Antibes

Ah, the Cote d'Azur! So annoying, right? But here we are in Antibes, St. Tropez' slightly dowdy half sister. But that's why we like it-- all the incredible beauty of ST without all (or many) of the posers.

Our apartment is a very well located, 70's era two bedroom that would be perfect if it had: no road noise, a view of the ocean, and A/C in the bedroom. Oh, and wifi. But other than that, perfect! The beach is across the street, and the daily market of fresh fruits,veggies, cheeses, olives, and fish is a 10 minute walk.

We had a ridiculously expensive fish dinner the first night (and it wasn't even at Bacon, H and T) because they charged you by the 100 grams of fish but didn't tell you how many grams they would serve you! So I got about a million grams of the most expensive fish, dourade royale -- even sounds expensive! Spent the first day on the "people's beach" as we call it, with jolly vacationers from all over the world cheek by jowl. On Monday, I went by myself to Nice to check out the Marche, which was crowded and fun. I then searched for some sort of good store for dinner supplies, but it was the holiday of the Assumption of Mary, so only Monoprix was open.. Derek whipped up a dinner at home with the random assortment of ingredients I came up with. That night, on the way home from gelato in Antibes, fireworks broke out all over from Nice to Juan les Pins. I mean huge fireworks! Missed them for the most part, but next year they'll be on my calendar for sure.

Yesterday we had one of our now typical shit show days: we tried to go to L'Isle sur la Sorgue, but the traffic was so awful that we bailed out (not an easy task on the motorways where you can only get off very occasionally at toll booths) and went to Aix en Provence. Naturally, there they were just cleaning up after the fantastic Marche Provencal which we had missed! But a good pizza at Chez Jo and a lovely walk around the city, which is a big favorite of mine.

Today, we went to the Marche finally and got dinner stuff then went to Plage Keller, which is a chic-ish private beach where people are also cheek by jowl like the Peoples Beach, but on chaises and wearing cooler coverups. You go to a table for lunch with a white tablecloth and it's super refined.

Dinner tonight is bar de ligne,which is small sea bass, chez nous. Derek is sitting across from me reading a guidebook plotting our next move. A bientot!