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Norwegian Jade Cruise Photos

From: Norwegian Jade Cruise Review

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Day 10: Cannes, France (3)

The central waterfront area had the atmosphere of an upscale fun fair, with food vendors and a ferris wheel. (It also attracted authors with an affinity for alliteration.)

A pretty garden was equipped with statuary and what looked like giant bunches of asparagus.

A street vendor supplied chapeaux to visitors who needed protection from the hot sun of mid-July.

Automated self-cleaning toilets (similar to the sanisettes of Paris) were handy for tourists and visiting boaters from the marina nearby.

Automation had also come to the waterfront McDonald's, where take-out customers were invited to order via interactive screens on outdoor kiosks and pay by credit card.

East of the Gare Maritime and yacht harbor, the Palais des Festivals et des Congrés was a monument to both the Cannes Film Festival and architectural ugliness. (It did have one redeeming feature: a mirrored wall that reflected the more attractive buildings across the street.)

Tourists posed for family snapshots on the Grand Auditorium's famous red carpet.

We continued along the waterfront to the Plages de la Croisette and the Hotel Carlton (shown above), which has been attracting the rich and/or famous since 1911.

The statue in front of the Hotel Carlton wasn't your typical garden gnome.

Across the street, the Hotel Carlton's private beach club had a full-service restaurant with a backdrop of beach, ships, and yachts.

Other hotels (and the town of Cannes) had their own stretches of beach with umbrellas--some apparently designed to attract Finns and Swedes.

Not everyone hid under a beach umbrella or sipped Champagne in a hotel restaurant: La Croisette's public beach was busy with ordinary folks enjoying the sun, the water, and each other's company.

Looking across the waterfront boulevard, we were reminded that we weren't in Nice or Saint-Tropez.

We were a bit surprised to see this vending machine on the way to the beach, and not on the way to the hotels. (Then again, we've never peeked inside a wiggling beach tent.)

Many of the buildings behind La Croisette were modern. Few were attractive, but some had decent landscaping.

Having had our fill of imagined luxuries along La Croisette, we headed a few blocks inland to the rue d'Antibes, the main shopping street of Cannes.