Cannes...the experience...part 1...

Cannes was absolutely fabulous...an experience never to be forgotten!

I went down to SJ's on Wednesday night, had a meal in her flat and a couple of bottles of wine. We did intend to get an early night as we'd got to be up at 5:00 to get to Luton for out flight to Nice. Well, best laid plans and all that...

We did get up nice and early and made the (short) trip up to Luton. Got there in plenty of time, despite SJ carrying her "Early Learning" suitcase...checked in and settled down with a coffee. It was at that point SJ decided to check her phone...message from her customers saying there was only one place booked for their flight from Stansted. Major problem! They'd actually sent the message at 5:30, it was now 7:30. One quick phone call determined they had actually left the airport and were back at home. The next 30 minutes were spent in a frenzy of texting phone calls, emails to SJ's offices to see what had happened and also to see if they could get flights later in the day. If I'm honest I didn't think they'd come but when we landed in Nice we had a message to say that they were indeed coming, albeit on a flight that arrived at 17:30. Still, at least they were going to get there and it was certainly a relief for SJ!

We were whisked through the airport by the HP representatives, into a black Mercedes with immaculate chauffeur. He certainly knew his way around Nice as we didn't really get held up at all in the local traffic. What a transfer!



The hotel we stayed in was the Cannes Hilton and it was right on La Croisette, the main street on the beachfront in Cannes. We couldn't have been more central. After a briefing from the HP staff and an outline of our proposed itinerary we unpacked our stuff in the room. The very pink room. For some reason, the hotel designers had decided that our room should be resplendent in pastel pink, very nice, if not a little overwhelming.



We wandered down La Croisette, taking in all the sights and sounds to La Majestic Barriere, the other hotel HP had booked for the Festival. We had passes that allowed us to basically go anywhere. All the exclusive beach terraces, hotels, everything. We couldn't have asked for any more really. We had lunch on the private beach terrace of La Majestic, watching the gin palaces go past in the harbour. Occasionally we would see someone being interviewed on camera for one TV program or another, whilst sipping our free, unlimited wine. The weather was fabulous, about 25 degrees and sunny. It really doesn't get much better than this!

As SJ's customers were not due to arrive until 18:30 in Cannes, we agreed that we'd forgo our Zodiac tickets as they probably wouldn't make it. We headed back up to the hotel to go and meet them. We got ourselves ready and made our way downstairs and then to La Majestic again for the Cocktail party where we had to collect our tickets. We decided that we'd wait for them down there as the meal was booked at the restaurant within La Majestic. We met a rather interesting person there - Imogen Diamonds, sort of like a mix up of Steve Tyler, an old Pamela Anderson and Mick Jagger. Quite weird.



Sj's customers arrived and we went off for a meal in Fouquets. It was really nice and afterwards we headed over to take our place on the red carpet. That experience was absolutely amazing. Despite the film (4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days) being not exactly a top draw, the paparazzi was out in force. We must have had our picture taken a hundred times. People were still standing 4 or 5 deep behind the crash barriers as well. It took us about 45 minutes to do the whole red carpet walk and every minute of it was amazing! We eventually arrived in the cinema at La Palais des Festivals and settled down to watch the film. And what a film. It was in Romanian, subtitled in French and then in English. The whole story was about two sisters, one of which is pregnant and has an abortion by a back street abortionist. That was it. I won't be rushing out to get the DVD! I'm sure it was very well shot, etc, etc but when you'd given up tickets to Zodiac, you can't help feeling a little let down!



After the film we headed back up La Croisette to our hotel. We had a couple of drinks in the bar and then went to bed.