Day Twelve: Cannes

I left Tocchi bright and early Wednesday morning at 7:00 am and picked up the Auto Strada outside of Florence. From there, it was an easy cruise over to France and I arrived at the place where I was scheduled to meet Malcolm Wood an hour early. So I followed the directions he had given me and managed to find his home in the village of Valbonne. And what a lovely place it is! It resembled the Tuscan villages I had become familiar with - a compact and tranquil place, compact and vibrant with activity in its narrow streets.

Malcolm then took me on a tour of Antibes and Cannes, where we walked among the rich and famous and saw the gorgeous beaches that line the Mediterranean. Antibes was just delightful, but I got the impression that Cannes was trying oh so hard to be hip and cool and with it. The people who hang out there are not the kind of people I had come to see. There is a charming old neighborhood at one end where the tourists and the wealthy never go. That looked more like my kind of place!

That night, we ate in the open air main square in Valbonne and had a lovely meal under a bright full moon. Malcolm regaled me with tales of his time in the merchant marine and his travels to virtually every port in the world at one time or another. He grew up in the Shetland Islands in Scotland and has Scottish burr that has been sanded down by the years away from home but it still delightful to listen to. He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage race cars and race drivers. In fact, one of the cars I photographed at Il Campo in Siena a few days before was driven by two of his neighbors.

And with that, my voyage of discovery had come to an end. Or so I thought. Tomorrow was an easy drive north and back to Annecy. But there were adventures aplenty in store for me. You can hear more about that in tomorrow's post!

For photos from today, please follow this link:  Day Twelve