A Day at the Beach

While it was still warm outside, but after the kids went back to school, we took a short, relaxing trip down to the Riviera. We stayed in Cannes, the city known for the Cannes Film Festival which happens here each May. Above is the Palais du Festival where some films are played.

Some (older) celebrities have left there mark here. The date on the lower right hand corner is from 1987.

In the morning we took a ferry from Cannes to Ile Saint Honarat, an island about 4 or 5 miles off shore from the mainland. Here's Max waiting on the rocky shore of the Vieux Port (Old Port) for the ferry.

This is Ile Saint Honorat. It is the smaller of the two islands in the archipelago known as the Lerins Islands. Both islands are still part of Cannes though Ile Saint Honorat is privately owned.

Visiting Ile Saint Honorat is somewhat of a religious experience. There is an abbey, a fortified monastery (above) and seven churches on the island. Some of the churches date back 15 centuries. Here is one of the churches below.

There is a sense of calm and peace here. There are no motorized vehicles on the island, minus a tractor or two used by the monks to tend to the vineyards. There were hardly any people around, so very quickly you feel surrounded by nature.

Here these boats have found the calm waters between Ile Saint Honorat and Ile Sainte-Marguerite.

This is the life! We spent the afternoon on the beautiful sandy beach. The weather could not have been more perfect and it wasn't even crowded. The water was a little cool, but felt pretty fine once we got used to it. It was hard to drag ourselves away.

We had a really great weekend in Cannes and would maybe go back if there weren't so many other places we wanted to visit! We've reached the half way point to our stay here, as far as we know, and I think we're starting to realize how much we still want to see.