Splendid Cote d’Azur
FOR a rejuvenating break the Cote d’Azur with its summer jazz and perfume festivals is hard to beat. But unless you crave glitz, forget Cannes and Saint-Tropez and make your base at the more modest but charming Villefranche-sur-Mer, three miles beyond Nice.
Nestled in the crook of a truly azure bay beneath the sun-splashed Alpes-Maritimes, the place is an unspoilt gem.
Bono and the Edge summer nearby, but Villefranche is a quiet warren of steep terraces, twisty lanes and cut-stone stairways traipsing down to a long quay choked with lazy waterfront cafés looking out to bobbing boats.
Italians ruled here for centuries and the pink, yellow, and ochre village houses show it with their red-tiled roofs and ornately-grilled balconies boasting lavish flowers and drying white sheets.
There’s a shingle beach down the way where you can soak in the Mediterranean’s warmth and watch gleaming cruise ships come and go a couple of times a day. I met Armagh couple Dessie and Ann Gregg who had just come off the Royal Caribbean line’s Voyager of the Seas. “It’s our 30th wedding anniversary and we always wanted to come to the Mediterranean,” Des explained. “It’s gorgeous, and they just had a St Patrick’s Day parade on board.”
“But that was weeks ago?”
“Well, it was led by Haitian staff and they take their time,” Des chuckled.
From the end of the beach you can walk out onto the small peninsula of St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, home to some of the most expensive villas in the world, and to summering celebrities like Brad Pitt and Sting, and formerly to King Leopold II of Belgium and Winston Churchill. A few villas boast the Tricolour, but the word is that the Irish are selling up.
On Le Cap a looping cliff-side path throws off panoramic views from Antibes back to the Italian Alps twenty miles east. You pass pine-scented lanes and secluded private beaches, and amble into the Port de St Jean with its extravagant yachts whose next stop may be Monaco.
There are extraordinary sights here, including a zoological park boasting tigers and alligators, and the stunning Italianate pink palazzo of Beatrice Euphressi de Rothschild, open to the public and boasting 5,000 works of art.
Her answer to Marie-Antoinette’s court at Versailles, the place has pools with fountains that dance in tune to Vivaldi, and nine gardens working off Beatrice’s obsession for pink according to various themes — Spanish, Japanese, Greek muses, etc.
A mile back toward beachfront-Bono lies Beaulieu (“beautiful place”)-sur-Mer, with watery activities (jet-skiing, water-skiing, and angling cruises) and the magnificent villa Kérylos with mosaics purloined from 6th to 10th century B.C. Greece.
Back in Villefranche, I met Olivier Mezyeres, the manager of the aptly named Hotel Welcome, a five-storey family-run place dead on the water. Olivier is so thin he’s a-swim in a black suit, being a former star French punk rocker. He’s coolly sophisticated but endearingly open — true to the easy ambience of Villefranche.
On the square Amelie Pollonaise to our right, the village’s flea market was thronged with visitors seeking treasures — this week it will be alive with local parishioners downing pastis and preparing to set fire to several boats in praise of the local saint Pierre. Just beyond hulks the 16th-century citadel built by the Duke of Savoy that’s now home to a few art galleries, the town hall, and a bacchii pitch where the theatrics of southern French culture are displayed every afternoon.
Much of Cocteau’s surreal Orphée was filmed on the creepily dark and vaulted nearby Rue de la Obscure behind the Hotel Welcome which ends in a charming restaurant called L’Aparte.
Cocteau adopted the former convent that is the Welcome as his HQ, and its lobby and best seafront rooms boast reproductions of his artwork and epigrams. It’s the signature hostelry of Villefranche, being welcoming under the stewardship of the family Galbois.. There are about 20 cafes in the village (some pricey), and a few bars like Le Cosmos and the Lombardi, although Dominique, the Welcome’s wine steward, will look after you better.
A short bus trip away is Nice — cost €1. The seafront Promenade des Anglais there with its grand hotels and French wannabe sunbathers is worth a leisurely stroll. At its end, climb Mont Boron to the cliff-ringed ancient fortress of the Colline du Chateau, first fortified by Ligurian Celts. Around the bend lies the old harbour with modestly priced, casual bars and cafés.
Nice’s old town is a Kasbah of crooked lanes with see eye-popping storefront displays of exotically coloured salts, spices, soaps, fruits, pastries and flowers.
At the Lou Lilha Leva on the place Centrale, sample the piping hot socca, a kind of flat bread Nice specialty of baked chickpea flour and olive oil doused with black pepper and served over the counter.
The baroque churches of the Chapelle de la Misericorde and the petite L’Eglise du Jesus on the place du Gesu are both hauntingly beautiful with ornately frescoed ceilings.
There is a grand sculpture on numerous squares, a botanical park, and museums of Beaux-Arts, Asian Art and Modern Art (disappointing), Matisse, and Chagall.
When you tire, visit the Café de Turin (place Garibaldi), which offers about the freshest seafood to be found.
A more celebrated restaurant is Le Merenda (4, rue Raoul Bosio). It’s a hole-in-the-wall run by the pony-tailed formerly Michelin-starred chef Christian Plumail who has no phone and takes no credit cards.
Aer Lingus offers direct flights from Dublin to Nice daily (from €235 return) and from Cork Tuesday and Saturday (from €285 return). Ryanair offers frequent flights from Dublin. Various carriers daily from London.
Avoid rip-off taxis. Buses are €1 (€4 from airport) and trains will take you to Italy for a pittance.
Villefranche’s Hôtel Welcome on the quays is a charmer: €310 and up high season, rates drop steeply in September.
The Hôtel le Versailles (7, Boulevard Princesse Grace de Monaco) at the top of the village, has heavenly views: €170 and up.
The more basic Hôtel de la Darse (3, Avenue Général de Gaulle) behind the citadel and beside a secret second harbour has rooms with balconies overlooking the sea: €87.
There are back-to-back jazz festivals beside Nice this summer featuring all-star casts. Best is the Jazz a Juan (www.jazzajuan.fr) from July 14-25, which follows the July 8-12 Nice Jazz festival in the lovely hillside Jardins de Cimiez.
Or try the curious Jasmine Festival in nearby Grasse, perfume capital of the world on August 11-15. This is an eccentric Mardi Gras.
In the Nice region you will discover pizza as epiphany. In Villefranche, try Trastevere’s signature affair of jambon, champignons, frommage, artichaut, chorizo, euf and olives — €14.
Or go to la Grignotiere in Villefranche and taste the Cote d’Azur bouillabaisse, a fishy dark gruel that excites every taste bud once you sink into a flotilla of croutons to be rubbed with garlic, pasted with spicy Rouille, and suffocated with grated cheese — €4.
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