« IT'S LEAP DAY! WOO-HOO! YIPPEE! | Main | TANKER EXPLOSION »
February 29, 2004
THE LIST... #4: CANNES, FRANCE
I don't go in much for Hollywood types or glamour, so it's not that the film festival is here that jazzed me so much about Cannes. It's just a very cute, very quaint, very charming Mediterranean city. We were in town for a huge trade show - like 28,000 registered, if I remember correctly. Thankfully, our business was on the first day, Monday - which meant that although my Sunday and Monday were hell, after Monday morning at about 11:00 my stress was pretty much over and I got to enjoy the rest of the show and the town it was in.
The Croisette is one of the grand avenues of Europe, a wide boulevard right along the Mediterranean shoreline, lined with luxury hotels and fancy restaurants on one side, and marinas and beach clubs on the other. There is a plaza in the center of town where old men still gather to play bocce ball, which I found quite quaint. Of course, there is the Palais des Festivales, where the film festival takes place every May. It was also the site of our trade show, so I have wandered the same halls that the rich & famous wander. Frankly, the seats inside the main arena were pretty uncomfortable for what's supposed to be a high class, prestigious arts center. But - I got to walk on the main stage, sat backstage during much of the proceedings... then got to spend two more days in the luxury flat that my company rented out as sort of a "home base" for our personnel during the show. Rumor had it that the apartment was the same one Mel Gibson stayed in during the festival... not sure about that, but it was a penthouse and the view was amazing. Unfortunately, because I am an idiot, even though I took pictures of just about everywhere else I went on that trip, I failed to take any in Cannes - was too busy and just never remembered to bring my camera with me.
Beyond the Croisette, there is a little neighborhood built on a hill overlooking the sea called Le Suquet... there are a whole bunch of really wonderful restaurants along cobblestoned streets along going up the hill -- streets so narrow that the only way to go along them was on foot. We took over one of the restaurants for an evening - about 16 of us from my company went out to dine together (and in places like this, it is dining, not just eating!), and tried our broken and rusty French on the amused waitress ... who let us all go through the challenge of trying to order in French before revealing that she spoke very good English. "I would have told you but you were all trying so hard," she said, and we all laughed at ourselves for not simply having asked "Parlez-vous Anglais?" before we began. One night, I also went out with some of my European colleagues to watch a soccer "friendly" between Ajax (of the Netherlands) and a British team (I want to say it was Arsenal, but I honestly don't remember)... and let me just tell you, you've not watched a sporting event until you've watched soccer in a pub with some Europeans. They got into that game like it was the Super Bowl!
So, my four days in Cannes were very memorable... almost as memorable as how I had to leave it. Air France pilots went on strike while we were there... which meant that my flight that got me back to Paris, where I would eventually catch my American Airlines flight home, was canceled. We tried to rebook through al-Italia, but weren't able to find a flight that got me there in time. So our solution? We took the rental car and decided the only way to get back to Paris was to drive it... resulting in my cross-country car trip across France. In those 13 hours, I got to see Avignon, Lyon, and got to stop into a small town in Burgundy and buy wine direct from the maker - and we still made it to Paris in time to get a good night's sleep before the meetings the next day.
All in all, it was a great trip, a grand adventure... and that whole week was one I won't soon forget. Cannes is a solid #4 on my list of favorite work travels. Coming soon... #3. (Hint: we're coming back to the USA for this one.)
