Antibes

So we left St Tropez on the 1st of August and headed to Cannes. I had a marina booking at Port Vauban in Antibes from the 3rd until the 7th of August, so I had a night to spare. A weather front was forming so I decided to spend the night as close to Antibes as I could.

Thanks to my friend Blaise, he recommended Île de St Marguerite. We chose a spot next to all the big boats and spent the night there. It was nice, we all swam, watched the big yachts and even watched a helicopter take of from a yacht called Samar. The video can be watched on our SV_BAYTI INSTA account.

Next morning the wind started picking up, we headed to Antibes at 10am hoping they would let us berth earlier, unfortunately our space was occupied so we hoped to get it at 12 as per our booking. Meanwhile I had to anchor outside the marina wall in a sea that was getting angrier by the minute. Hani took me in our Q7 (the name of our dinghy in honor of our Audi Q7 family car). I went and picked up the car rental and headed back as quickly as I could.

The boat that had our space didn’t leave until 1pm! Crapper… I parked the boat gracefully in between 2 big yachts with inches to spare… It was tight!

Once we settled in, I spent the next 4 days showing Sarah and the kids all the cool spots between Cannes and Monaco. One of my favorite places in the world is a small village called Saint Paul de Vence. We were able to squeeze 2 visits on 2 separate days. We also went to Grasse, showed the kids how perfume is made, we went to Biot and showed them how glass is made and also went to a village called Gourdon on top of the mountain overlooking the Côtes D’Azur.

The 4th of August… Lovely afternoon it was… We headed to Monaco, the kids were really looking forward to it. On the way there my mother sends me a message that there was a massive explosion in Beirut, I stopped the car on the side of the road and to my horror I watched the videos! I thought it was a nuclear explosion. I started checking on all my family and friends, scrambling on Facebook and Insta looking for them to post that they were ok. What a horrible day! Sarah and I were really devestated during the following days.

We left Antibes and moved onwards to St Jean Cap Ferrât, we spent the night there before our 100mile crossing to Corsica, overlooking a gorgeous town where apparently Charlie Chaplin lived. This is also the same area where they filmed one of our favorite movies “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”.

Next morning at 5am we started our trip and bobbed around what was thankfully calm seas to Calvi.

To be continued…..