Goodbye Cannes…

So… I have a confession to make. Remember that post you read yesterday? The one about the marché de Forville in Cannes? Well… it’s kind of a lie.

Not that I don’t love the marché… I do. It’s just that I’m not in Cannes anymore, and I feel like writing about the place where I no longer am is kind of a lie. Isn’t it?

Well, I’m setting things straight now: life got in the way, and even though I left Cannes more than a week ago, I had a handful of pictures lying around that I wanted to post for you before writing about where I currently am. So bear with me… tomorrow we can talk about Edinburgh. Today, I want to say goodbye to Cannes.

Cannes is a special place, as pretty much everyone who has visited it knows, but especially the collège, the international school where I first met the Canadian, the Nomad, Scotty… endless people that I still keep in touch with (thank you, Facebook!) even though we only knew each other for a handful of months more than three years ago.

One thing about yesterday’s post is true, though: this trip showed me a very different Cannes than the one I knew three years ago. I didn’t once visit Midnight Blues, where Thursday Ladies’ Night was a staple for cheap Sex on the Beach and cheesy music from the 90s. I only went to Quay’s once or twice and Morrison’s exactly once, although Bar à Vin became my new evening regular.

There was no drinking at the collège bar, no dancing in the foyer or on the terrace. There was no Geil Hour, no costume parties and no episodes of Heroes watched in the middle of the night in the Canadian’s office.

But there were other things. New things. I went to the beach–something I never did when I actually lived in Cannes. I spent several full days there, crawling back to the collège when I’d had so much sun I could hardly move.

I took the time to wander the pedestrian Suquet, snapping pictures of perfect old houses that seemed so commonplace when I lived here. It’s important to leave Cannes, every once in awhile, to make coming back worthwhile. Someone told me that once.

My brother came, and he, too, fell in love with the place that made me move halfway across the world from Canada three years ago. We stretched out on the beach and collected seaglass, and when we were both bright red from the sun, we walked around town for hours, watching would-be surfers try to catch some waves in the usually lake-calm Med.

And, of course, the Nomad and I showed him all the best places to eat.

On his first night, we went to Astoux, a shellfish restaurant where we ordered the platter showed in the picture above: fresh oysters, boulots, tourteau, clams. We also ordered these hot oysters with tarragon sauce, which were life-changing: sweet and creamy and perfectly seasoned with the very “under-appreciated” herb, tarragon, according to Scotty. I have to agree.

We also went to other places: my all-time favorite La Brouette de Grand’Mère, where you have no choices: your food is selected for you, as is the entertainment of the evening, which is usually a Spanish guitarist accompanied by a woman with maracas, who sing all the current Spanish pop. We ate pizza to rival New York pies at Cresci and we found the perfect twinkle-light decorated Le Jardin for our last night: one last bottle of wine, one last conversation with the Nomad before we’re relegated, once again, to Facebook chat, which is absolutely nothing like heartfelt conversations over bottles of rosé and endless dinners.

I may be back in Cannes next year… who knows. I applied for and got a job working as a boursière at the collège, but I know now how little that means in the grand scheme of things. This trip has sent my plans into a tailspin, and I’ve realized that I have no control over my own life; decisions get made in the universe without my consent, and it’s up to me to deal with them. So far, I’m pretty pleased with the way things are going, so if I end up working at the bar au collège come January or back in New York with my new roommates, or even back in Paris, somehow, it’s all right with me.

Bar à Vin
10, rue Marceau

Astoux
27, rue Félix Faure

La Brouette de Grand’Mère
9 bis, rue d’Oran

Cresci
3, quai Saint-Pierre

Le Jardin
15, avenue Isola Bella