foot ceiling. The unit is probably more ideal for a couple, but works just fine for us and is in a terrific location. Besides its proximity to the beach, there's a morning market every day a block up the street, with tens of stalls selling produce, meats, cheeses, flowers, knick-knacks, etc. Just about everything we need is within short walking distance. About every other morning, we'll walk over to the market and pick up a few things, and then maybe walk to the bakery for some fresh croissants and/or baguettes.
With the Mediterranean just down the block, we'll usually head to the beach once/day, sometimes, twice. There are two kinds of beaches here: sandy or rocky. I'm told many locals like the rocky beaches better since you don't get sand stuck all over you. We've also become converts to the rocky beaches. They're a bit harder to walk on, but once you're in the water, it doesn't matter. The water is a little colder than I expected, probably like Lake Washington in the summer. On a hot day, though, it's perfectly refreshing. None of the beaches here ever get crazy crowded. Even though there are thousands of tourists in the Riviera, there are also probably over a thousand kilometers of coastline with much of it swimming beaches - and it seems all the beaches I've seen are always moderately crowded.
The day after we got here was Lily's birthday and it DUMPED rain during the morning. Pretty funny how this happened on both Annette's and Lily's birthday's on our trip. It was probably a good omen to get the rain out of the way because it's been sunny and warm the rest of our trip. Even the second half of Lily's bday was gorgeous. With the departing thunder clouds, we were treated to an amazing lightening show across the bay. Big storm clouds were stalled against the Alp foothills above Nice, which is across a bay from Antibes. On our evening walk out on the pier to look at the fancy yachts we saw the most amazing lighting show in these clouds for probably over 15 minutes. The whole big clouds would light up. I tried getting some pictures, but managed to only get one (out of tens), which I'll try to post here.
We've had a number of memorable adventures during out stay so far, including a day-trip to Italy, some nice bike rides, and a ferry ride out to Les Iles de Lerens, and I'll try to write about those in the future. Time to do up some dishes.
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