Antibes France

Written by Dave:  We have been mostly lucky with the weather during our travels.  It had been raining heavy the day before, but the day that we went to Antibes turned out to be a stunning day.

Antibes has long been an important town and trading port.  It was founded in the 5th century BC by Phocaeans, and was called Antipolis.  Later the Romans took hold over the town around 27 BC.  It remained in their control for over 500 years.  It grew to the largest town in the region and was the main entry point into Gaul.  After 476 AD, with the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the town descended into chaos.  Later a wall and fortress were built, and the townspeople found shelter from the outside wars within their walls.  This is a town with a great amount of history.

We started our visit with a walk along the defensive walls.

On the other side of the wall was a beautiful beach.  Luie would stop periodically to peek through at the sea on the other side.

The beach here was fairly sheltered, and had nice sand unlike the other beaches nearby.  We went down and spent a couple hours soaking in the Mediterranean sun.  Luckily it was not yet high season, and the beach was not as crowded as it would be in full summer.  It was very comfortable, and soon we were asleep in the sand.  The kids did go into the water for a dip, but I hadn’t brought my suit along.  It appeared that some just dropped their pants and went in their underwear, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet.

Next to the beach were the many sailboats and yachts.

This was an interesting sculpture that was looking over the harbor.

Docked in Antibes was the superyacht Katara.  It is owned by the Emir of Qatar, and is one of the largest yachts in the world at 408.1ft in length.  The picture hardly does justice to the actual size of it.  The other yachts that would have looked immense in their own right, looked like bath toys next to it.

We continued our walk along the walls into town.

This is the Chateau Grimaldi, which Pablo Picasso lived in for 6 months in 1946 after World War II.  It was said he was thrilled to leave occupied Paris, and his creativity was reinvigorated here.  When he departed the region, he left some of his works behind, and it was turned into the Picasso Museum.

The streets around Antibes were clean and picturesque.  Beautiful baskets of flowers hung down lining the streets.

Here is a brief video of some of the sights around town, as well as the kids swimming.