After St Raphael which I talked about in my last (late) post, Antibes was our last stop before heading back to the UK. Last but not least. She did not disappoint. We arrived on 2 October and surprisingly found... a landscape of serenity.
That was a sharp contrast with the overcrowded Antibes we had quickly visited August during the high tourist season. At the time, Antibes wasn't really on our radar, despite very enthusiastic recommendations from both my mum and my sister about the place. I had visited Antibes quite a few times but had never been outside of the famous old town, missing out on the beaches and the wild Cap d'Antibes, which suddenly turned Antibes into a much more attractive place. So as it turns out, mum and my sis were spot on!
We realised this thanks to poor Didi who needed a whole bunch of her teeth (lost count) extracted in August. Given her age, we were advised to go to the Antibes' vet clinic specialised in geriatric dog 'safer' anaesthetics. We dropped her in the morning, and spent the whole day visiting Antibes' surroundings until it was time to pick her up in the evening, a tad groggy but relieved of her teeth pain. Free from Didi during the day, we scooba dived in clear waters near the Cap, and found 3 beautiful beaches a mere 10mn walk from the town center. That's when we decided to test living here in October as our final destination before heading back to the UK. We booked an Airbnb just 1 minute walk from the 3 beaches.
When we got there, all clicked together beautifully.
Family and surroundings
First of all, my sister's family and mum are just 40 minutes away by car, and all the great places we've described going to in the past blog on Cagnes-sur-Mer are still close by. This time, we all met in the nearby scenic medieval village of St Paul de Vence, also famous for it cool art, and enjoyed a long walk around the wall overlooking gentle hills.
As much as we loved Spain and flashed on Dénia, it is an additional four day return journey by car from my family. Since Cuong's is in Vietnam and Luxembourg, it's a bit too many places to travel to so we can regularly visit everyone. Also, now that I have the guitar and still need to perfect my Vietnamese, and that Cuong is switching careers, learning Spanish to become fully fluent and to navigate the Spanish admin system is a bit of an extra hassle we are feeling lazy about. France seems a much more sensible option for a potential move. We enjoyed being closer to my mum and sister's family, which is cool after so many years spent away with a couple of visits a year. We were initially a bit concerned about the Riviera being touristy and overcrowded, full of cars and traffic jams, but aside of July of August, Antibes and all the places around we visited seem perfect! There's more than enough life and activities not to be bored or lonely, but as soon as you head towards the beaches and Cap d'Antibes, especially if you get up early or walk at sunset, you pretty much have all nature for yourself and your dog(s).
Le Cap d'Antibes
The walk around Le Cap is quite something. It can be done in just 2 hours but the path goes up and down flights of stairs on tiny paths often a few inches from steep rocks over 10 metres high. On the Western side, the path is so close to rough seas, loose from the protection of the bay, that you have to be lucky not to find the main gate access closed for public safety. Having already failed twice to go through that gate during winter in previous years, Cuong and I had to turn back twice this month, until we found it open the third, only to be told by my mum that she had just climbed over it with her girlfriends when it had been closed! Such rebel youths these ladies😬🤘😁 Not without risk in big weather through, even with the gate open, the waves were crashing onto the path by the time we returned, quite impressive that was.
The southern path of Le Cap parth is accessible from a long road full of massive mansions, passing by secluded beaches including the suitably called "bay of billionaires". Not just the type to host visiting hollywood celebrities, but also Russian oligarchs and many more or less savoury characters, who are logically attracted to the nicest spots. Best not to dig too much into that and focus on the grandiose landscape. Interestingly, we ran into a couple of mini raves of 20-30 people on the path, with proper DJs, where people seemed to have great fun combining a dance and picnic. No obvious billionaire in sight, which is probably a result from that 'coastal law" forcing since 1986 the privileged (except for the king of Belgium who gngngngngngngn....) to push back their private properties inland in order to free an uninterrupted public path for us lot commoners.
Khuan-les-Peens
The Cap connects to the neighbouring city of Juan les Pins (which I like to pronounce Khuan-les-Peens, because it's that kind of a place). You can also shortcut there directly from Antibes town centre, just a 15 minute walk.
Khuan-les-Peens is a so-called "chic" place...erm... a bit like St Tropez without some of its older charm, and which aside of the privileged, attracts crowds who... without intending to throw shade... are also trying hard to look (or hook up with the) privileged.
In this context, we decided to stay open-minded and test one local nightclub. Big mistake, both Cuong and I agreed won the trophy of the worse nightclub we've ever been to, on all fronts. I'm sure many decent people and families enjoy lovely summers in Khuan-les-Peens on the looooong sand beaches bordered by rows of 70s buildings, only we're getting a bit fussy here, so not for us. Back to Antibes and normal people...
Going out and DJ Flim
On the topic: as you know by now, we like an occasional boogie, and were a bit sad to learn that taking advantage of the Covid lockdown, the mayor of Antibes shut down all Antibes nightclubs (hence our fatal idea to try the one in Khuan-les-Peens). There are lots of bars but neither Cuong nor I like sitting down drinking. We did find an absynth bar with a super dynamic piano plink plonker and a Cajon player (a Spanish drumming box usually for Flamenco music), who got a large crowd of English people singing lots of Beatles and Oasis classics. Good fun but still not a place to boogie. Then we found a popular Karaoke way too keen on ABBA to make a lasting impression on us.
We were starting to come to the sad conclusion that boogying in Antibes would not be a tick box, when we ran into a tiny tiny bar with a disproportionately huge DJing deck behind a dismantled vintage VW camper front. The deck was manned by a very smiley Thai chap with swinging dreadlocks called DJ Flim, with huge ethnic-techno skills who would make Ghetta envious (we don't even like techno in normal times, that's how good he was!). Because, at 11pm, it was still way too early for the French, noone was dancing yet, except his one nerdy friend, who we joined out of lack of shame and desperation (and because the music was good). An hour after, the tiny bar was so crowded that people overflowed into the street, so went back home. We were invited to his Full-Moon party, which we missed because it past our bedtime, but concluded Antibes boogie is all about those outdoors raves these days. Makes sense. Safer, cleaner, no Instagram crowds and no annoying bouncers telling you what to wear. Phew, tick box! Turns out DJ Flim is quite famous for his Full-Moon parties in Thailand and in Canada, he is just back from a tour in England, heading to Nice, etc. No wonder he was so good!!!
Cuong's plank experiment and dangers of VR
Part of the reason we missed the full-moon party is that Cuong used my sister and her son as guinea pigs for one of his study projects based on the "Richie's Plank Experience", which took a while to complete, while we were being fed delicious fresh raviolis by my sis, yum yum!
The principle is that you wear a Virtual Reality helmet which makes you think you are walking a narrow plank sticking out of a very high building. At the end of the plank is a bunch of virtual donuts you have to pick up without falling off the plank in the virtual world. To make the experience feel a bit more 'real', Cuong sorted out a long real-life plank made unstable by some blocks and sponges to walk on. He then measured our heart rate while asking us to focus on white noise or long breaths, to test balance and stress reactions to different external factors.
That went well until the end of experiment, when as a joke, he replaced the donuts with a 'spider cake'. It made me rethink my blind trust for Cuong because despite the obvious hint in the cake name, I didn't want to believe that he could be so evil as to inflict on me a virtual cake with heaps of monstruous spiders galloping out of it! Being a huge spider phobic, my heart rate was recorded at 145 beats at that moment, twice the beats I had when walking the plank without spiders. There is the vid, have a good laugh at my expense. My sister and nephew were cool as cucumber though, I know who to call now if I run into a migale! Instead of taking the helmet off, I somehow ended up running back on the plank (somehow not losing my balance!) while showering Cuong with well deserved insults, having barely avoided a heart attack!
Antibes' olympic pool
Another tick-box was Antibe's olympic pool, a 10 minute drive from the beach, which sports 2 outdoor olympic pools (50 metres), heated so you can swim outside all year, there's also a 25 metre indoor pool and a shallow indoor pool. It's fun watching girls practicing synchronised swimming with military precision, and lots of French champions train here so you can see how the experts do it. While you swim at sunset, you can enjoy stunning views of the sea, the old town and the Fort Carré. I took a lesson with the super skilled instructors to get tips for Cuong and I and improve our freestyle. This place is an amazing alternative when the sea gets a bit cold, though we did enjoy swimming in the sea until 20th October! Today, back in Cambridge, we went to our usual pool and while it served us well during lockdown, we both realised it is a bit like a bathtub now in comparison, we'll just have to readjust our expectations a bit.
Locals don't let the relative cold stop them being outside though, the day before we left, the sea was full of kite surfers flying and flipping above the waves.
Sophia Antipolis
We were pleasantly surprised to see such a healthy balance in Antibes between old and young generations, given that the Riviera tends to edge towards older, and many internationals still in Antibes out of season. Then, lightbulb moment: my sister, who used to worked in computing, informed us that Antibes is a 30 minute drive from Sophia Antipolis, where she used to work. It is a large area in the back hills and forest where tech and research companies settled and multiplied since the 60s so there are now over 2 500. It is also known as the "French Silicon Valley". Suddenly, another significant piece of the puzzle clicked. Outside of Paris, if there is ONE place where Cuong might find a job suiting his degree in machine learning in France or Spain, Sophia Antipolis is that place, and we didn't even know, or chose to test Antibes for that reason! There, Cuong found Altran's building, recently bought by Capgemini, and parent company of Cambridge Consultants, Cuong's current engineering company. Small world...
The rest and what next?
Antibes was founded as a Greek colony, and was originally called Antipolis (hence the tech park above to which they added Sophia meaning 'Wisdom'). For anyone who cares, Antipolis means Opposite-City because it's opposite of the Var estuary from Nice. The Roman left their stamp in fortifications, aquaducts and plenty of their usual other infrastructures. I haven't dwelled on the town itself, because it has all what you can expect from a modern city, mixed with very old historic quarters, all that can easily be found in guidebooks. Not so different to Cambridge in that way. The mix of modern and old works really well.
The only serious drawback we could find was the design of the road system, because Antibes was built such very long time ago and is on a which means you can easily get stuck in traffic jams, especially in the summer. But with a bit of planning to drive out of rush hour, and given that pretty much everything is within alk or cycling distance, it's all good. A shame you can't go by horse like back in the days though 🫤
There are so many other good things in Antibes, lots of pine trees, a lively old town full of little independent shops, cafés, takeaways, many very reasonable in price, a huge Asian supermarket and restaurants including Mama Boon, one of the best Phos we've ever eaten made with organic ingredients, tasty Lebanese, Turkish, restaurants, etc. I have flooded you with beaches pictures all year, here are the last with a transition to a rougher weather, preparing us for the much dreaded return to Cambridge. Kids, adults channelling their inner-child, artists and dogs all loved all playing with the wood on the beach.
In the end, you won't be too surprised to hear that both Cuong and I heartily concluded Antibes would be the ideal place to move to, either semi-permanently (Vietnam next?) or for a large part of the year. Just how and when and how long will need a bit of work and logistical juggling, so we're roughly giving ourselves a year to come back.
With this, I was going to put a final goodbye here. But I feel like this blog needs one more post to close the loop, which is the return to Cambridge, I owe her that. Cambridge which we are rediscovering with fresh eyes, the good, the bad. As much as I procrastinate writing these posts, to finish on Antibes would be putting too abrupt a stop to the amazing adventure that we've had the chance to live this year. Another month is time needed to reflect on the conclusions of this year's travels. It was a bold project, but worth every minute.
So it's not quite goodbye, Rendez-Vous for another rant in a few weeks. In the meantime, a BIG THANK YOU to you, friend, family or foe, who took the time to read one post, five posts, or perhaps all of them. It's been great for me to keep all of you in mind to share the highlights of 2023. You helped us remember our trip, organise memories, make big decisions, in a way, you have unknowingly been part of this journey all along! In return, I hope you might also have found threads of inspiration and motivation either to appreciate more where you already are, or to consider exploring some of the many safe and other wonderful places the world still has to offer (...somehow).
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