cannes

we took the train down to cannes for the day, since the film festival was still going on. it’s an industry event, so i don’t think the general public is allowed in, and in any case, it would have been far too late to get tickets anyway. we just tooled around the city, watching the throngs and various people with their particular types of entourages. we did see the famous red carpeted steps, but there were no celebs waiting there, waving for paparazzi. maybe on the half hour?

this did mean that we didn’t get to catch any of the new films being shown, such as wong kar-wai’s belated 2046. however, we did see a poster for capoeira the movie, with the tagline: “fight. dance. love. the passion will seduce you.”

i did see some french starlet come off of the pier, stop and sign many autographs for her many besieging fans, and then get whisked off in a mercedes limo, but i couldn’t identify her. she looked vaguely familiar in that way that every young french actress looks vaguely familiar (this may have been emmanuelle béart, who was on the jury).

hmc wanted to go to the beach, although most of the beaches in cannes are all gated off and private and you have to pay to get in and use a beach chair so you can order a fruity drink and tip the waiter. or do they really tip the waiter here? this tva thing is a little vague on that. however, since we didn’t bring a beach towel (and i even remember looking at my packtowl and then thinking, “nah, they’ll have beach towels in the hotel!”), we set off searching for a cheap one. they did have a cannes film festival one for a whopping 55€, which turned out to not be that bad a deal, considering a lot of the other ones were 45€, 30€, and even 20€ for the tacky ones with the almost nekkid men/women on them. by the time we finally recalled where we saw those cheap 7€ towels, it was too late and hmc wanted to go back and swim at the pool in the hotel.

we were going to stop and check out antibes on the way back, but opted for pool swimming instead. and then hmc promptly fell asleep when we got back to the hotel.

on the way back we saw this gaggle of five people on segways, moving sloooowly down the sidewalk, all wearing helmets. it was quite a sight, and very comical. we couldn’t figure out what was going on, and then we finally deduced that they must all be learning, since they were going so slow and timidly bobbing along/ apparently, there’s a thing where you can take a city segway tour of nice, which may be the most ridiculous thing ever.

although there were also those paprika flavored pringles.

Posted at May 21, 2004 8:49 PM