This region can be very busy during summer. Tourists start to arrive around the Cannes Festival and life never stops until September. For every weekend there is a festival you can visit, but to be more accurate there are many festivals running at the same time. Sometimes it's hard to decide which ones to visit.
And do not think for a second that you have to stay at home because you have a baby. You can go out and see things just adopt your programme to your kid’s age.
On the long weekend we aimed for visiting more then just one, trying to schedule around different themes.
We went to see the VW aircooled festival in Cannes. I always admired the retro cars, I think they have a character and the beetle is one of my favourites. They are cute and charming, a nice little car I would be happy to own. So this festival was definitely one I wanted to visit. It wasn’t as big as I’d imagined but we saw some beetles and some campers. Some of them had nice modern or funky designs, some were more classic. We walked around a bit admiring the cars but didn’t stayed to see the activities. While we were there they had sort of a model car race organised for children. They also had some food and beverage options on site.
Not to forget about Pixie we stopped at a park so she would be able to run around. We choose the park because it had a big area covered by grass and we thought it would be safer for her. She still falls a couple of times, since she doesn’t pay much attention to her steps. But no matter how we tried to show her the nice grass field she was running around the road and she wasn’t bothered by the people in her way. It’s hard to convince a 15 month old, isn’t it ?
The next day we went down to Antibes to see an italian food festival and the big sailboat race. During the year this isn’t the only italian festival here, there is one in February at Valentine’s day and one during the summer. They usually have the same stands, and we always buy a portion of Porchetta. We love italian food, their cuisine is special, they can make a plain and simple pasta taste divine. Among the different exhibitors you can find cheese, chocolate, meat, olive oil, focaccia and of course wine. Surprisingly Pixie tasted a few things, as she isn’t eating well I’m very glad when she likes something, this time the italian cheese was the winner. After tasting a few products we went over to see the sailboats.
The race was supposed to last until 5pm but by 4 all the boats were back in their berths. If you want to see them racing, go there early. I find sailboats very nice and impressive, they can sail trough the ocean without any modern technology. Unfortunately you are not allowed on the boats but you can walk around the port and see all of them. There wasn’t much going on for the visitors this time, there were some stalls selling different products connecting to sailing and a small art exhibition. But of course there was a bar and they had some nice champagne as well, this is the Riviera if you’d forgotten.
I think the port has a different vibe when the sailboats take the motor yachts palace. They are more elegant and you can feel their history.
There is a small little beach by the port if you want to stop and relax a bit.
