Well, i figured it might be nice to do a little review of my holiday this year so here it is.

Myself, Nicole, Sammy (Nicole’s Sister 15) and Stephanie (My youngest Daughter 12), went to the French Riviera after enjoying Toulon so much on our first holiday (2yrs ago) so here we go...

Stephanie has never been on holiday before, let alone on a plane or even out of the country.. she was quite scared but very excited at teh same time.


She seemed even more scared soon after take off... maybe I shouldn’t have given her the window seat. What a view though, fabulous.


Not to worry, 2hrs later we are back down on teh ground at Nice international airport, it is 30degrees and the suns blazing. We head to the car hire car place all very excited... Sadly the Golf TDi I wanted was not available so we had to use a Megane II, actually it transpired this was not a bad car at all. It excelled at sod all, but was adequate at everything.


All loaded up and off we go, on the wrong side of the road looking for the town we are going to stay in, the world famous Cannes. It is soon apparent that we have found it.. Every hotel and shop looks like you need to be a millionaire to use it, or even gain bloody entry through the door... Hmm..







Even the dogs had more expensive clothes than me...


We finally find the hotel, and after struggling for an hour to find parking for under 60euros a day, we opt for the hotels own parking, complete with porter and car staff at 35euros a night. There’s 280euros I hadn’t banked on before we even get to the hotel. DOH!!
We soon learnt that we would spend the rest of the week queuing behind cars like this, waiting for the porter to come and park the car. Ferrari's, Astons and Bentley's were the commonplace car at teh hotel, not to mention the Mercedes Mclaren that was waiting behind us one day...


Still, once inside the hotel we are shocked at how nice it is... chrome and marble adorn everything the eye can see. Very impressive indeed...



The room's are both very damn nice too, although the colours are a bit in your face, unsure why, must be a fashion thing...






The Kids are loving it as they got their own room for the week, right next door with adjoining balconies, so they got a week to play at being grown ups with their own hotel room in Cannes.



We quickly get changed, unpacked and head to the roof to check out the view, the pool and the promised Jacuzzi’s. We were certainly not disappointed:




After 30mins chilling and taking up the beautifull view and heat up there we head out to the beaches and to see a little bit of Cannes town for a couple of hours:





We enjoyed a very nice couple of days at Cannes, but in all honesty it soon became VERY apparent that it was not a nice place to stay if you are any less than a multi millionaire and wish to show your warez and money to the other millionaires. It was like a fashion parade with everyone just going out of their way to show how rich they are.

You can sense people, even poxy waiters and bar staff looking down on you because you are not wearing Gucci and Chanel, and everything, and i mean everything, is massively overpriced, from a 330ml coke on teh roof at £4.50 to an 8oz steak and chips (only that,nothing else) at £30. We decided we had seen enough of Cannes and were going to start getting up early and heading north or south to see the rest of the Riviera and hopefully some more realistic people, cars and prices. :top

We go North first to a place called Antibes and meet up with PassionFord's very own Captain Mike (Formerly Jock) And he shows us round the mind numbingly incredible Boat that he works on!!

Sadly I only took a few pics, but here they are:







Mike showed us a little of Antibes and then he came back to the hotel with us and spent an hour or 2 drinking beer on the hotel roof:



That night, Mike and I went out alone and spent the night eating, drinking and chatting crap. We just ha a great night out in teh sun and enjoyed the passing eye candy, ultimately ending up in some French nightclub and later a casino before i took a cab back to Cannes. It was a great night out and Mike is a great Host, thanks very much for adding so much to our Holiday Mike, it was really great to meet and spend some leisure time with you pal.

Next day, I awoke feeling just a little brittle so Nicole drove us out to St Raphael which was a very nice place indeed, and considering its proximity to Cannes it was really very contrasting as the shoreline was all red rock. Really nice indeed.






After enjoying St Rapheal for a while we decided to head a little north of Cannes back to Antibes to go to teh famous Marineland they have there.

This was one of the highlights for us all as it was so professional, although a little sad to see such fabulous and huge creatures in captivity, it was what it was and overall it was fabulously enjoyable.








And after that we headed further down teh south coast (About an hour south of Cannes) to the world famous home of many a moviestar and singer. St Tropez. We ate our tea at the port and trawled the village for an hour or 2. Only got one pic here but it was an amazing place to generally just hang out, and we saw a few people we recognized. Very impressive.


Next few days we headed down the furthest south we would go, Toulon and the islands Porquerolles. This to my mind is the most beautiful part of the coast and the place i enjoyed most of all... We met Petrucci and his beautifull wife at Toulon Port for tea too as they live here. It was really great to catch up with them again, both fantastic people.

Even the Motorways down there are beautiful:




Toulon:





Porquerolles Islands:
A fabulous place that can only be reached by boat:


You then have a bit of a walk from teh port, depending on which beach you want as the island offers a few, but Petrucci promised me this one was worth the 40min walk in the glaring heat...




And it was!! A stunning lagoon with the smallest of beach gradients. You could almost walk out to those boats before it got to head depth. Incredible:




We headed home from Porquerolles exhausted after a long, hot and enjoyable day, and i learnt that night that i got quite badly burnt after swimming virtually all day and forgetting to top up the lotion i was washing off. Wounder, what a bloody useless idiot. You will see how badly later on...

Next day we decided Monaco was in order, so we got up, ate breakfast and headed north.






Actually, Monaco is surprisingly boring, it has nothing at all of any great interest at all that i could see, but I had always wanted to go there, so we did and i dont really regret it.

We headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of that afternoon on the roof in teh jacuzzi and pool before heading out for what was to be our last night in France...

Look at these for bar prices on the roof BTW. Total liberty IMO.


That night we headed back down to Toulon (About an hours drive) and met up with Petrucci and Florence again for tea in one of their favorite restaurants out on Toulons West coast, and here are the pics you’ve been waiting for of my burnt face;







Had the greatest and most relaxing night of the holiday there with pet and Flo, it was truly brilliant just chilling and chatting to Flo and Pet, and the guy who owned the restaurant was from bloody London of all places so we were treat well and fully understood by him. Perfect.

Next day we got up, packed, paid the hotel and headed up for one last day in Italy after some advice from Pet about great places to shop. We went to a place just after the France/Italy border and spent the day there shopping in Italian markets and eating Italian Pizza, generally just soaking up the Italian way of life before heading back south to Nice and the airport...



We actually met Mike again at the airport and had a few more beers... in fact, i was drunk on the plane i think much to Nicole's dismay. LOL.
Mike had decided to get a last minute flight home to see his lady, hope it all went great Mike, look forward to seeing you again soon mate, and maybe meeting this fabulous lady you spoke so highly of too.

Massive thanks go out also to Petrucci again who helped massively with translations by phone and text at all hours of night and day when i was struggling with things, especially some important foods for Nicole. Miss you already pal, see you in England soon i hope.