Another entry compressing two days. Wednesday was the penultimate day of the conference. I mailed the proceedings back home as there was no way I wanted to lug it around South America. It cost me 150FF but it was worth it. Seeing that I was headed for the post office, L gave me postcards to pop into the mail box. I was bemused to realise that she didn't mind me seeing the text because she was sure I could not understand Serbian or read Cyrillic (I don't). The conference dinner was held that evening. There were long queues for the buffet tables but there was too much food, as usual. It was a bit sad to part with newly minted acquaintances.
In the morning I had a leisurely breakfast and skipped the first session. I luxuriated in the warm air by the pool for the last time then said goodbye to the cat.
After the last session, I collected my backpack from the conference frontdesk and caught the bus to Nice airport. I checked into a hotel within walking distance of the airport as I was flying out early in the morning. But I had arranged to meet up that afternoon in Nice with L, an American student who was headed back to Paris by train. We walked along the pebble beach at Promenade des Anglais, then up to the Château which overlooks the bay. I wondered aloud at what life must have been like in Roman times. Certainly nothing like the bustling city spread out in front of us.
We wandered through the narrow streets of the old town, chatting, then shared dinner. Unfortunately I had misjudged the time to get to the gare, which is ½ km inland. We made it to station with a couple of minutes to spare. I even remembered to get L to validate (composter) her ticket in the machine. A couple of pecks on the cheek and she was off.
It was only around 2100 but already the last service of bus 23 had left. Odd, did Nice shut down this early? Not very Mediterranean. Jean Médicin, the main drag, was still full of people. So I caught the night bus, worried about the many diversions it took, but eventually tumbled into bed to end a packed day.
Monday was just filled with more tutorials at INRIA. Not all of the Sophia Antipolis's facilities were gleaming, some had fallen into disrepair. I suppose these industrial parks start off with great promise and eventually pragmatism sets in and only what is used is maintained.
I enjoyed the wine and cheese reception in the evening, mainly because of the interiors of the Palais where the film festival takes place, and the views of the harbour. Cannes is obviously a tourist town, the receptionist was proud of being able to speak English.
On Tuesday I had a leisurely breakfast indoors as there was a fresh breeze outside. I finished with time to spare so sat and sipped my coffee. Lots of German guests at breakfast. I noticed that the Serbian girl walked very fast downhill.
After lunch a group of us arrived at the same conclusion that the sessions were too boring and we should just go to the Gray d'Albion beach and read the proceedings later. So after coffee break, we had our own session dubbed 3A, in lieu of the session 3 we were skipping. I didn't swim but the warm sand and sea air were pleasant.
In the evening, a knowledgeable local attendee took us on a restaurant. A couple of establishments we tried in the Le Suquet quartier, which was the one I had been walking through between the hotel and the Palais, were full or had no cooking gas (a supply problem I think). Eventually we ended up in a somewhat expensive place on the main drag, Rue d'Antibes. But it served excellent seafood. I got introduced to the Serbian girl, L. (Note from future: she was the one I visited briefly in Lausanne in 2004.)
There was a total eclipse of the moon around 8 or 9 pm that night. It was the last total eclipse for the century.
I got up early to have a quick breakfast before catching the shuttle bus from the Palais des Festivals to Sophia Antipolis in the hinterland of Cannes. Sophia means wisdom in Greek and Antipolis is the ancient Roman name for Antibes. It's a technology park where INRIA, a French national research institute and the host of the conference, is one of its occupants. The tutorials were held there.
Unfortunately the lecture room was overcrowded for the airconditioning capacity making the air stale so I had difficulty paying attention even though the talk was excellent. During the recess I got acquainted with many fellow researchers and my suggestion of a group dinner in Cannes was taken up.
After the day was over, I had a dip in the hotel pool. I also managed to get some pictures of the cat, which was not at breakfast.
This is the Palais, which is where the Cannes Film Festival is held. Finally I saw for myself where the film stars parade past the crowd when they arrive.
From the Palais we walked to Les Enfants Terribles, a restaurant in a quiet quarter of Cannes. Many nationalities were represented in our group. I sat next to N, an Iranian girl who was doing her doctorate at Eurecom. She had a brilliant smile and laughed easily. However I sensed a little wariness. This photo is one of the better ones from negative scanning process. A fun time was had by all. After the dinner a sudden downpour started which drenched the shades you see in the picture. There was so much water on the ground that my shoes got waterlogged. I would be glad to jettison them soon.
Here's a charming narrow street I traversed going back to the hotel, lined with restaurants.
As expected, I woke several times in the night, but I just went back to sleep. At 0800 I went down for breakfast. It had rained in the night so the day started off cloudy, but the sun emerged. I had a leisurely one hour breakfast in the hotel garden. There were the usual: bread rolls, cheese, butter, jams and honey. A cute tortoiseshell cat was wandering around; I should have brought my camera.
I walked to the Marché Forville and enjoyed looking at the fresh produce and colourful flowers. The shop windows were also richly stocked. Lots of Fifis and Fidos on leashes. What is it about the French and poodles?
The Gare SNCF was in a less salubrious part of town. It felt a bit seedy with more immigrant faces in evidence. Cannes is a lovely place if you have the money. Its topography is of a harbour backed by hills sloping down to sea so the railway line is on high ground. Hence the convoluted access road from the highway in the hills.
At Antibes I found not one but three markets: a shopping street with entertainers, a clothes market, and the Marché Provençal which featured a bounteous olive stall.
I bought a ficelle and walked to the Musee Picasso where I ate my lunch on the ramparts. I didn't view the collection, I seem to remember there were no items of interest to me. While I was eating a taxi pulled up and several Japanese alighted. Perhaps a special pilgrimage.
The beach was full of sunseekers.
I started on my planned walk, around the Cap d'Antibes, to Juan-les-Pins. Along the way I passed the harbour and marina, replete with pleasure craft.
The cape is an area of private residences and luxury hotels. They looked secluded and discreet.
Sometime during the walk I spotted graffiti urging respectez les skinedes. This was a play on respectez les pinèdes (pine forest, which gives Juan-les-Pins its name). Skinedes is of course the French rendition of skinheads.
The foreshore is rocky in many places. It reminded me of the Ligurian coast.
I had estimated about 1-½ hours for the 6 km or so around the cape. In the event it took me a couple of hours. At Juan-les-Pins I eschewed waiting for the bus and walked back to Antibes SNCF since it was only 1 km as the crow flies. I bought a cool drink from a vending machine, but the wretched thing swallowed my 10FF coin. The French are proud of their automation but not all of it works.
In Cannes, on Rue Meynardier, I bought a snack of a Provençale batard filled with cheese, tomatoes, basil, pepper, olive oil and a pinch of salt. It was accompanied by ½ kg of purple Provençal figs. Then I had my much anticipated cool dip in the hotel pool. Italian parents with a young boy and pubescent girl who I dubbed Lolita were enjoying the pool too. I dozed off to the noise of Lolita and her brother splashing each other.
In the evening I walked to Palm Beach Casino and back along La Croisette. The esplanade was given over to skaters and rollerbladers. Each hotel on the waterfront has its own section of the beach. These windsurfers were taking advantage of the evening breezes.
2000, time to dine. Au Bec Fin and Le Lion d'Or, two recommended restaurants, were closed for Saturday. In the end I settled for a pizza from the prix fixe menu at the Cafe d'Antibes, with a Belgian Jupiter beer. Nothing special but filling. Then I called it a night as I had to be up to catch the bus to the tutorials the next day, yes, Sunday.
Well here I am in my room which overlooks the hotel swimming pool. Not bad eh, leave on a Thursday afternoon and by Friday afternoon I'm in the Côte d'Azur. Of course my body clock is out of kilter but give it time.
Played cards with the lady in the window seat to pass the time on the plane. P was of Scottish descent and was going back to Edinburgh to see her dad. The gent with the aisle seat never took off his coat, just read his Financial Times and was mildly irritated whenever we needed to get past him.
Thought while waiting to board the shuttle flight to Nice how wonderful it is to have time at my disposal again, to be a wanderer and a magician instead of a warrior, in the lingua of Jungian archetypes. Time to sift, reflect, absorb and discard. To have only vague plans for the day. To be free to do or not to do.
On the short but pleasant flight to Nice they handed out ice-cream bars for desert; a bit unusual for an airline menu. It lent an air of informality. Nice Airport looked dilapidated; I somehow expected better. I reconfirmed my plane ticket and hopped on the bus with no time to get any francs from the ATM. The landscape reminded me of Southern California: bare soil, bright sunshine. I thought maybe that's why the dilapidation; why fix anything when it won't rain anyway. Maze of highways before arriving in Cannes. There was a pleasure navigation expo on so it was crowded. The afternoon was humid so I was drenched in sweat by the time I reached the tourist office. An even sweatier walk was required to get to the hotel at the top of a hill.
Weak water pressure due to water restrictions, so I jumped into the aforepictured swimming pool to cool off. The water here has a slightly saline taste. It reminded me of Adelaide.
Dozed off but woke in time to walk down the hill for dinner. Opted for a pan bagnat instead of a sit-down meal. But there was plenty of fine dining available in the narrow streets of the old city. People here are friendly and used to tourists. Cannes is a pleasure town. Evenings in the open air are heavenly. I was reminded of my sojourn in Sestri Levante, a few years previously.
The old town and in particular the market all looked alluring but I was too tired to explore much with an 8 hour jet lag, so I called it an evening.
The pictures accompanying this blog were scanned from slides and negatives. Consumer digital cameras were still a laboratory dream in 1997. You really cannot appreciate how sophisticated your plain digital camera is until you have seen the scanned results of film photography. What the camera does nowadays to make your pictures look good would have required specialist techniques in the bad old days. Film was quite unforgiving and even when you got the exposure right, it would give poor colour balance in light situations the film was not suited for. With digital manipulation I can improve the quality but it's too time consuming to do more than simple adjustments using software.
I took two cameras with me on this trip, a SLR loaded with Kodachrome slide film and a point and shoot camera loaded with Kodacolor print film. As they were the bad old days, film was expensive so I had ration my shots. Shots on negative film generally came out poorer in scanning due the limited dynamic range, but the more saturated colours after adjustment with software, compared to slide film, have a certain attraction. See if you can work out which camera was used for a shot.
Finally, after years of planning, taking Spanish classes, studying travel guides, and so forth I'm headed for South America. Only 6 weeks split across Brazil, Argentina and Chile, nowhere near enough to do them justice, but it's all I can manage. There was some excitement in the final weeks, which saw me resign from a research job I had held for 7 years and accept another research job upon return. There was the usual flurry of farewells, although I would still keep in professional contact with my old colleagues.
I would be missing the Festival of the Winds as well as the Manly Jazz Festival, but that's the price to pay for visiting South America in the best season.
Headed out for the Queen Victoria Building where I had a nasi lemak and drumstick lunch in the Malaysian cafe in the basement.
My first stop is actually Cannes via Amsterdam and Nice for a conference. Regrettably I could not get an earlier connection to Nice so I'll spend some Dutch guilders on a lunch in Schiphol. Those were pre-Euro days, remember.
After the last session, I collected my backpack from the conference frontdesk and caught the bus to Nice airport. I checked into a hotel within walking distance of the airport as I was flying out early in the morning. But I had arranged to meet up that afternoon in Nice with L, an American student who was headed back to Paris by train. We walked along the pebble beach at Promenade des Anglais, then up to the Château which overlooks the bay. I wondered aloud at what life must have been like in Roman times. Certainly nothing like the bustling city spread out in front of us.
We wandered through the narrow streets of the old town, chatting, then shared dinner. Unfortunately I had misjudged the time to get to the gare, which is ½ km inland. We made it to station with a couple of minutes to spare. I even remembered to get L to validate (composter) her ticket in the machine. A couple of pecks on the cheek and she was off.
